MMXII...

So as the new year approaches, I've been thinking about resolutions. Where is my life now and where do I want it to go this year? That's a loaded question for someone who could end up in one of about eight different places next year. But that's a whole other blogpost...

Looking back over the last year, I'm truly amazed at how God has worked in my life - all the things He's taught me and all the ways He's changed me. It's really wonderful to see just how involved God is in my life. Sometimes I don't realize the ways He's growing me until they've already happened, and sometimes I see it as it's going on, but either way, it really is just incredible, and I just feel like I cannot say that enough. :')

Anyway, back to the resolutions...one thing that's really been on my mind lately is the need to have a thankful heart.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says: "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

So I guess that's what I'm feeling the need to pursue this year. And so I'm planning on doing what DAVO has dubbed "1000 things to be thankful for in 2012"... I'm going to take time every single day to write (in a yet-to-be-purchased fabulous new journal) what I'm thankful for. My goal is to do about 5 things a day, although 1000 would only take 2-3 a day, so there's some flexibility there. Over the past several years especially, I've loved writing down ways God has been faithful (through journaling or blogging or whatever else), because it's so absolutely wonderful to look back on those things later, especially in times of great struggle. That said, I'm really excited to spend an entire year recording all the ways in which God provides for me. Plus this ties into two HUGE themes that God has brought up again and again in my life for a long time now - manna and remembering.

Well, it's almost 3 AM and I'm tired and don't have much more to say, except that anyone reading this should join me in finding "1000 things to be thankful for in 2012"! I'm so absolutely looking forward to God teaching me through this and I'll definitely be posting some of the things I'm thankful for throughout the year! :)

Buechner + Christmas

So since it's pretty much been the year of Buechner for me, I figured I'd post some Buechner quotes on Christmas tonight...enjoy! :)

"The birth of Jesus made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it."

"Back then to the essential message of Christmas which is Emmanuel, God with us, and to the questions it raises: Who is this God and how is he with us? "The high and lofty One who inhabits eternity" is the answer to the first. The One who is with us is the One whom none can look upon because the space-and-time human mind can no more comprehend fully the spaceless, timeless Reality of the One than the eyes of the blind can comprehend light. The One who is with us is the One who has made himself known at most only partially and dimly through the pantomime of nature and history and the eloquent but always garbled utterance of prophets, saints, and mystics."

"It seems to me one of the miracles of the Christian faith is that the feast of Christmas survives what we have done to it -- all the hoopla, clap-trap, commercialism and all the rest of it that I don't even need to go into because everybody knows what it is. Yet, somehow it does survive. This extraordinary moment when the whole year slows down and you point to this unimaginable event where God somehow became made flesh. It is so cataclysmic; it is so extraordinary; we try to make it habitable; we try to make it cozy; we make creches and we sing Christmas carols. At best, it can be touching and real. At its worst it can be cheap and banal. What often occurs to me about Christmas is that if it is really true, if the word really became flesh, if the mystery behind all that really took the form of a human life, this vulnerable, tiny human life whose skull you could have crushed with one hand, then there must have been extraordinary anguish and intergalactic struggle to have this extraordinary thing come to pass. It wasn't an easy thing to happen. There is a kind of terror about Christmas, a kind of holiness and awesomeness about Christmas that we tend to forget. The resurrection and the life came down and tasted the bitterness of death."

"Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed—as a matter of cold, hard fact—all its cracked up to be, then eve at best our efforts are misleading.

The Word became flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God… who for us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.”

Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast."

Thoughts from a blissful Sabbath...

First off, let me just say, I love the Sabbath. I haven't kept it perfectly all my life, but I think it's one of the (sooooooo many) things God's been teaching me over the last few years, and I think it is absolutely one of the most beautiful gifts God has given us (if we would actually let Him).

In Mark 2:27, Jesus says "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath."

In other words, God knows how much we need to Sabbath even more than we do. And so He gave us the command to REST. I know some people who don't shop or clean or run errands or anything on the Sabbath, and I don't usually treat it quite that way (sometimes those can be hugely worshipful activities for me...but that's a different story)... But regardless of what people do or don't do on the Sabbath, I think it's so incredibly important to use it as a day of rest from the things you need rest from, and it's glorious when you do.

I came across this quote probably five years ago, and it's always stuck with me:

"To put it another way, the rest God instituted was meant first and foremost to cause us to interpret our work, to press meaning into it, to make sure we know to whom it is properly dedicated."

I think this is such a good way to think about it. I know personally, when I get so busy with classes and teaching and grading (and applications, lately), I start to lose my sense of meaning. I trudge through daily life as if with blinders on, only able to see well enough to put one foot in front of the other, not aware of my surroundings, just struggling to survive. And this just isn't how God meant for us to live!

So every seven days, God sits me down, takes off the blinders, gently lifts my head up, opens my eyes, and invites me to glory in the bigger picture, to be refreshed by Him, to be reminded of the greater purpose in everything I've been doing all week. He invites me to BE, and not to DO. And it's amazing. I didn't really Sabbath intentionally for like the first twenty years of my life. Going into senior year at Wheaton, I was about to apply to grad schools, and knew from experience how crazy that could make a person, so I decided to be very intentional with my Sabbath. I'm sure I didn't do it perfectly, but it was a beautiful experience, and I know that God used it to help me to trust Him with my future and to not completely lose my mind.

This year (after a summer of working far too many Sunday brunches), I decided to do the same thing for basically the same reasons, and once again it's been beautiful, and I look forward so greatly to the Sabbath. I'll admit, in some ways, it's a little bit stressful, because at the back of my mind, there is a little voice telling me about all the stuff I should be doing. But the more I Sabbath, the quieter that voice is, because I know I'm not even going to give myself that option. And it's so freeing! The other six days, I always feel the pressure of this world and like I should be doing work constantly. Then the Sabbath comes and I know that I don't have to do, but only to be, and that's amazingly refreshing.

I've spent a lot of Sabbaths lately listening to sermons from my three favorite churches/pastors (Redeemer Presbyterian/Tim Keller, Red Rocks/Chad Bruegman and Shawn Johnson, and Mars Hill/Mark Driscoll), listening/worshiping/dancing to music (so much Gungor :) ), reading, talking to friends, leading the high school girls' Bible study, helping out with youth group, and just resting. God has used all these to just fill me up spiritually and revive my soul in exactly the way I need after it has been battered and worn out week after week. Without these days of refreshment and revitalization, honestly, I don't know how I'd be surviving this semester. And God absolutely uses them to re-fill me with joy even in the midst of all the stress and difficulty and bad circumstances that come into my life.

That's about all I have to say right now, except for...thank You Abba for the Sabbath! :')

Some belated Thanksgiving thoughts...

Okay, so I am extraordinarily blessed. Even when it doesn't feel like it (which has kinda been the last few days). God has been indescribably good to me, but I'll try to describe at least some of it in honor of Thanksgiving, and so I can look back and be reminded when life gets crazy and I forget.

I am so thankful for.......a God who KNOWS me and LOVES me. I'm realizing more and more how incredible that is. Humans love so imperfectly, and humans hurt each other so much. But God loves me perfectly, and God heals me. That's pretty incredible.

I am so thankful for.......all the saints God has brought into my life. "A saint," according to Frederick Buechner, "is a life giver. A saint is a human being with the same hang-ups and dark secrets and abysses as the rest of us. But if a saint touches your life, you come alive in a new way." I am amazingly blessed to have saints in my life, and I would not be who I am today without them. To have a safe place to be vulnerable about my "hang-ups and dark secrets and abysses," to have people who trust me with theirs, to have people who love me for who I am regardless of what I can do/be for them, leaves me at a loss for words. God has been doing an amazing work of healing in my life, especially over the past few months, through these saints, and I am in awe of that.

I am so thankful for.......my past. At times it's been an insanely difficult path, and there have been moments of staring into the pit and realizing that God was absolutely waging war for my soul - and He won! :') - but still, God is good. There have been so many trials and battles and hurts, and there still are...and I have done a lot of stupid things, and I still do...but God has absolutely made beautiful things out of brokenness in my past, and by His grace, I'm struggling and growing and learning to trust that He's gonna do it with the things that are currently broken, too.

"Only if we trust God to turn past calamities into future comfort can we look back with gratitude for all things." -John Piper

God, thank You for who You are, and how You love me. Help me to trust You with my brokenness and my scars. Make them beautiful, God, and make them a thing of worship. Amen. :')

On finding God's will...

I think I have a weird decision-making process. For all the big decisions in my life, I tend to wrestle with all the different possibilities, making pros-and-cons lists and spreadsheets, trying to weigh all the options, and just generally over-analyzing and over-thinking everything. Then after all this effort and thought and inner turmoil, I think I generally make the decision on what feels like a whim.

I did this with college. Up until about a day before the deadline, I was torn between Wheaton and Westminster. I spent hours and hours trying to figure it out, or talking to others and trying to get their opinions... Then one day (and just in time), I just picked Wheaton. Not sure why. I just picked it.

Once I make a decision like this, I don't look back. I'm not interested in living a life of regrets or what-ifs. Plus I believe that God won't allow me to make the wrong decision if I am really seeking His will. So once I picked Wheaton, there was no looking back, no questioning whether it was the right decision, no regrets. And I do firmly believe God led me to pick Wheaton, and have believed that through all of the very good and all of the very bad times I had there.

So once I make a decision, I'm fine, and I trust that God is leading me, yet making that decision is still often a ridiculously hard process. Over the last month or so, I've spent a TON of time in prayer and reading the Bible and listening to sermons and talking to people about God's will, since I was in the process of choosing doctoral programs to apply to (the process for that, by the way, was very similar to the usual steps I mentioned above - spending countless hours and days and weeks in turmoil, then deciding it all really suddenly and for no apparent reason).

Psalm 16 has been so important to me lately:

Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you.”

As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.

The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply;
their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out
or take their names on my lips.

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

I bless the Lord who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
I have set the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.

You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

I especially love the second half of verse 5, which simply says "you hold my lot." I think the more obvious part of it is that God knows our future, and (if we seek Him) He is leading us and won't let us go astray. God has a plan for us. And that's amazing! But I think maybe there's more to it. He holds our lots, which yes, I think means He's protecting our futures from all of the things that could come along to try to destroy them. But I think He also holds our lots in the sense that He holds onto them until we're ready for them.

One Tim Keller sermon I listened to in particular talked about this sort of thing: he talked about how when we're driving somewhere and get lost, and we stop and ask for directions, the person can either draw us out a map or a list of directions, OR he can get in the car with us and direct us step-by-step (which admittedly would be kinda creepy). When we're lost in life, though, and we ask God for His will, we want the map more than we want the relationship with Him that is what we really need.

But I think God holds onto things about our futures that we're just not ready for yet, and I think that's beautiful (albeit frustrating sometimes)! He knows us better than we even know ourselves, and He knows exactly how much we can handle every day, and He gives us exactly that much. And even though we claim we want the whole map, He knows we can't handle that, and He gets in the car and leads us step by step, which is WAYYYYYYY better, because that means we aren't going to mess up the directions!

That said...God is good (so very, very good). He holds my lot, so "therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices..." :')

A Praying Life...

The adult Sunday School at my church is working our way through "A Praying Life" by Paul Miller (which, although I'm only 5 or 6 chapters in, I highly recommend). I was just reading it and came across this passage:

"If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life. You'll always be a little too tired, a little too busy. But if, like Jesus, you realize you can't do life on your own, then no matter how busy, no matter how tired you are, you will find the time to pray" (49).

Wow. I personally find that very convicting. Obviously there is a huge part of me that IS "quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all [I] need in life." Which...when I say it out loud, is just moronic. And yet I think there's part of every human being that feels like that's the case - if only we had a little more time, a little more money, a little more talent...surely THEN we could do x, y, or z that we want to accomplish or become because we think it would fulfill us. And yet we could have all the time, money, and talent in the world, and still have NOTHING if we didn't have the love of God.

Reading this passage came at an interesting time in my life, too. As I read it, and felt the conviction that so often I do feel like this, I almost simultaneously thought to myself, "But you don't have any time, money, or talent!" Now, this isn't 100% true, of course. But honestly, I'm ME, I'm always way overcommitted - I have no time. And I'm a grad student, trying to live off the meager sums Penn State finds it appropriate to pay me for my slave labor hard work - I have no money. And lately, especially as I've been wrestling with crazy spatial math/music and thinking about doctoral programs, I've been realizing how little I know - that I have no talent.

Jesus, like You, I cannot do life on my own. Even if I had all the time, money, and talent in the world, I could not. And I have none of those. Help me, no matter how busy, no matter how tired, to find the time to pray. "Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul" (Psalm 143:8).

On goat demons and other whorish pursuits...

I was just reading Leviticus 17, and verse 7 says (in the ESV): "So they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to goat demons, after whom they whore. This shall be a statute forever for them throughout their generations." Not gonna lie, I found that first sentence pretty amusing. Like, what the heck are goat demons, and why are the people of Israel whoring after them?!? I felt a little weird laughing at something like that from the Bible...especially from Leviticus...it's a pretty serious book, after all. This is God's Law for the Israelite people.

Then I started to think about it a little bit more, and I realized how ridiculous so many of the things I (and other 21st-century Americans) whore after would sound if they were put into that verse. We whore after popularity, after various artistic pursuits, after romantic relationships, after career success, and after so many other things that are just ridiculous - particularly when held side-by-side with the living God that we're supposed to be worshiping!

That said, I really don't know (and hopefully this isn't heretical), but maybe Leviticus 17:7 is meant to strike us as kind of ridiculous. To the Israelites it was written to, yeah, there probably were goat demons that they were spiritually whoring themselves out to, and so it was probably pretty serious. But to us, it's ridiculous, in the same way that if the Israelites heard what we whore ourselves out to, they'd probably find us completely ridiculous. But the seeming ridiculousness of this verse helped point out to me (not for the first time, but I can use all the reminders I can get) of how utterly pathetic all the things I whore myself out to are.

God, on the other hand, deserves our wholehearted worship: “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created” (Revelation 4:11). Jesus, help me to cast all the goat demons that I'm whoring after out of my life, and worship you and you alone. Amen. :')

A story...

Okay, so this is a story I wrote a few months ago at the request of my sister to entertain her during a really long stats class one night. Some of you have already read it, and it's not my usual kind of post, but I figured I should post it so that I don't lose it or forget about it (I'm not really a creative writer, either, so bear with me). Also, when writing this story, I asked for some prompts from Denise, and she told me that I had to include: a bus, a radio, peanuts, "alligator-hunter man", and a "chef good with a knife." Here goes...

Once upon a time, there was a nondescript and rather ordinary man. His name was Marvin, and he was a bus driver. Marvin lived in Florida, and he worked very hard at his job, sometimes driving eighteen hours a day, in hopes that one day he would be able to retire north. Six days a week he drove his bus, picking up all kinds of passengers, most of them usually quite old (this is Florida we're talking about). The old people complained and made trouble for Marvin all the time, but he kept on working, holding on to the hope that his patience would one day get him to the beautiful cool weather and four seasons of the northeast.

One Saturday, one that seemed like any other Saturday, Marvin was getting ready to start his route, to pick up the usual blue-haired ladies and bald-headed gentlemen. Marvin couldn't wait for the day to be over, so he could enjoy his one day off before another week started, and he had to go back to the same old routine. On this Saturday, as on every Saturday, Marvin's job was to drive tour buses to the Everglades, where the passengers would get on boats and tour the swamps, getting thrills out of seeing all the alligators that inhabited the area. Marvin had never toured the Everglades - he had never even seen an alligator, except in the movies and on TV. His job was to wait with the bus until his passengers came back, full of exciting tales about their encounters with the beasts. Marvin loved hearing their stories, since that was probably the closest he would ever get to seeing the alligators himself. But if any of the passengers had been paying any attention as they told their stories to each other, they would have noticed Marvin glancing back at them with a wistful look in his eye. Alas, they were too concerned with their own lives to notice the nondescript and rather ordinary man driving the bus.

So Marvin started his route, and with a bus full of old grandmas and grandpas and their children and grandchildren who were visiting, Marvin pulled onto the interstate on the way south to the Everglades. The radio droned on in the background, and Marvin heard - heard, but didn't give it a second thought - that there was a tropical storm coming. The meteorologists expected it to miss the mainland, but not by much. Marvin kept driving. He noticed the sky was getting overcast. As he drove, he munched a handful of peanuts, a snack perhaps as nondescript and ordinary as the man himself, and thought about all the adventures his passengers would have that day, and how he wished something adventurous would happen to *him*.

As he pulled the bus into the park, it started raining. It was one of those storms where you can't see more than a few feet in front of you. As the passengers let out disappointed cries, realizing that their tour of the swamps would have to be called off, Marvin struggled to see well enough to guide the bus safely into the parking lot, where he turned it around carefully and prepared to drive back to the interstate...until the bus' engine sputtered and died. The passengers groaned at the thought of being stuck on the bus any longer, and Marvin put on his raincoat and galoshes to go out and check the engine. As he went out, his thoughts were a million miles away - or at least a thousand, as he dreamed of the day he would be away from all the horrible heat, the hurricanes, and the hum of complaining voices waiting for him on the bus. He was so distracted, in fact, that he didn't notice the pair of dark, reptilian eyes staring at him through the sheets of rain from across the parking lot.

Marvin surveyed the engine with an experienced eye, quickly found the problem, made some adjustments, and soon the problem was fixed. Relieved that he wouldn't have to face the surprisingly vituperative anger of his octogenarian patrons, he put away his tools and turned to make his way back onto the bus. When he turned, however, his heart skipped a beat, as he realized he was face-to-face with a sixteen-foot alligator. Marvin marveled at the obvious power of the creature, and at the same time wondered why he had ever wished he could pay money to tour its habitat in hopes of ever seeing one. He stood, frozen with fear. On the bus, one of the passengers, Jilly, a small girl of about seven years, had wandered to the front of the bus, impatient from the long trip and tired of listening to her ancient grandmother tell her stories that all inevitably began with "when I was a little girl..." Jilly peered out the front window and gasped as she saw the bus driver and the alligator, staring at each other, not five feet in front of the bus. She called out to her grandmother, and all the passengers on the bus flocked to the front to see the nondescript and rather ordinary man, motionless, and the sixteen-foot beast, its tail whipping back and forth with a force that could obviously knock Marvin off his feet without any trouble. Jilly's grandmother grabbed her and covered her eyes, and the other passengers began to panic, certain that they were about to witness an alligator tearing a man to pieces.

Marvin stood, stared at the creature, on whose face he swore he could detect an evil and - was it hungry? - glare. Was it possible for alligators to lick their lips? Did they even have lips? Or tongues? Marvin thought he saw the creature do so. He wished he were back safe on his bus, and wondered why he had ever wanted adventure. The alligator began to move forward, very slowly and deliberately. Suddenly, Marvin remembered a TV show he had once watched, "Alligator Hunter Man," in which the host often wrestled and captured the beasts. But that guy usually had a pole and a net, maybe some rope...and plenty of people to help him out if he got in any serious trouble. Marvin had none of that. He kept staring at the alligator, still motionless, still frozen in fear. He had no thoughts of anything else in the world. For now, there was only him and the alligator.

Then, to Marvin's great surprise, the alligator, now only a few feet from Marvin (and with what Marvin had decided was definitely a hungry look in his eyes), staggered and fell. Marvin's eyes widened. He was sure that he should be dead now. What had happened? Minutes later (but it felt like hours), he was finally able to lift his gaze from the creature, after it had heaved a final breath and those reptilian eyes had closed, no longer to keep Marvin frozen in their gaze. And what should he see, but a woman! Now, to the other passengers on the bus, this woman had looked nondescript and rather ordinary. She had sat by herself and kept quiet the whole trip, and no one had noticed her slip off the bus when Marvin's standoff began. But to Marvin, this was the most beautiful woman in the world. He glanced at the alligator again, and noticed for the first time two long knives, piercing into the alligator's tough, scaly skin. He also noticed the rain start to subside, as the sun began to peek through the clouds.

He stuttered out a few words, breaking what had seemed like an eternal silence: "Wh-what? H-h-how?"

The woman gave him a shy smile, and explained that she was a chef, renowned the world over for her knife skills. She was visiting from New York City, and was planning on going to her aunt and uncle's house to make a special 50th anniversary dinner for them right after the tour, so she had all her equipment with her. She had never seen an alligator either, but she had watched the same "Alligator Hunger Man" program as Marvin, and thus knew exactly where the alligator's weak spots were. Marvin, having regained his composure by this time, walked closer to her, thanked her, and introduced himself. She introduced herself as Meg, and asked timidly if he would want to come as her guest to her aunt and uncle's anniversary party. He accepted quickly, and the two of them walked back onto the bus, shocked as they climbed its stairs to remember that there were other people in the world. Marvin quickly took his seat, and Meg made her way back to hers as the other passengers cheered. Its engine long since repaired, the bus roared to life when Marvin turned the key in the ignition. The rest of the trip was uneventful, as the passengers all buzzed with excitement about what they had seen. Only Marvin and Meg were silent, for this was not just some funny little story that they'd share at parties a few times, then forget. No, this was a story that they would tell hundreds of times, for the rest of their lives, whenever people asked husband and wife how they had met, a story that would always surprise whoever had asked, for it was surely not a story you would expect from two such nondescript and rather ordinary people.

The End.

Jesus heals the demon-possessed man...

I was just reading Luke 8, where Jesus heals the demon-possessed man, and was really struck by verses 38 and 39. I'd never really paid them much attention before, but then, that's why we keep returning to Scripture over and over even when we've read it all before - you never know how a certain passage or story will speak to you or be illuminated for you in a new and different way as you grow and change and muddle your way through so much of life and its trials, blessings, and experiences.

Anyway, so in this passage, Jesus has just healed this guy who has been possessed by many demons for a long time. This man has been tormented by them and separated from his friends and his family by them, as they keep forcing him to go into the desert and out of society (sidenote: here's an example of Satan isolating his victim, a technique he seems to use so often, especially in a place like Wheaton, where it tragically has a history of working very well). Jesus comes along and casts the demons out of him and into a herd of pigs. Everyone who sees this guy, now acting completely normal and demon-free, is terrified, and their fear is so great they even tell Jesus to leave. And the man's response is found in verses 38 and 39: "The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, 'Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.' And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.'"

This strikes me in two ways:
First of all, when Jesus heals me of my brokenness, like the healed man in this story, my response should be to want more of Jesus, not more of my family, friends, career, society, etc., even when I've been kept from them by and missing them because of that brokenness. It's not that these are necessarily bad things, but when the kid in this story was healed, the all-consuming desire of his heart was to be with Jesus. I think Jesus has been teaching me this over the years, but I still have a lot to learn.

Second of all, when I *do* have those days where the only thing I want is to be with Jesus, even if that means leaving behind all of the blessings of my current life, that's not always what God has for me. Not yet, anyway. Over the last month or so, I have had days where I long for heaven and for Jesus so deeply that I can hardly stand it...days where I, like the man in this story, BEG Jesus to let me just be with Him...but we don't always get this right away, even when it is the deepest desire of our hearts, and even though it's a GOOD desire. So for me to be reading this passage right now (God's timing is perfect), I feel like Jesus is saying to me the words He said to this man: "Declare how much God has done for you."

God, help me to spend my life proclaiming how much You have done for me. Help me to be content with your timing, even if that means I can't be with You yet. I praise You for how much You save me, every day, and for Your incredible timing which gives me exactly the manna I need exactly when I need it. Amen.

David's prayer...

 ¹⁸ Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and he said:    “Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? ¹⁹ And as if this were not enough in your sight, O Sovereign LORD, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign LORD?
 ²⁰ “What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Sovereign LORD. ²¹ For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant.
 ²² “How great you are, O Sovereign LORD! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears. ²³ And who is like your people Israel—the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt? ²⁴ You have established your people Israel as your very own forever, and you, O LORD, have become their God.
 ²⁵ “And now, LORD God, keep forever the promise you have made concerning your servant and his house. Do as you promised, ²⁶ so that your name will be great forever. Then men will say, ‘The LORD Almighty is God over Israel!’ And the house of your servant David will be established before you.
 ²⁷ “O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, ‘I will build a house for you.’ So your servant has found courage to offer you this prayer. ²⁸ O Sovereign LORD, you are God! Your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant. ²⁹ Now be pleased to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue forever in your sight; for you, O Sovereign LORD, have spoken, and with your blessing the house of your servant will be blessed forever.”

Buechner on Wheaton...

"All this to the contrary notwithstanding, it seemed to me that insofar as their resounding motto can be true of any institution, it was true of Wheaton. Literature, history, science, the arts -- as nearly as I could tell, everything that was taught there was taught from the perspective of Christian faith and for the purpose of enriching and deepening that faith. It would be easy to belittle such an approach to education as narrowly limiting and parochial, but I found it moving and refreshing especially when compared to the approach of the great eastern universities that I have had dealings with whose mottos echo a faith that has long since become as obsolete in their scheme of things as the Latin they are written in.

One day I was having lunch with two students who were talking about whatever they were talking about -- the weather, the movies -- when without warning one of them asked the other as naturally as he would have asked the time of day what God was doing in his life. If there is anything in this world I believe, it is that God is indeed doing all kinds of things in the lives of all of us including those who do not believe in God and would have nothing to do with him if they did, but in the part of the East where I live, if anybody were to ask a question like that, even among religious people, the sky would fall, the walls would cave in, the grass would wither. I think the very air would stop my mouth if I opened it to speak such words among just about any group of people I can think of in the East because their faith itself, if they happen to have any, is one of the secrets that they have kept so long that it might almost as well not exist. The result was that to find myself at Wheaton among people who, although they spoke about it in different words from mine and expressed it in their lives differently, not only believed in Christ and his Kingdom more or less as I did but were also not ashamed or embarrassed to say so was like finding something which, only when I tasted it, I realized I had been starving for for years."

(from Telling Secrets)

2 Corinthians 6:11-13

"We have spoken freely to you,1 Corinthians; our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also." (ESV) (1. footnote: Greek, "Our mouth is open to you.")

"O [ye] Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels. Now for a recompence in the same, (I speak as unto [my] children,) be ye also enlarged." (KJV)

"Oh, dear Corinthian friends! We have spoken honestly with you, and our hearts are open to you. There is no lack of love on our part, but you have withheld your love from us. I am asking you to respond as if you were my own children. Open your hearts to us!" (NLT)

America the Beautiful...

Okay, so I've seriously got four other blog post ideas on stickies on my compy right now, just waiting to be written about, but I'm gonna delay them to write about this documentary I just watched called "America the Beautiful." It's on Netflix instant if you wanna check it out. I think every parent and everyone (both men and women) of a suitable age (it's rated R, and there is some mature-ish content in there, plus if you're particularly squeamish it might not be a good idea since you see some plastic surgeries being done) should watch it.

The documentary is about self-image in the United States (focusing primarily on women and girls). Naturally, the media gets quite a lot of attention as well. The documentary covers a lot of ground in its hour and forty-five or so minutes, looking at everything from the rise and fall of a 12-year-old model named Gerren to toxic materials in cosmetics to eating disorders to advertising execs at big companies to airbrushing to plastic surgery and more. In some ways, it seemed like it was covering TOO broad a scope, but all in all, I think it did a fantastic job of giving an *introduction* to all of these different issues that factor into the broader topic of female self-image in America. Because this IS a complex issue. I don't think there's an easy way to solve this problem, and the film doesn't really try to offer one. And it's not really possible to assign blame to one particular party, either. Certainly the media inundates women with very specific standards of what is beautiful and what is not. But so do men. So do parents and other family members. So do friends and peers. And so also women often impose these impossible standards on themselves.

There's a lot I could write about this issue, but I honestly just think everyone reading this should go watch the documentary themselves. I'll highlight one or two interesting pieces before I close, though. First of all, the documentarian interviewed a (Harvard?) sociologist who studied the people of Fiji. When she began studying them, they had their own wonderful culture and their own ideas about what beauty was (for example, larger bodies were appreciated since they were signs of more affluence). In 1995, television came to Fiji. At this point, none of the girls the sociologist studied had ever purged as a form of weight control, but just three years later - three *television-filled* years later - 11% of the girls interviewed had. The United States has had television for about 60 years now.

And now some stats:
-50% of girls between the ages of 11 and 13 see themselves as overweight
-80% of *13-year-olds* have attempted to lose weight
-Approximately 7 million girls and women struggle with eating disorders
-Approximately 1 million boys and men struggle with eating disorders
-As many as 10% of college women suffer from a clinical or nearly clinical eating disorder, including 5.1% who suffer from bulimia nervosa

Anyway, to close, as I already have by facebook, text, chat, phone, etc., let me just say once more: women, you are beautiful, inside and out; and men, you need to take responsibility to tell the women in your life (moms, sisters, friends, significant others, etc.) both NOW and OFTEN that they are beautiful. And they might not believe it at first, because everything a woman faces in this culture tells her that she's not thin enough, not tall enough, not beautiful enough, not curvy enough, not in-shape enough, not tan enough, and just plain not enough, so just keep on telling them.

Brokenness, part two: some thoughts on friendship...

As all two or so of you who read this blog probably know, and as I've mentioned a little bit in previous posts, I think about brokenness pretty often. I guess living in this world, everyone kinda thinks about the concept a lot, if not explicitly in those terms...

I wrote a post back in October about how Jesus redeems the tragedies of life.

But what I've been realizing lately is that a lot of times, we don't really let Him do that (n.b. this isn't to say that I think human beings can actually stop Jesus from doing anything). I guess what I mean is, even though we talk about how God is able to do all things, and we read about some of the miracles He performed in the Bible (total sidebar: I say some of the miracles because, as one of my favorite verses - and, yes, I do say that about, like, 327 different verses - points out, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written" (John 21:25)...how crazy and awesome is that?!?...but I digress...), and we even look back on all the miraculous ways He's worked in our own lives, in a lot of ways we still don't expect Him to do great things in our lives. We don't really give Him opportunities to transform our lives so that they look radically different than the rest of the world.

That realization has been hitting me again and again over the past few years, and especially lately. And you know what? I don't want to live like that. I don't want to live a life of saying I believe God can do miracles, but not expecting Him to, or not giving Him every opportunity to do so.

Of course, there is going to be brokenness in life. This world is fallen. But I don't think that means we should act like that's okay. I don't think that means we should settle for living in that brokenness. I don't think we should accept that brokenness as how it's meant to be, because that's simply not the case. I think Satan really tries to make Christians think that we ought to respond the way the rest of the world does to all the broken situations and relationships of life. And, much of the time, I'm afraid we believe him.

I have no words to adequately express how much my heart hurts at that, mourns for that, revolts against that. People, this is NOT how it's supposed to be.

One of the ways in which I feel this most deeply is in broken relationships. Aside from my relationship with God, my relationships with people are the most important thing on this earth to me. And I work hard to keep up with them. Sometimes they ebb and flow, and that's natural, but I try really hard to find time for them even when life gets crazy, because investing in people is both one of my greatest joys and one of my highest priorities.

But there are a few people whose friendship I have lost over the last couple years, and this has honestly been one of the most painful things in the world to me. To know that there is anyone out there to whom I am estranged goes against everything I care about and everything I want to be. Unfortunately, in some cases, I've had to learn that there is only so much I can do. Apparently not everyone shares my beliefs about what friendship is and should be (to quote Augustine, "Well said one of his friend, 'Thou half of my soul:' for I felt that my soul and his soul were 'one soul in two bodies'"...), and apparently not everyone believes that the sacred bond of friendship need never be broken.

This isn't to say that there aren't people I've struggled to be friends with, or times when I've been tempted to throw in the towel. But the thing is...I'm willing to struggle. I think it's okay (not in the sense that it's the way it's supposed to be, but that since we're living in a fallen world, it's going to happen) that it's a struggle sometimes. Some of my dearest friends are the ones with whom I've had the most conflict. But that only works if both people are ultimately willing to stop at nothing in pursuit of the friendship. If one or both people run at the first sign of difficulty, there's not much that can be done.

What really gets to me is when people try to advise me to give up on a difficult friendship (especially when it's a friendship between two Christians). If any of my readers have done this, I'm not condemning you for that, and I do understand that that advice comes from a well-meaning place. Sometimes friendships go through periods during which they are difficult and painful. But I don't think that ever means we should give up on a friendship. I just can't believe that God would EVER have it in His plan for two of His children to remain unrighteous (not in right relationship) with each other.

So here I am, saying it for all of my vast readership to hear: By the grace of God, I will not settle for what the rest of the world accepts as normal. By the grace of God, I will never give up on a friendship, even when it's difficult or painful. By the grace of God, I will never put up with the hardships Satan tries to throw into my relationships without a fight. By the grace of God, I will keep on loving, no matter how the other person treats me.

I believe in the power of God to redeem situations and relationships that to all human understanding are irredeemable.

I believe in the power of God to make broken things beautiful.

More of you and less of me, Jesus.

The Most Important Thing I've Learned in Grad School............

..........is that grad school is pointless. And that music theory is pointless. And that academia is really pointless.

Academia is the kind of thing that wants and tries to consume your life. It has certainly succeeded in doing that to me at various points. It's so easy to get caught up in the busyness of everything - in the work and the deadlines and the constant striving to achieve the next level of proof that you are qualified to do/say anything in your field. But personally, I find that it's these times when I let myself get caught up in academia that I hate it the most. Academia for its own sake is miserable. When I let my life become only about academia, I am miserable and unhappy and generally discontent with life...because it's supposed to be about so much more!

It's at this point that I usually question whether I should even be studying music theory, whether I should be in grad school at all, whether I actually want to pursue a career in an academic field. I still don't know the answer to these questions. But whether or not I remain in academia, these struggles have taught me something which will (hopefully) stick with me no matter what field I pursue - that earthly things, if pursued for their own sake, are unsatisfying and pointless. This isn't to say that I've realized I can't glorify God with music theory, I just have learned that there always needs to be more. That said, I'm still not sure what my future with academia is...whether I'll stick with it or find something else to do...but I do know that regardless, my life will never be all about my career (which is a pretty cool discovery for someone like me who has always thought that my career was super important).

Right now, I feel pretty okay about grad school, and music theory, and being in an academic field. This isn't to say that I don't find them stupid sometimes, but having learned that these things are pointless, I've changed my life to include things that actually mean something. Being in Bible studies and working with the youth group at my church have definitely helped. Taking time to invest in people is good, too. And taking more time to pursue things that will edify me (spiritually, mentally, and emotionally) has really changed my perspective on life. Reading books about things that matter (right now, it's Buechner), spending more time with God, blogging, talking about and studying with friends things that actually have eternal significance...it puts things into the right perspective. And thank God for that.


Speaking of Buechner, in "The Birth," he writes from the perspective of the innkeeper, a wise man, and a shepherd about the birth of Jesus. The innkeeper's perspective fits in with what I've been writing about pretty well...basically, his life is consumed with his work and everything he has to do.

"I speak to you as men of the world," said the Innkeeper. "Not as idealists, but as realists. Do you know what it is like to run an inn--to run a business, a family, to run anything in this world for that matter, even your own life? It is like being lost in a forest of a million trees," said the Innkeeper, "and each tree is a thing to be done. Is there fresh linen on all the beds? Did the children put on their coats before they went out? Has the letter been written, the book read? Is there money enough left in the bank? Today we have food in our bellies and clothes on our backs, but what can we do to make sure that we will have them still tomorrow? A million trees. A million things.

"Until finally we have eyes for nothing else, and whatever we see turns into a thing. The sparrow lying in the dust at your feet--just a thing to be kicked out of the way, not the mystery of death. The calling of children outside your window--just a distraction, an irrelevance, not life, not the wildest miracle of them all. That whispering in the air that comes sudden and soft from nowhere--only the wind, the wind..."

At the end of this section, the innkeeper says,

"But this I do know. My own true love. All your life long, you wait for your own true love to come--we all of us do--our destiny, our joy, our heart's desire. So how am I to say it, gentlemen? When he came, I missed him."

People...we need to make sure we don't miss him. We need to make sure that all of the busyness, all of the million trees in the forest don't make us miss the reason for it all.

God has a plan for my life (and so does Satan)...

It seems like Christians love telling other people that God has a plan for their lives. This is something we particularly like to turn to when things are going bad - it's okay, God has a plan for our lives. He is all-powerful, He is in control, He is going to work everything out for the good of those who love Him. He is working in our lives, and He can do amazing things. And this is true. And this is wonderful. And this is GOOD.

However, I think Christians neglect to look at the other side of this whole plan-for-our-lives thing. Satan also has a plan for our lives. Satan is also working hard in our lives, and Satan can also do some pretty amazing (in a very different way from the kind of amazing we relate to God, of course) things. 1 Peter 5:8 describes Satan's work by saying:

Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

And just three chapters into the Bible (Genesis 3:1-7), we see Satan already prowling around, already influencing and corrupting and speaking lies to the first woman.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

The serpent is described here as "crafty," which can be defined as "skillful in underhand or evil schemes; cunning; deceitful; sly." And we see that he really does exhibit these characteristics with the woman - he doesn't just come out and say "I know God said this was wrong, but I want you to do it anyway." No, instead, he lures the woman into a conversation and confuses and deceives her into thinking that to eat the fruit will actually enable her to better fulfill her role as helper (my new book obsession, Pure Heart, talks about this a lot). The woman got so lost in the thought of having something that would make her even better at fulfilling her role that she forgot that God had already provided her with everything she needed, and that He would not withhold something that she needed to fulfill her role as helper (how often are we guilty of this?!?). So the woman took and ate, and the man also ate, and thus was mankind's lifelong struggle sealed. Here we see that Satan makes us question whether or not God has sufficiently equipped us to do the work He has prepared for us. His tactic here does not consist of directly telling the woman, who KNEW God, to disobey Him, but instead he confuses and deceives her into thinking that God has not provided enough for her. Satan tries to trick us into believing that God is not sufficient for all of our needs, and also that He does not want what is best for His children.

Let's look at Job now (you can read it here). Here's this righteous man, who is actually described as "blameless and upright," and who "feared God and shunned evil," and Satan comes after him. Job was a threat to Satan's work, and so Satan launched his attack. I think what's awesome in this story is that we see that Satan is still subject to God's authority, even though he's Satan. Satan, many versions tell us in a footnote here, means "accuser." And that's exactly what Satan does - he stands before God and accuses Job. Now, Satan doesn't really have anything to accuse Job of - he's a good guy! - so he basically tells God that if Job wasn't so blessed, he would curse God to His face. So God gives Satan PERMISSION to do what he will with Job's possessions, family, etc. And so the story goes. Revelation 12:10 sums up this role of Satan pretty well - it says that he accuses us before God day and night! Now, I would definitely say that in addition to standing before God and accusing us, Satan accuses us to our own faces. Fortunately we know that God is never going to be swayed by Satan to see us as anything other than what we are - bought and saved by the blood of Christ, but we ourselves often fall prey to his accusations. Based off of my own experience and those of some people I've talked to about this, I think the accusations Satan whispers in our ears are very often reminders of our own sins. The thing is...in a sense, he's right - these are things we are guilty of. However, that doesn't mean that we STAY guilty of them. Satan tries to trap us into false guilt, which pulls us into vicious cycles of self-loathing and insecurity, while God calls us to conviction, confession, and redemption! Once again, Satan is telling us that God is not enough...and yet we believe him!

Fortunately, God does not leave us alone in this struggle against Satan's schemes. Ephesians 6:10-18 talks about the armor of God, which is given to us so that we can resist Satan's schemes!:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

God provides us with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the Spirit, that we might not be consumed by the lies and treachery of the devil. Hallelujah! This language of war and armor is no coincidence - people, we are at WAR with Satan and his followers! Let us not forget this!

I remember learning in my ninth grade doctrine class (taught by a wonderful man who changed my entire conception of who God is and what the Bible is all about, and who has since gone to be with God) about Genesis 3:15 as the protoevangelium, or "first Gospel."

"And I will put enmity   between you and the woman,   and between your offspring and hers;he will crush your head,   and you will strike his heel.”

In this verse, the entire history of mankind is summed up - there is enmity between mankind and Satan, but One (Jesus) will come who will crush Satan's head, even as Satan is crushing His heel. And so, three chapters into the Bible, we find out that we have already won the war! Praise the LORD! This certainly doesn't mean that battles against Satan aren't difficult...we've already seen that he is good at the evil he is working in the world. But how awesome to know that we have already won - that Christ has already conquered! Not only is there hope, there is certainty of our victory in Christ! Hallelujah!

Going back to Revelation 12, here are verses 9 and 10 that pretty much sum up Satan's defeat:

The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:   “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God,   and the authority of his Christ.For the accuser of our brothers,   who accuses them before our God day and night,   has been hurled down.

I guess all this is to say....let us REJOICE that Satan has already been defeated, but also let us be on our guards for the ways that Satan tries to work in our lives. We have no room in our lives for his lies or his work or his plans. To God be the glory forever and ever! Amen.

A few scattered thoughts on Heaven...

This is actually a post that I started writing on a sticky on my computer a looooong time ago and never finished. I figured it was about time to get around to it! :)

So I've been thinking about heaven lately. Really, it mostly started over chorale tour over spring break last year. We sang a Copland arrangement of the hymn "Shall We Gather at the River?," the full text of which is:

1. Shall we gather at the river,
   Where bright angel feet have trod,
   With its crystal tide forever
   Flowing by the throne of God?
• Refrain:
  Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
  The beautiful, the beautiful river;
  Gather with the saints at the river
  That flows by the throne of God.
2. On the margin of the river,
   Washing up its silver spray,
   We will talk and worship ever,
   All the happy golden day.
3. Ere we reach the shining river,
   Lay we every burden down;
   Grace our spirits will deliver,
   And provide a robe and crown.
4. At the smiling of the river,
   Mirror of the Savior’s face,
   Saints, whom death will never sever,
   Lift their songs of saving grace.
5. Soon we’ll reach the silver river,
   Soon our pilgrimage will cease;
   Soon our happy hearts will quiver
   With the melody of peace.

Singing this so many times in Chorale, and especially at a time where I was thinking about leaving Wheaton and not seeing a lot of people for a long time, and maybe not seeing some people ever again, was really, really hard. I think I probably had tears welling up in my eyes every time we sang this song.

I have to say, I'm really excited for heaven, and this song is a good example of why. For one thing, how amazing is it to think about someday gathering at the river with all of the other Christians from all of eternity??? This means not only the people that we knew and loved on earth, but also every single other believer from the beginning of time to the end of this world. Whoa.

Singing this on tour, it just filled me with such joy that even though a separation from so many people I love was fast approaching, it was only a temporary one! One day I will see all of these people who I have come to love so dearly again and that I will NEVER BE SEPARATED FROM THEM AGAIN! And even more so, the same is true of God! When I get to heaven, I will no longer feel torn between earthly and heavenly pursuits. I will no longer struggle with how to worship God with tasks that don't really feel all that worshipful most of the time. I will no longer be in pain, or feel sorrow or shame, or shed tears (the bad kind of tears, that is......I kinda think I'm going to :') a whole lot in heaven!).

One thing that I think about heaven a LOT is that when I get there, I will no longer perform ANY activity without it being an act of worship to God. This is how we're supposed to live now, and we in our human weakness just *cannot* figure it out! And it's so frustrating!...we know with our minds that everything should be done as if for the Lord, but we just can't get our sinful selves to do this. This is one of those ways in which I feel incredibly torn (I don't know if that's the right word, but it's late) as a Christian. So it's just way exciting to me that in heaven, this will no longer be a problem. I don't know what heaven's really going to be like, but I think that there will be work there (there was work in the Garden, so why not in the City?), and it will be work (and relationships and so many other things) done in the way that we are MEANT to experience them, and that is just pretty darn exciting.

I don't really have a good conclusion for this, other than to say that I'm really really excited for heaven...and at the risk of sounding über cheesy, I'm really really excited for all of the people that I'm going to see up there and how righteous (in the sense of "in right relationship," not some hippie sort of lingo) all of my relationships are going to be. No more broken relationships...that's just too wonderful to even fathom. :')

And now, I'm tired. This has been really scattered (written as it was in small pieces over the course of several months), but oh well. Good night.

Lady Gaga...

So I haven't blogged in a while. Oops. Now that I'm...hopefully...getting this semester under control, I'm definitely going to try to be more consistent about that.

For all four of you that read this, you probably know really well that I don't wanna have kids. A lot of that is that I'm pretty much a tocophobic (check it out...I'm not the only one!). But honestly, the last few months have made me realize it's so much more than that (although seriously...childbirth is just disgusting...and unnatural...which everyone thinks I'm crazy for saying, I know...but childbirth changed as a result of sin, sooooooo it's totally not how it's supposed to be).

Anyway...a few months ago, my grandmom sent me some newsletter she gets with an article in it called "Lady Gaga and the Pornification of America" (you can read it online here). Basically it talks about how Lady Gaga (and other entertainment icons/idols) are transforming pop culture into porn culture. The article also mentions that many of Gaga's fans are young children. Gaga calls these fans her "Little Monsters," and claims to love them (and I mean, she tattooed "Little Monsters" on her forearm and tweets about them all the time, so how could she not be sincere???). I listened to Lady Gaga for a long while. I even owned a bunch of her music. Let's face it...it's REALLY catchy. But a while ago, a friend and I decided to make a pact not to listen to her anymore. And then I read this article. And now I have to say I have absolutely zero desire to listen to her anymore.

Maybe I shouldn't have this double standard, but it didn't seem super harmful to me as a 22-year old who's already pretty well grounded and has, y'know, morals, and is not very likely to fly off the deep end and start dressing and acting like a slut, to listen to Lady Gaga. But the thought of an 8-year old girl (and one is quoted in the aforementioned article) - a child - listening to Gaga's music, watching her music videos, heck, even looking at her outfits...well, honestly, it makes me sick. I could go on about this for awhile, and the damage that Gaga and others are doing to our culture, but ya'll probably don't wanna read a tome about this.

After reading this article, I was pretty het up for awhile (that's one of my new favorite phrases, I don't even know where I got it, but I think it works)...but after a few weeks kinda moved on with my life. Right now, though, I've started thinking about it again because of a book I'm reading. The book is called "Pure Heart: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Integrity," by Shellie R. Warren, and so far I LOVE it. The church needs people like Shellie to talk honestly and boldly about sexual sin (on that note, check out xxxchurch.com, an organization that Shellie is a part of that is definitely doing that...and there's also a book for men by Craig Gross, founder of the site, on sort of the same subject).

Anyway, today I was reading a chapter of Pure Heart about media and sexuality that talks about how overexposed we are to sex in today's culture. And it makes my heart hurt. Shellie quotes from a conversation she had with her mom about raising kids in today's culture. Her mom said:

"The Bible says there is nothing new under the sun, but in my day, even when you were little, if people wanted porn, they would have to go to the other side of town, be a certain age, and pay for it in a store. Now children can download it on the internet, see sex scenes on regular sitcoms, and look at nearly naked women on billboards. I don't know what I would do if I had to raise you in all of that and still have to tell you not to think about sex."

And I have to agree. I can't even begin to comprehend how I would raise a child in today's culture. The thought just hurts. This is not how it's supposed to be. I just keep coming back to that thought again and again, in all areas of life. I guess the thought of raising a young girl especially hurts (not that boys don't face tons of problems because of today's culture, but my heart particularly aches for girls dealing with all this junk). I mean...look at the magazines for women that are out there right now. Cosmo, Glamour, even Seventeen...almost every single magazine out there is telling girls and women that they're not good enough as they are. And I don't just mean giving hair and makeup advice (for the record, I subscribe to and love InStyle and I think on the whole it avoids the kind of stuff I'm talking about). These magazines constantly inundate their female readers (and anyone who ever goes to a grocery store or CVS or Walgreens) with the message that we are not beautiful enough, that we are not sexy enough, that we are not skilled enough at sex to keep our men, and that we are not wearing the right clothes, shoes, makeup, or lingerie, AND that if we take their advice, everything in our lives will be better. As if some magazine columnist can solve all of our problems. As if she even knows what sex is really REALLY meant to be. It's sickening.

I don't know what else to say. Our culture's views on sexuality are so, so, so, so, so far off base and this makes me heartsick. And I don't think the church is doing that well either (I mean...in my experience the church avoids a lot of the secular problems, but only to find its own). It's just not right. I could probably write a ton more about this subject and lots of related ones, and I'm sure I will at some point, but I've already written a lot and I don't really know where to go next anyway, so I'll close with a few more quotes. The first is from a so-called "sex expert" that Shellie Warren interviewed once. He said:

"Young men learn about sex from porn and young women learn from women's magazines. You put those two people in the dark and all you get is one big mess."

I think that sums up the current state of sexuality in our culture right now - one big mess. There is so much work to be done.

My final quote is from Proverbs 31. It talks about the wife of noble character, and it is such a far cry from what Cosmo, Lady Gaga, and Hollywood are telling us women to be:

"A wife of noble character who can find?
   She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her
   and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm,
   all the days of her life.
She selects wool and flax
   and works with eager hands.
She is like the merchant ships,
   bringing her food from afar.
She gets up while it is still dark;
   she provides food for her family
   and portions for her servant girls.
She considers a field and buys it;
   out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She sets about her work vigorously;
   her arms are strong for her tasks.
She sees that her trading is profitable,
   and her lamp does not go out at night.
In her hand she holds the distaff
   and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
She opens her arms to the poor
   and extends her hands to the needy.
When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
   for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
She makes coverings for her bed;
   she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
Her husband is respected at the city gate,
   where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them,
   and supplies the merchants with sashes.
She is clothed with strength and dignity;
   she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom,
   and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household
   and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
   her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
   but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
   but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Give her the reward she has earned,
   and let her works bring her praise at the city gate."

MMXI...

At the request of Schkundrat and Brett Bretterson, here is a sort of update on my life for the New Year...................

ONE Nonsensical Sentence For Your Reading Enjoyment

1. The spotted snail slithered down the street whilst whistling waltzes with his furry feline friend, Felix.

TWO Serious Summaries Of This Year To Follow That Strange Beginning

1. Wheaton is over, Penn State has begun.
2. God is teaching me lots of things.

THREE New Year’s Resolutions

1. Read through the whole Bible.
2. EXERCISE!!!
3. Keep up with this blog! :)

FOUR Things I’m Thankful For

1. God cares about every single thing about me and every single moment of my life.
2. Forgiveness, and that God uses all the mistakes and bad parts of my life to bring me closer to Him.
3. FRIENDS...especially my Wheaties... :)
4. There is more to me than my work.

FIVE Ways God Has Worked In My Life This Year

1. Helping me survive a craaaaaaazy senior year at Wheaton.
2. Working everything out for me to come to Penn State.
3. Giving me a church to get involved in at Penn State so that I can have in-person Christian community again.
4. Giving me so many good, encouraging, and thought-provoking conversations with Wheaton people that have helped me grow.
5. Forgiveness!!! (I'm stealing this one from Schkundrat)...