sexy speakin'.

I am painfully self-conscious about speaking in tongues. I shouldn't be honest about this, but I will, because the strength of this blog for me has been its honesty, sometimes its naivete.

I wonder if it's possible to speak in tongues "wrong." Can I do it the wrong way? Would someone listen to my experiences, and say, "You misunderstand, it's actually like this"?

This might not be a popular comparison, but I think I may regard tongues in the way that some evangelical Pentecostals regard sex. It's new and exciting, and though there's talk, the details are kind of fuzzy. Unknowing, they have a general idea of what goes down, and some parts are wonderful, but they still might wonder...am I doing this right?

I've been asking myself that about speaking in tongues--am I doing this right?

Maybe, maybe not. Whatever I'm doing, it feels good. There's joy in my communion with God that is qualitatively different from what has come before. So I guess it doesn't matter so much if I'm getting it "right." Right?

The perception seems to be that tongues are an out-of-body experience--that you suddenly become some kind of tongues warrior from on high, a fluent speaker of gibberish in 0 to 70. That's not my experience. While deep in prayer, and waiting on God, I'd hear the syllables rolling in my head, at first uncertain as to what they actually were. And then I realized. And I would open my mouth to let them come, and then shut it, saying silently, no--I can't, it's too weird. Until I didn't shut my mouth. Until I let them come.

My experience is neither out-of-body, nor pedestrian. I feel the words in my heart, and I choose to give my voice over to them. But I have to choose. They won't be forced from me.

This is risky, this kind of admission--maybe I am doing it "wrong." Maybe I am completely foolish, or childish or naive, or silly.

Yet, I've already taken an overwhelming chance in admitting that I've prayed in the Spirit. That's something that I cannot expect my friends, family or professors to understand or take kindly to. I've crossed a pretty serious line.

What then is the worry?

I trust.

to tell a texan.

"Do I tell them that I pray in tongues? That the "infilling" of the Spirit has occurred? That it occurs? Or, second blessing, as Wesley might have referred to it. Some call it the third. Are we saying it's the same thing as sanctification? I think that's a 200-year-old debate, Ash..."

I digress. Rather, I was digressing, in conversation with myself, in conversation with others tonight at a table outside Starbucks.

I think the Texan really wanted to know, which gave me every good reason to keep it to myself. The Brazilian was sly. Cool, like a cucumber.

"Do I tell them? How will that conversation play out?" I wondered to myself. I knew that if I said it out loud, if I admitted it to someone, it would become reality in a way that I didn't (don't) feel ready for. That the full force of my experience with God would slam into the public "Ashley" in a way that leaves no room for interpretation, no space for doubt. I would be openly, wholly "made" as a girl after God.

I feel too imperfect to admit to seeking God. Who am I that I would speak to God so intimately? Why would He allow me to come so close? I am heavily flawed.

But also greatly loved.

That's the crux. I feel insecure in admitting to praying in the Spirit not because I'm ashamed (though I fully recognize the difficulty of ever having to field the questions from my friends on the topic, and I'm scared), but because I falsely feel that doing so is analogous to how we would say "putting on airs", or making much of myself. Because somewhere along the line, I have picked up the dangerously wrong notion that only the perfect can approach God in tongues. So, I pray in private. I've kept such prayers to myself, for fear of arousing scorn from others who might point out my inadequacy. Silly fear, I know.

I've come so close to God my heart breaks in beauty, sometimes conviction, mostly in love. Breaks, and soars, and stills. Yet, my imperfection remains. A testament to my great need for grace. And a stumbling block to my honesty.

I sat at the table with them, wondering if I was ready to have an earnest conversation about tongues. Trying to track down all the ends of the many directions this discussion could have. Mostly, wishing I were more honest with myself--that I might be more open with them. I am making a secret of something joyful, and in so doing, am dampening His gifts both in me, and in those who would take joy with me.

Ultimately, I did not tell them. My stubbornness in thwarting the Texan, and my fear in fielding the questions, silenced me. I am, however, taking the advice of the Brazilian: "You should not tell her, but just blog about it."

Yes. Very, very cool.

maynard.

I feel as though yesterday's post was unintentionally candid, and unmindful of more diplomatic ways to phrase my concerns.

But I'm going to go for round two anyway.

In conversation with my best friend last week, she told me that she felt like our relationship was unmarred by my new surroundings (unlike other of my friendships), because I haven't changed. I haven't "gone weird," and what really bugs her about Christianity isn't Christianity itself, but the fact that so many Christians feel the need to attempt to engage her in discussion about their, and her, faith. She is offended by being asked about faith.

Which is kind of a bizarre concept. Certainly, she doesn't feel the same about a rousing debate of Obama's policies. If someone made a case for Bobby Flay being more talented than Giada, she'd be in robust opposition, but would unquestionably accept the validity of the topic. Likewise with countless other possible conversational polemics (Banana Republic vs. the GAP, for instance, or, in her nerdy case, Classical vs. Keynesian economics).

Across the board, she might disagree with her company, but would not find the subject matter inherently offensive.

So why faith? Why is this the one place no one can go? If I argue against her view, I'm an evangelist, a proselytizer (both dirty words in my circle of friends), catching her in an unfair conversation.

I don't mean to pick on my best friend. I love and respect her deeply, and at any rate--she's just a stand-in for most non-Christians. "Christians can believe what they want, as long as they don't bother me with it," seems to be the refrain. "Who are they to tell me I'm going to hell?" I have to admit, I don't wholly understand this.

I can't remember all of what I would have thought or said, but I'm pretty sure that was not part of my arsenal against the Christians. I was more upset by what I thought I was a stopping short of Christ's love, than by a rigid defense of hell or domestic evangelism.

When was faith divorced from reason to such a degree that we no longer see conversations of faith as conversations that can be had on more or less reasonable grounds? That's really what's at the heart of this, no? My friend doesn't want to be asked about faith because unlike Giada and GAP and John Keynes, which she feels all have logical possibilities, faith represents to her what is the un-knowable. To her, any conversation about it would be nonsense, because there's no grounds for reason. Faith and reason are divorced in her mind. Which is unfortunate, because she's a very faithful woman. We all are. Whether or not we know and acknowledge what we're putting our faith in--we believe.

academaChristian.

Non-Christians can get away with saying some outrageous stuff. No lie. They can say stuff about Christians that, if the same were said to them, would result in shouts of bigotry and narrow-mindedness. It's the craziest thing.

I say this as two people. Firstly, as a person who has been the non-Christian getting away with verbal murder, and secondly, as a Christian invested in a community about which much negative is said.

I kick it with some people who have some things to say about faith, and law. It's true. On the extreme end, I know people who don't believe in birth control, and would gladly vote against gay rights, and believe the earth to be only 6000 years old. On what is considered the extreme end, almost everyone I've met through the church would affirm that non-believers will go to hell. These are people who believe in protecting sexual purity, and around whom I abstain from F-bombage.

Basically, I hang with the conservatives who make the liberals nervous. The people who my scientific papers refer to as "closed-minded literalists." The very group of people about whom I had made a snotty career of saying horrendous things. These are the they I had claimed were messing up the faith, stopping the love.

So, I get it. I've been there. Sometimes, I am there. At times, it is all I can do not to fire off a post, or a tweet, or a FB status about how some or other evangelist did something crazy dumb. I get it! But...

How did I think I ever had a right to blindly fire against these people? I kept asking myself that yesterday during this discussion with a fellow grad student. She was telling me about the closed-mindedness of the Christians she'd met down here, and their thoughtless literal beliefs. About how judgmental they'd been, and how she could just "feel" them judging her. And before I could recommend a good treatment for paranoia, I remembered who I'd been.

It was an odd moment of confusion. On the one hand, I want to push her. I want to ask, "Give me examples. Don't speak in generalities. I know those generalities, and I promise you I can go ten rounds, so give me examples. Tell me what people have actually done to you." I don't want to do this out of offense or hurt--I'm not offended or hurt, at least not in my heart--I want to do this out of truth. I want to get to the bottom of this supposed difference between us. I want logic. I want facts.

And yet, I also want to love her. Maybe loving her is pushing her to be intellectually thorough? To have to drop the fake rationality that I myself harbored for so long? To ask herself, why do I perceive judgmentalism where at least some of the time there is none? Why do I care if this girl thinks I'm going to spend an eternity separated from a God I don't believe in?

I stood there, wondering--when should I speak my mind? When should I very carefully, very smartly attempt to ask for evidence, and reason in defense of beliefs she assumes I share with her? When do I blow my "cover" as not only a Christian-sympathizer, but a Christian?

Interestingly, at the end of the conversation, I casually dropped something about "my church," and, at the risk of claiming the same types of "feelings" I'm so distrustful of in her comments, there was definitely a moment. I could see it register in her eyes that she had been talking very candidly, and very negatively, to a person who might in fact fall in the category of people she'd slammed. There were questions.

How will they be answered? When?

they are not everything.

I was watching people at the altar tonight.

Some come alone, some in pairs. Older couples sit on the steps, holding one another, and praying. Young people fall to their knees, sitting back on their legs folded underneath them, holding their hands to heaven. Others bow deeply, touching their foreheads to the carpet, their hands planted on either side as their bodies seem to shake with the force of their prayers. Some cry. One woman sits up, barefoot, a few feet from the stairs, her shoes next to her and, as though on a beach, she smiles up towards the sunny bright lights.

It is oddly touching.

Odd because I begin to wonder...why do these people do this? Have they been doing it all their lives? How old were they when they first approached the altar en masse like this? Do they come every time the altar is "opened"? What do they experience while there? Why does she cry like that? And him?

I'm not a stranger to altars alone, though certainly to this kind of organized altar activity. And though I am used to seeing it now, I am reminded by it of my mother visiting James River in July, whispering to me as people began approaching for the prayer for the sick, "What are they doing now?" So...odd.

And touching. I watched them, and I kept hearing in my mind, "What does this mean?" What does it mean? What am I watching? What am I seeing? What am I feeling in response?

What does it mean?

I look and see young people. Some I know to be highly intelligent and thoughtful and modern people. And I know that they believe deeply in what I'm seeing. They believe in Christ as an atoning savior, in God as an all-powerful Father, in the Spirit as he moves through our lives, in tongues, and altar calls, and charismatic worship. My mind flickers back to whatever ideas I have of Christ having walked on this earth. I try to imagine God, incarnate. In the imagining, I see a force moving throughout history, up to this very second, and I understand the power of a movement that has been re-created here in this room, tonight, as vividly real now as then.

I live mostly in a world that claims my faith to be foolishness, if not in its entirety than certainly in its aspects. My professors are seldom kind to religion. The papers I read treat it as an obvious mental defect or illusion. My friends are respectful of my spirituality, but scornful of large chunks of religious behavior and belief. My parents are now church-involved, though really only nominally spiritual, in some ways. And my orientation towards any behavior or belief is almost always a probing.. why? What is the simplest explanation for this behavior? God is not simple.

So I forgive myself for my confusion, and jadedness. For the part that asks "Why do they approach the altar? Is it because they were raised that way?"

I forgive myself, and pray for His forgiveness. Most of all, I pray for the uplifted hands, and the tears, and the bended knees--that why ever they find themselves at the altar, God would hear their prayers. That they would sense, so tremendously, that their struggles play a part in the greatest redemption.

Chesterton wrote that though the dragon's jaws may fill the sky, still they are not everything. We are not everything.

But He is.

a.b. hearts j.t.

I was raised with James Taylor music like some kids are raised with Sesame Street, or Veggie Tales. My Dad has loved JT for a long time--I think the melancholy of the music resonates with him.

When I listen to it, I remember the scope of time. That is, it carries me across and through the years of my life, and I recall how big life is. How small we all are. How quickly these moments will pass into history.

I don't mean to be dramatic, really. I just like to be reminded of the hugeness of life.

My year here has been intense. Sometimes, that intensity fogs my memory for, and awareness of, the world outside of my own.

Then, JT. I know the music so well. I hear a song, and see myself where I was when that particular song helped me through. Next song, and it happens again. And after a few songs, I begin to remember all the places and people I've been.

It's good. Stops me from thinking too much of this person, this place. I begin to see possibilities again. I feel less tied to the options laid out before me. I start to dream of entirely new directions, and paths less traveled.

I like to think, though, that my dreams are inadequate. That whatever song I might have remembered these years by, my future with God requires no verse, no notes.

healed.

A funny thing is happening.

I'm coming to myself in the middle of a busy day, and realizing that I'm not a visitor to Christianity.

I'll be walking up the stairs, or cooking dinner, or taking a shower. Then it hits me. I'm done surveying. I'm in this. I believe in Christ as my savior. I ask God to keep me close, and I believe that there is His spirit moving through my life.

And I wait for the doubt. I wait for a moment of trepidation, or the thrill of a role played so well.

But no dice.

What I get instead is excitement. I get this surge of joy. I smile to myself, and to God, and thank Him for knowing me so well, and I think--how do I share this with other people?

It's a bizarre sensation. The year made all the difference.

I can't believe that I'm out of the woods of tumultuous faith. But am I?

Certainly, doubt will come and go, but in the rough psychology of conversion, I think I've been healed.

He keeps nothing from me.

It hadn't occurred to me that I could actually be living with a tongue-speaker. That she could be, like, you know, tongue-speaking with me in the house. Just through the wall.

About a month ago, I realized that a whole bunch of people I know probably do. I started asking around, and sure enough, one by one--my world fell. I chillax with a bizzle-bunch of tongue-speakers. They're everywhere. It was kind of like finding out that everyone else in your family has six toes. You're the only one with five. But you never knew.

I was talking to my roomie and her visiting friend, both glossolalists, when she told me that she never mentioned it because she didn't want to wig me out. Much appreciated. Then she started chanting "Shandela, shandela, shandela" with this huge smile on her face, which is pretty much the funniest joke I've ever been told. You maybe had to be there.

It's not that I didn't know that it happened at James River. Like, duh. I've heard that guy who gets up and gives messages and stuff. And I've known that a couple of friends do. I just hadn't thought that it was so widespread. I absolutely refused to believe that Lindell spoke in tongues until I caught it during a moment of prayer, while I was standing close. Then, lightening-bolt, does Curt Cook speak in tongues? Probably, right? What about Brendon? Or any number of friends with whom I'd spent the previous 10 months in relative normalcy?

Yes, yes, and yes. All of them. Six toes. Totally like the six toes thing.

My Dad makes fun of it pretty much every time we end up talking about the church. Last week, I told him about wanting to go to Thailand and hang out with some AG-ers there, and he told me I wouldn't be able to tell who was speaking Thai, and who was speaking tongues during church. He thought that was way funnier than I did.

There's a definite prejudice against tongues, outside of the Pentecostal fold. I've often had to hold myself back from what I've thought which was-- but you're all so normal, and modern, and intelligent. How is it possible that you all do this? I don't understand.

I don't get to be quite so judgmental anymore, given my own experiences. And I'm mostly used to the small exposures in church. I figure there are at least two cameras running at any given moment--how crazy can it get?

But still...I can forgive people (and myself) for being apprehensive. Sometimes, I'm so used to what goes on now that I'm starting to forget how jarring it all can be. I'm forgetting what looks funny to the outside. What maybe needs explaining.

What is shocking.

unfinished product.

I am praying for something big. Like, really big.

I'm not even going to write what it is, because I'm embarrassed for anyone to know the audacity of my asking for it. It's that crazy.

I was sitting in prayer meeting tonight, thinking that this is actually the one-year anniversary of my first prayer meeting, and then thinking that I will probably be made fun of for writing that in my blog, but then finally thinking that I need to do what I say I'm doing.

This was all happening as we were singing my absolute favorite worship song, "Jesus, You're All I Need." LOVE that song. Have since I first heard it. Very emotional connection to that song.

But, as we sang, I was not in fact lifting my voice, nor shouting His name. Thus, I need to do what I say I'm doing.

I don't want to bust myself too hard on the issue, because I did in fact pray out loud tonight. With other people! In our little prayer group. And it was great! Something about hearing my own voice praying, and their whispered "Yes, Lords" and "Amens" completely upped the power of the momet, and I might have even done a little Tim Keene-ing with the volume. It was craz-ay. And exciting, and exhilarating, and I'm not even going to lie--all I could think was that I'd be lucky to pray with people like this for the rest of my life. The reality of a life lived in the church became awesome to me in that moment. I also touched someone during prayer (I believe they call it "laying on of hands") for the second time this month. So, not an altogether unsuccessful evening.

Still, though--I need to do what I say I'm doing. It's most obvious when I'm whispering a lyric about shouting. Less obvious when I'm praying for guidance in my decisions, but not making the calls to get the information. Or sitting in my seat on a Wednesday night, asking God for the confidence to approach the altar, but unwilling to take the step. Or, praying for something big, without really believing in the possibility.

I have come a very long way over the past year, but We're not done yet.

b-i-b-l-e; bethenny.

I went back to that mecca for tongue-speakers, the Assemblies of God Headquarters, today.

It had been awhile since my first tour, and I wanted to know what it would feel like to be there now that I am mostly (if not openly) comfortable with the shouting, and the waving, and the tongues (I put up a fight just pretty much for sport at this point). Now that I've made peace with my own place in the Pentecostal church.

Same super-friendly receptionist, still reminds me of my grandmother's house. Excellent. I meander up to the museum, losing myself in the brightly-colored displays on the likes of J. Roswell Flower, and Rachel Sizelove. I take a picture of myself with the former, and jump out of my skin when, suddenly, an exhibit starts singing some Christian ditty at me... "The B-I-B-L-E," something something something, "That's the book for me." The song ends, and a kid and his Mom start talking about Daniel. Motion-activated displays are the worst thing to happen to my nerves since they gave Bethenny Frankel her own tv show.

We start the tour, which threads through different places than the first time. There's this awesome hallway with easily over a hundred international flags flanking each side. I think to myself that if I worked there, I'd find every reason possible to pass through that hall several times a day.

The tour ends, and I find myself alone in the old-timey chapel in which we started. There are old, wooden pews, that famous picture of white Jesus, a piano in the corner, and a tin roof--supposedly a good likeness of most early Assemblies. I sit down, thinking that early Pentecostals must really have liked one another--there is no where to hide in this "church." They saw everyone, every Sunday.

I look to the scripture, painted on the wall above white Jesus. "Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever," it reads. What does that mean? An ancient God, I think. I serve an ancient God. Also, a modern God. I try to wrap my head around what would have happened in these early Pentecostal churches. The fire, and excitement, sweeping across the country and the world. Like it has swept through my life. I imagine a preacher, believing for the world a new salvation.

That preacher is dead now. I may be too, before this is all over.

Because I serve an ancient God, and a modern God, and a God who has ruled all the moments in between. But why now? Why is this the moment in which I live? I asked God-- "Father, why the AG? Why did you bring me here? Why these people? Why this place? What part will I play in all of this?" I'm confused.

Will I praise God the same if that part is the lowliest? Will I live, content to glorify Him, in the background until I die?

When I think about God as the God of history, I feel sick and excited simultaneously. Sick, because the reality of a God over all time is overwhelming. Excited, because I think, what a yarn He must be spinning. Reminds me of some lines from Whitman-- "That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse." That the God of the universe has been unfolding this grand, sweeping story, and I have been called to the plot. That's incredible. I am neither more, nor less important than any other, and yet, scripture tells me that my part is of unfathomable importance to God.

Those early Pentecostal preachers did not see, before their earthly deaths, the second coming for which so many of them passionately believed. And yet, they continued on because they understood that Jesus is the same. He's the same yesterday, as today, and tomorrow, too. He is an ancient God, and a modern God. They understood the timelessness of their mission. They pursued eternity with singular focus.

I think I can live this life for God, no matter the part, no matter the plot.

My plot, and my part, are in praise of the God over time.

spin the wheel.

Thailand. Seminary. Psychology. Springfield. Chicago.

Those are the options.

I could move across the world to a strange country, and kick it with some AG peeps in a country not known for being particularly AG. I could chill with some pastor wannabes (what do you think the proportion of the homeschool-ed is in seminary?). I could stick to the plan, and get my doctorate in psychology. Or I could take a year to work in Springfield (which would keep me close to a church I'm not feeling great about losing), or in Chicago (where the presence of great Thai food might help me cope with the loss of James River).

What'll it be?

What am I not considering?

Where would He have me?

has been had been.

I'm sentimental. I celebrate anniversaries of things. I like stories that fold in on themselves like a Hollywood movie where no character ends alone. Though I have traditionally tried to slip past my birthday without fanfare, I enjoy it all day long--like a little secret I keep with myself, and smile. I am sentimental, and corny, and romantic.

No surprise, then, that on the eve between the one-year anniversary of my first Sunday at JRA, and the date of my first Sunday, I'm sitting at my kitchen table looking through the James River section of my scrapbook memento collection (for the scrapbook I haven't started, but will, you know, next season).

The directions from my house to the James River campus, written out on notebook paper in my messy handwriting, with reverse directions not to home, but to Target. A bag, with map, and CD recording of JRA core values, and literature I got during my tour. There's a card with Wanda's name and cell number on it--that's sweet. "Baptism Instructions," with a blank space where the testimony ought to have been because I decided to "wing it." Little slips of paper with the names and numbers of JRA regulars, offering themselves to me in friendship. A recipe from my first Life Group. A thank you card, written to me for some editing I had done of a friend's early manuscript on a book that is now being published (praise God!)--a friend who reached out so early to me, so lovingly. My DFL wristband. The church Christmas card. A New Life brochure, given by Tim Keene during one of his numerous attempts to talk me into the Sunday morning class. A thank you card from my first JRA roommate, in the weeks leading up to her wedding. The ILA prayer list, and some run sheets for the advertising placements I helped with. Several sermon notes marked up with production directives. A beautiful, glossy magazine challenging me to "Dare to Dream."

A year.

I'm feeling sentimental. I'm wondering how it all happened, and who I was. Who I've been, at each step. Ultimately, though...

This is the day that made all the difference, but the difference has been made.

I'm new. A new creation. Not a perfectly-behaved one by any means. But one "washed by the blood," as the creepy phrase goes. One redeemed. One saved. One with God for eternity.

So, I'm trying to recapture that person, for memory's sake, but she's gone. This is in fact my life. It isn't a dream. I'm not hallucinating. I am a Christian. A pentecostal one at that. I live a life that seeks, if not always fruitfully, after God with purpose, with effort, and love. I'm sold out. This isn't an experiment. It's not a phase. I'm not "trying this on for size." Christ is one-size fits all, folks. He came for everyone, everywhere, and my any time was one year ago today. This is it.

Mostly, I'm excited. I'm thinking that if He did this much in just one year, what else is there to come?

I sat in service this morning, and Lindell is preaching on about Ephesians, and thievery, and other stuff that my intellect was paying attention to, but really... I'm just trying not to break into smile. Trying not to laugh aloud, or to tell my friend next to me that I could have come past a year far from God, but by His grace I live saved--I live close. Not to move, or dance, or lift my arms in the middle of the sermon, or cry. I'm just trying not to show the exhilarating joy I feel.

Then, suddenly, an image pressed powerfully into me -- I was 14 or 15, shortly after having heard of Christ, but having already become disillusioned with the church, I had fallen. And having fallen, I felt awful. I rode my bike down to my favorite stretch of the Lake Michigan beach. It's a lonely, empty little dune that is not even publicly-accessible anymore. I was afraid to be out there alone, with good reason. But I felt that God had called me there. I was safe in His sight. So I walked out, and falling to my knees in the sand a few feet from the water, I came clean with God. I was confused by the church, and in turmoil over whether I had been "saved" and what it even meant. What made the difference between a life saved, and one lost? I wasn't sure that God existed--had I created him? But I promised my life to Him, anyway. Through confusion, and tears, and anger, and hurt.

Today may be one year in the church. It may be the longest time I've been in the church for ten years, since I first heard of Christ. It is definitely the greatest time of spiritual growth I've ever known.

But my life has been promised to the Savior for some time.

Was I saved when I moved here? I don't know, and it doesn't matter. I'm saved now. He has been faithful. Though I have strayed, and though I have tossed off the things of God as less than dirt, He has been faithful. Though I turned from the Truth I had heard, He did not turn from me.

This is the day that made all the difference, but friends, the difference had been made.

game-changer.

It's like Christmas Eve.

Though Monday is actually my first year anniversary at James River to the date, tomorrow is my first anniversary in Sunday service.

Kinda exciting, right?

Come on, be excited with me. Smile. Drop a friggin' or a stinkin'. Tell the person next to you that the heat outside is probably due to a shift in the earth's axis on August 16, 2009, then smile, and drop a fake curse.

I'm seeking myself, trying to get a read. Am I happy? Confused? Sad? Regretful? Do I miss the life I might have had, had I not gotten all wrapped up in Jesus and James River?

I'm thinking back to that first night in town. Knowing no one, I sat in my room, alone in a strange town, thinking that if I dropped dead, no one in this town would care. That wasn't self-pity, it was matter-of-fact. My housemates had told me about this crazy megachurch that was a must-have experience for a student of churches. I can still remember seeing the website for the first time. Writing down the instructions. How huge it seemed from the highway. That raspberry smell in the halls. Asking the tour guide when "ya'll" take communion. The craziness, and loudness, and... I smile.

And cry. I'm so lucky. (Ashley translation; lucky = blessed).

I didn't know. I couldn't have known.

I didn't leave a service for the first 5 or 6 weeks without someone having given me a phone number, or email address--asking me to go see a movie, or offering to help with anything I could think of.

A whole year. I came here thinking that Jesus was a man with an inordinate love. But I was so angry. I was so full of venom and arrogance. So sure that I knew better for the church. Because I hadn't really seen or felt Christ's love given out so freely from His body. These people spent so much less time frowning at my theology, than they did loving me anyway. That kind of love--it's a game-changer. It trusts God to be God.

Because they allowed God to work in them, they led me to allow Him to work in me. To whom will I pass that on?

at His pleasure.

I prayed for grace on my way home from church last night. Not to understand grace, nor for the ability to explain it. But to feel it.

Sometimes, I'm afraid that I am more in love with the church than I am with God. So I remind myself that my fears make God no less real, no less God, even if true.

Nevertheless, I often think that an indicator to me that my love for God transcends an interest in the church would be my life flooded so fully with Christ's love, that I begin to live to help others know Him.

But then...I'd have to know Him. I worry that though I understand, and can explain His love and His grace, I don't feel them so fully that I'll go out to share them. Then again, William Seymour began preaching the evidence of tongues long before he ever spoke them himself. He studied the Bible, and moved across the country, and allowed himself to be mocked and ridiculed, and put everything on the line, all for something he himself had no personal evidence of, and all while seeing so many others around him receive this glory. That's faith.

In the 5 or so minutes on Battlefield between 65 and Glenstone, it occurred to me that I don't need to really, deeply feel His love to know it exists, to give it to others, and to pray for it.

Whether or not I ever fully feel and grasp His love for me won't change the truth of His existence. Wesley's "peculiar warming" of the heart won't make me certain.

I can become discouraged by my own lack of feeling, or I can keep moving, and pray. Last night, I chose prayer. Tonight I choose prayer. By the grace of God, I'll choose prayer again tomorrow.

Prayer for what? For peace, and obedience. For a heart after God. That's what I pray for, often. "Father, let my heart desire You. Even if nothing works out, even when I don't want anything to do with You, keep something stirring in my heart. If I ask now, will You be faithful to me when I've forgotten You, or worse, rejected You? Because I know my heart is fickle. I know that my mind intrudes on the soul, and the world obscures You. I know I can't promise to love you for always, or even for the next week. Will You help me love You? Will You keep my heart towards You because I asked?"

No act of will can bring my heart to His. He draws.

Some people don't find this sovereignty of God very comforting. Hearing that He will "have mercy on whom [He] has mercy, and compassion on whom [He] has compassion," is unsettling.

I understand that, I do. But I prefer such words on His sovereignty to words on His kindness, or Grace, or unfailing Love (though I enjoy those, too).

Maybe because I don't always feel God's love, or fully connect with His grace, I'm comforted to know that no matter what I feel, my role is ordained. No matter the circumstances of my life, I exist at the whim of a sovereign God.

I once read an interview with a CIA operative, who was asked about taking orders from an administration with which he disagreed. He said that his political affiliations didn't matter. He served at the pleasure of the president, without regard for what that president believed on any particular issue.

So with me.

I serve at the pleasure of the living God.

speechless

Four days until the 16th of August. Four days until a year. And I'm so grateful. I'm breathless with grace. Speechless.

a sip of life.

Look, like ten people read this blog. So I'm going to trade in on that anonymity to get down and dirty and all up in my own business.

I have a crush on the most amazing and Godly man in the whole world. And we've known each other almost since I got here, so "four seasons" down, we could get married tomorrow.

Yeah.

Except that we couldn't And this conversation between me and my bestie back in Chicago will tell you everything you need to know.

Me: [Sigh, murmur, sigh] "He's so great," blah blah blah.

Her: "Ok, then why are you planning to stay as far away from him as possible? You've always been a talker-outer."

Me: "It's pretty clear he's not interested. He's had plenty of opportunity to ask by now, if he were. And plenty of motive--I'm pretty fantastic."

Ver.Bat.Im.

Her: "How do you know? Have you thought about asking him? Because for all you know, he could be sitting there wondering if you're interested." [Comforting sounds of the blue line in the background.]

And then, friends, I had to do it. I had to tell her about dating with conservative Christians.

Me: "Yeah, well, about that. See, there's like this thing down here about girls asking guys out. They just don't."

It's at this point that I started worrying that this was another gag played on me by some over-eager Christians. But then remembered the bevy of girls I've asked since I first heard of it, including my L.A.-born, very-normal roommate, who affirmed it. Girls don't ask. (Coincidentally, they do tell, as I've learned from some married women down here.)

Me: "It's, like, a part of the culture. I think the idea behind is that if he can't balls up to ask you out, he probably won't be able to take on other important aspects of domestic leadership."

Her: "Seriously?"

Me: "Yeah, look, I know it's Amish, but it's just part of the culture."

Her: "Ok, but do you want that kind of relationship? I mean, really.. leader of the household? I mean, it'd be one thing if you actually were Amish, but..."

Me: "Well, you know, I'd like to keep the vote. But yeah, I want some liberal version of that. The 'head of the household' is not at all how you're imagining it anyway. "

The rest of the conversation devolves into a discussion of exactly how Amish my amazing, and Godly crush actually is, and whether or not my decision to back off is a function of my supposed talker-outer disposition, or real wisdom.

Regardless, I felt the moment was too good not to share. When I moved here, I didn't just meet Christ, I met His word, and the many seemingly whacky (and many not-so-whacky) ways in which His word is lived.

Usually, I'm too busy living the moment to enjoy it for what it is--funny, and real, and sometimes confusing, and illustrative, and altogether wonderful--but tonight, I'm just blessed enough to sip it slowly, tasting the complexity of what my life has become.

Cheers.

james dean and jersey wives.

Why am I not freaking out?

I'm asking myself that, my hand on some guy who has torn shoulder muscles, during a healing session at tonight's church service. This is classic, Ashley-joins-up-with-the-Pentecostals-and-oh-holy-crap-what-are-they-doing-now material. The visiting Sri Lankan pastor is about to claim healings in this place, and I am touching someone while praying, and there's this chick a couple of rows up who could probably single-handedly pray down healing for every patient in Cox South-just stand her in the lobby (and North, give her a megaphone)-and I'm not feeling shock.

He asks us to get up and put our hands on the closest in pain, and I do. I don't look around and try to figure out how to avoid it, or, as has been my custom, just sit in my chair doing my best James Dean impression. I get up, and I touch the kid. And, for a split second, folks, I actually considered praying out loud. I was in impressive proximity to blending in. I might have been mistaken for a real Pentecostal.

It was a night.

This is the second time recently that an international evangelist has come in to preach, and let me tell you -- John, Curt and Scotty sound like mice compared to these men from abroad. All of my talk about my own church's "praying for the hearing-impaired" and shouted sermons? Nothing. That's nothing. These other men could put the Housewives of New Jersey to shame. They hop, they pump their fists in the air, they shout, and stamp, and make a ruckus up there! I've never seen anything like it, save for television documentaries.

But.. I'll give them this. They have seen things. They have done things. They have lived things that are pure and raw God. Whatever I think of the hopping and the stamping, and however skeptical I feel about their stories of healings, and demons--they are on that edge I'm looking for.

When I came here, I thought the edge was poverty. I believed radically that the church's sacred mission was to redeem the world not through salvation from sin, but in setting a new social order of equality and kindness. I believed in a social gospel.

Then, a few months ago, I wrote this post about Samuel. It's about how the Israelites asked Samuel for a king, and in so doing, seemed to ignore or misunderstand the absolute sovereignty of God in meeting every need they'd ever had or would have. I ended by pointing out that though I often go the way of the Israelites, I'd do well to remember that stripped of every earthly pleasure, I'd still have the one thing I needed. The implications of my own words didn't come to me until a few weeks later.

When I first joined the church, I was outraged at what I saw as a wrong direction in almost the entirety of the church world because I didn't understand that though we ought to be in the business of taking care of physical needs, that's not our main business. And to claim that it is decentralizes Christ. More than that, it denigrates His sacrifice, it nullifies the Gospel. What does it mean for me to say that I could lose everything, and still have Everything in Christ, unless physical needs take a back seat to spiritual needs? Unless there's a reality so much greater than my physical existence? Unless Christ is not only my ultimate provider, but ultimately the only provision I (and you, and he and she) need?

How then should my purpose change?

And so, the edge that I once would gladly have jumped from seems to lead now only to a sort of virtuous death. The edge I seek is one that I don't have the courage to stand on.

But these hopping, stamping, shouting specimens of Godliness--they are standing on that edge. They are praying, and believing. And they know that their power is from Christ.

I still think they're kinda freakin' crazy. But I would gladly trade my James Dean faith for their Jersey Wives faith any. day. of. the. week.

Today is as good a day as any.

though.

I want a radical faith.

I want a faith that flies off to Peru at a prayer's notice. One that holds nothing back--no shred of love, no solitary dollar--to glorify Christ. A faith that stops short of no man unsaved, and shows no fear. I want the kind of faith that makes evil nervous. And one that loves outrageously, far beyond "normal."

But I don't have that kind of faith, and I'll be honest about why I think that is.

I have self-pity, where I ought to have compassion. I have self-indulgence, where I ought to have discipline. I have self-love, where I ought to have humility. I have self-contempt where I ought to have grace.

Most of all, I have self-doubt that I perversely reflect onto Christ. Where I ought to have faith.

But...I do want to want compassion, discipline, humility, grace and faith.

So with Habakkuk, I pray, "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produced no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my savior."

a dreamer's sleep.

A whole year.

I can't decide if I'm lucky, or stupid, or blessed.

Really, I can't even wrap my head around the situation. How did I walk into this church to just... experience a Pentecostal megachurch...and end up with a comparatively impeccable attendance record, and a volunteer gig? How is that even possible?

I have a whole year's worth of blogs that say that I'm a person who thinks about, and seeks after God. What is that? What am I supposed to think about that?

Is this really my life? Reality is getting fuzzy.

I feel as though I want to get away from all of this, away from schoolwork, and church and friends...and just sit with God. I just need to sit with Him. And to ask Him what's going on. Can He just explain to me just a little bit of what's been happening in my life? Because I don't understand it.

It would be one thing if I could look back, and say "Ah, well, I did all of those things so as to understand these Pentecostals better." It's true, I do understand them better. But that's not why I did all of the things I've done. My heart has changed. I see it in my self. I feel it, sometimes. God is making me more of the person I've always wanted to be, but could never seem to master. Not that we're even within sight of the finish, but, I'm closer. Yet, I didn't do any of this to be a better person either. I didn't actually do it.

Do you ever look at your life, and feel that God has just been doing stuff? That you can't explain why or how you made particular decisions, though you definitely made them, and that truly, oddly, God seemed to have...well, He, He just.. He changed it? He changed you?

I feel that way. The last year has been a blur. I went to DFL, and three womens' rallies, and joined a Life Group, and then another, turned in a praise card for my salvation that was read on the day my Dad happened to come to church with me (oy vey), and was baptized (!), and claimed to be the modern (and mostly normal-looking) embodiment of a Pentecostal to a classroom full of leftist classmates, and started volunteering in production, and prayed to pray in the spirit, and made fast friends with two Christian roommates in a row. That's not even counting the funny stuff, like going to my first ever evangelical bachelorette party, and being asked if I've ever lusted after a man, and seeing Joyce Meyer speak, and traipsing around a field on my first ever prayer-walk. Nor the theological stuff, like deciding that Christ actually lived and died and rose again to pay for my sins.

It has been a year.

A beautiful, whacky, painful, and confusing year.

I don't understand.

Sometimes, it really, truly feels as though this has just been some huge experiment of my dreams, and I think I'll wake up tomorrow the person I came here as. Like it was someone else who did all of that stuff, some other Ashley.

God, don't let it have been a dream. Please don't let it be a dream.

it is done.

I'm getting a much-needed assist from my past.

I'm having a bit of a rough time in faith right now, asking myself if God exists, if Christ died for my sins, if all of what I've accepted in coming into the church, and beginning work in the Body is real, and true. Some days, I've felt like I'm only a few inches from shutting it all down. I start plotting a strategy for disentangling myself from the church with the least damage done to new-found friendships, and maximum consideration to volunteer schedules. I cry, and stare at the carpet for what seems like hours at a time, love-hating my Bible as I struggle to believe all that God tells me through it.

Not that all my moments are mired so in drama, or disbelief. But I have begun, in more serious fashion than usual, to wonder if the church is in my future. If Christ is with me.

I was thinking about that today, meandering the hall outside Clark Chapel while greeting for Cherish Kids. I had just run into a friend--I doubt he knows I think about this, but he always seems to assume that no matter my jokes, or the flippancy with which I toss off comments about my faith, this is it. While I feel like I'm floundering, the battle is won. God called me in, and He's holding me in. This friend is probably just being nice by refuting my nonchalant claims to future Buddhism. Regardless, his unswerving confidence in my faith makes me think that maybe there's something to be confident about. His unusual sense of "knowing" gives me pause. He seems to think I'm in the church for good. So why shouldn't I?

I paced for a while, in the silence of the church before rush hour. I am a couple of weeks shy of the one-year anniversary of the day I first walked into James River. I can't even believe it. I never would have imagined all of this.

I haven't been in the church like this for over 10 years. And the last time I was, this was about the point, this one-year mark, where things began to fall apart.

Hence the assist from the past...

Things began to fall apart for the same reasons, essentially. I began to doubt what I said yes to. I felt like I was being controlled by the church, and the culture, and by some set of standards that I thought were too restrictive, and not in line with what any real God would exact of those He loves. So I fell out, missed service by missed service, week by week. Until I gave it all up, the theology, Christ, the whole thing, and inside of 18 or 24 months from first walking into Christ Community Church, from first hearing the gospel, I considered myself agnostic, at best.

But He wasn't done. He followed me into college, hooked me up with the president of IVCF (a brilliant scientist, still one of my best friends, but now an atheist), and introduced me to some of the coolest Christians I had ever met. Including a couple who adopted these two great kids, and loved James Taylor (I smile as I remember that because it occurs to me that if God watches us along the way, what a sign-post perfectly tailored to me). He saved my life more than once, and I don't even have time or space for every other sign post.

And now, I look back, and I think...I could walk. I could freak out at the one-year mark, and give it all up. But why travel this road again? It's done. My heart is redeemed, and I am confused sometimes, and scared, uncertain, doubtful. But I can't live as though I haven't seen the truth. There's no going back.

I suspect that even if I did go back, I'd just be led right back to one more version of this.

It is done.

anything but God.

Ridiculous lead-in to a spiritual moment, in 3..2...

I was making cake balls this afternoon. They're completely delicious, and ridiculously easy, and best of all--they start with the making of one of those 99-cent, boxed cake mixes that make less-than-delicious cakes, but positively-addictive batter.

So I'm making this mix, and I'm dumping the bag of powdery-goodness into my pyrex when my hand slips, and suddenly, there's a quarter cup of Betty Crocker on my countertop.

And I have a thought.

Can I use the straight edge of my spatula to make lines of this stuff to snort?

No, probably not, right? But it is that good. And so I find myself on a wild spree of cake-mix possibilities. Can you huff it? Mix it with seltzer or cranberry juice? What happens if you try to flame a spoonful of it--can you freebase Betty Crocker cake mix?

Then, I have a second thought. Two second thoughts, actually.

1. You, Ashley Louise, are ridiculous.

2. And, you'd do well to put half that creativity and mental energy into new ways of fostering a God addiction.

I'm not always that much of a harpy, but I've been having some pretty serious conversations with friends lately--both Christians and non--and, as much time and energy as I do put into faith, it might be time to put a little more. Maybe not more, just...different.

See, I'm concerned that I might be becoming something of a fair-weather Christian. Unlike my undying (and entirely illiterate) devotion to the Cubs, win or lose, I have trouble buckling down to God when it feels like all is lost. I repeat favorite verses to myself--and scoff. I start to pray--and cry through a couple of sentences. I try to take solace in encouraging music--but Ben Folds' Jesusland is not an acceptable worship alternative. Pretty much the only thing that I can always get myself to do is to listen to my favorite sermon, which unfortunately is on the topic of election, and can, in the wrong mood, turn into an hour-long theological debate with myself on whether or not I've been chosen.

In short, I don't always believe God's promises. Then again, if I don't always, do I ever? If I cannot believe that He won't ever leave me nor forsake me when there's darkness, am I really believing it when there's light?

I don't want to oversimplify, nor to denigrate how far We've come together. But, this is a sticky thicket, and an important one at that.

Addiction is marked by a drive to use a substance, or an activity, again and again in the face of a life crumbling, and destroyed by that use. In that sense, my turning away from God when I am most in need of Him is an addiction of sorts. An addiction to negativity, to hurt, and pain, and maybe even Ben Folds. In the past, I have turned, and turned, until it felt like everything inside me was crumbling. And then I kept turning, mistaking one "drug" after another for salvation. Financial security, emotional stability, political activism...

The truth is I still turn. But, maybe there are a couple of things to that one promise--the truth shall set you free.

My name is Ashley, and sometimes, I am addicted to anything but God.

differentiation dispersed.

This is the blog of a good, good friend of mine--we became fast friends in the fall of 2007, and quickly began plotting ways to save the church. Though she believed in Christ as her atoning Savior, and I viewed Him in somewhat less divine a light, we both felt passionately that He offered something revolutionary to the world, and that the church, by-and-large, was killing it.

Do I still agree with all of what she's saying? Do I agree with the way she's saying it? The forum in which she's saying it? Have I sold out? Have I lost the passion with which I was called into the church?