the call.

A week ago yesterday morning, I found out that I have cancer.

When I stopped the crying, and the phone calls, I felt a truth rise in me.

I don't want to miss this opportunity. I don't want to just get through this. I've prayed too often for wisdom, and courage, and for closeness with God, to let this pass. I don't believe that God is causing this cancer, but I know that He's allowing it, and friends--I don't want to be victorious, I don't want to be the picture of someone stronger for the wear, or a proud cancer survivor. I want to be the one weakened by reliance on our powerful God. I want to be humbled by a greater understanding of His glory, and His grace.

I've learned, over the past week, that it's much easier to say those things in the moments when I'm not having terrible stomach cramping, or vomiting, or fear. So my greatest prayers are for the worst moments. The moments when I know that God is with me, but when I start to wonder why He allows the pain.

The truth is that I don't need to know. I believe that nothing is lost in the economy of God.

I don't know what's ahead. My appointment with the oncologist is tomorrow, and I might not even know then what all of this means. Will treatment be straightforward, or complicated? Will it be taken care of once and for all, leaving me to a normal life? Will I live with scars? Will I die?

I don't know.

I do know that I serve a loving, and a gracious God who has plans both for my life, and for my death, as He does for you, and that if His strength is made perfect in my weakness, then I am not in such a terrible place.

schooled.

I've been prayed for by email. By telephone. By text. In tongues, and in English. In shouts, and in whispers. Hands on me, hands off of me. In church, in coffee shops, in homes. And now, in parking lots.

The memory is sweet, and I'm smiling because God has been so gracious to me.

After four months of what has been intense trial, I feel fully alive again. I've learned some things along the way.

I can't do faith alone.

As I stood in the parking lot with my friends Steve and Mona, they prayed, and I smiled. Earlier that week, a dear friend of mine (one with whom I'm not always so careful to be dear), took me for chicken noodle soup, and stepped into the situation to help. On Friday, I resumed my volunteering--it has never felt so good to spend a few hours with a group of people before, ever. A few days before, I sought out some wisdom from a couple of Christian woman whom I very much respect. And all of that together brought new life into the despair that I had been feeling. Allowing people that opportunity to pray for me, to know the truth about how dark things had become, changed the situation entirely, and convinced me that I cannot do faith alone. He never intended for me to do so. I'm so grateful for the chance to rebuild the people around me, and to step back into the community of wonderfully faith-filled, and wise believers who minister to me.

There is such a thing as spiritual darkness.

I am generally the first person to turn a funny face to the suggestion of "spiritual warfare" or "evil," but I've learned that those things are real. And they're not generally like the movies. I wonder now if one of the ways that Satan propagates darkness is in letting people think that evil is just all of the spookiness, and gore of big-box horror movies, and television dramas. Because I have no seen any blood in the last four months, but I had been taken into something darker than I've ever known. It wasn't depression. It wasn't like anything I've ever known. But it was dark, and heavy, and poisonous. I let it grow, and it affected everything about me--the way I treat other people, the way I treat myself, the way I understand faith and God. It was real. And in its absence, I sense that reality all the more.

Obedience is everything.

I've never been a fan of the idea of obedience. I was educated to be "free-thinking," and exploratory. My perception of the term "obedience" was framed by psych experiments in which people did terrible things to other people, all in the name of authority. I missed the finer points of what it looks like to be obedient to something benevolent, all-knowing, perfectly wise, entirely sufficient in grace, peace, and compassion--the finer points of surrender to Christ. So my responses to God have often been things like, "Maybe," or "If it seems to work out..." or "When I get things figured out." But I'm learning that faith and obedience are friends. Faith is built when obedience to God displays His power to engage the impossible and the mundane alike. From that faith comes hope. And obedience becomes easier as the cycle turns. But it all comes to a screeching halt when we refuse to step out, to say yes, to be trusted with little that we might be trusted with much.

I'm grateful to be learning. I'm humbled by my complete inability to pull myself out of the dark I've been in. I'm seeing my faith grow as He shows me His mercy. Sleepless nights, and stomach cramps are not the ways I would choose to be refined, but He is faithful, and He is good, and our closeness now makes the whole of it well worth the pain.

I will most likely forget that particular lesson during the next trial, so if you think of it, pray for me via blog comment.

these will be yours.

Sometimes, I feel as though I've given up quite a lot to believe in Christ. I know that that's rubbish, but...

Inside of two years ago, I had a plan. I had an academic pedigree. I went to a great school, I had a neat little resume with a neuroscience fellowship, and I did my undergrad research with one of the world's top experts in his (and my) field. I was offered the opportunity to come to Missouri to work with another of the field's well-published professors, and I was so certain of the future. I'd go on for the Ph.D., and then do what every academic dreams of doing-- something fresh, something new, something that launches you into a career of teaching, and publishing, and speaking engagements, and being known.

And now...we're here.

Two years later, I have no real plan, and the plans I do have are entirely dependent on the prompting of an entity I cannot see. I find myself concerned with things like holiness, and broken over my separations with God. I'm making decisions that are terrifying, because they don't always make rational sense, and I wonder, "How can this road get me to that one when I can't see the connections?" I keep checking back into my own heart to find again and again that things have changed. What I once believed I no longer do, and what once seemed impossible to believe is now so true. Sometimes I'm failing, but I'm always coming back. And I know that I'm about to be pushed over into something new, into a bolder faith than what I've known. (Is it ok to be scared?)

Back in March, my church hosted Chris Tomlin. The music was good, Louie Giglio was awesome, but the point is that in the middle of it, God spoke.

Eyes closed, and arms aloft I sang--it was total worship, and totally wonderful. I opened my eyes. My friend to the left was lost in worship. When I turned to the right, I saw one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Thousands of faces, hands, voices lifted to heaven, bathed in golden light, entirely surrendered to the God I love. Friends. There aren't words. As I watched, God spoke. More clearly than I've ever experienced. He told me to get ready--"These will be yours. I'm giving them to you to care for, and to lead." The imagery was of a flock, it called forth a sense of protectiveness. The message was unmistakable--get ready, prepare yourself to do it well.

I know that sounds crazy. I know I'm completely unfit for any type of pastoral leadership, ever. I could be entirely wrong about that message--and trust me, I'm not too proud to know that, and if I am wrong, I will print out this page and literally eat my words. But that was the message. Not now, but soon enough. Not these exact people, but some. Prepare yourself.

That's not the first time I've gotten that message or something similar. It's also not the first time I've ignored it. Coincidentally, this is the first time I've been honest about it. Because I'm scared. Because I imagine that anyone reading these words will think that I'm foolish, will say, "Does she realize how completely inadequate she is in Christ to ever lead another person?" The answer is yes, I do realize.

But I also realize that I serve a God who changes lives from dark to light, and takes hearts that are broken, and arrogant, and foolish, and turns them to strength, and humility and wisdom. I know that I love a God who is faithful to His promises. I know that my God works miracles, and does not spread lies in the hearts of His own, but truths--whole, beautiful truths that would in fact be foolish or impossible without His power.

Now is the time for honesty, with myself and others. I've been hiding, and in that, I've been falling. I realized this week that my own unwillingness to do what He asks has twisted things, and taken my heart off course. I start to feel like I've given up so much--because I'm not stepping into all that I've been given. I have not allowed God into my life to be God--to do the impossible in my heart, my mind, my friendships, my work, my finances.

It's time to get ready.

living dead.

I've been thinking about death a lot lately. I've been having some health problems, and after a thorough exploration of my symptoms on google, Cancer is the only answer. Which led into a now staunch belief that I will be dead inside of a year. So then, of course, I started thinking about how I should live life differently, given my upcoming funeral. If I really only had a year, I'd live much differently.

I would say crazy things, like telling my heartbroken friend that only Jesus can overcome the pain she's telling me about. I would sing LOUD, and put in all the runs and octave changes I always hear in my head. I'd lift my arms in worship ALL the time, including during the first chorus and the instrumental bridge, when no one else seems in the mood. I would pray like a crazy person--like I hear it in my head--loud and passionate. I'd enroll in seminary.

Seriously. Other Pentecostals would shoot ME weird looks. They'd be like, "What's she on?" And I'd be like, "A death sentence."

But see, that would not be a death sentence. That would be a sentence to Life. Because the impulse to worship extravagantly isn't motivated by impending death, but is an outpouring of the freedom to live. So it's a life sentence. And I already have one of those.

So why do I live dead sometimes? I'm not talking, by the way, about my silly obsessing over my imaginary diagnoses. I'm talking about the way that I don't share life with people when I should, that I sing softly, and that I keep my arms to myself in worship.

I live dead when I don't trust, and when I don't hope.

I can't be the only one.

Maybe, just for a day, in reverence to my short year on this earth, I'll live one day completely alive in Christ.

Tomorrow? If I make it that long...

an honest hope

I started writing this blog with the idea that I would always be honest, no matter who read it, or how many who's. No matter how my thoughts changed, or what happened to my heart. I started attending church with somewhat the same idea. I vowed that I would be honest with people when I agreed, and when I disagreed.

That honesty got harder the more involved I became. It's easy to be honest when you're anonymous. Not so much when you know people, when you see them in the hall, and then when you're suddenly on the big screens talking about Jesus, and then applying for a job and seminary, and chatting with the pastors.

But my honesty in faith has brought me this far. It must be valuable, important.

My heart is a mess right now.

I'm walking this funny line, and on the one side is an excitement in faith that seems ready to carry me into the best life--this side is the side I've been promised, the possibilities I've hoped for. At this same exact time, there's this other side, that's threatening to drag me into more darkness than I've ever understood.

How can my faith be both so ready for incredible growth, and also so close to collapse?

I'm not in a desert. God has become more real, and more powerful to me over the last few months than ever before. I cry through services not because I'm defeated, but because I'm sensing something in Him that's new, and gorgeous. Because I'm learning.

So how then can I be in this place of such total vulnerability to life-altering sin? The last six months have seen one trial after another--it almost feels intentional. As though someone is cherry-picking these situations to poke my softest places. My relationships are being tested, and my heart is found weak. I'm thinking and feeling things about friends that are so far from loving, I can't believe that God can exist in the same heart that feels them. I'm being tested with alcohol, and sex in ways that have been totally off the radar for the past two years. I have at times been so miserable at this job that I have prayed to God that I wouldn't wake up the next morning--but I'm not depressed!

It's all so crazy, I just step back, and think what in the WORLD is going on?

And then...Father, will I make it through these trials?

I've been thinking a lot about wisdom, and how I know that prayer, and time with God are the wise answers in these moments. But what's knowledge unless I'm truly acting on it? Thus...wisdom is truth in practice, in action.

Father, I'm giving you all of the sin, and all of the tests, and all of the possibilities, and all of the pride. Please bring me what I need in each new moment.

urgency.

At the funeral, my Mom told me that my step-dad was concerned about his Dad's salvation. "The rest of his family doesn't care, but Ken knows," she whispered to me. "Maybe you could talk to him."

My parents come to me for spiritual answers sometimes. They confuse my reading in religion for wisdom in faith, and so I find myself trying to give my Mom tips on explaining relativism to her friends, and helping my Dad through problems with his church board's vision, and talking to my step-dad about what will happen to my grandpa's soul. It's a hot mess. I don't have that kind of wisdom.

All the more so on that last one. What am I supposed to say to my step-dad about this? How can I try to provide answers, or comfort, or guidance when I am so completely lost?

The idea of my grandfather in Hell makes me sick to my stomach. I can't think about it. I literally start to gag. I'm afraid sometimes that if I hold on to the thought for another moment, I will throw up all over. Yet, I'm afraid not to think about it. I'm afraid of what happens when we push those hard thoughts out of our minds. When we stop contemplating reality, do we then begin to live in our own version of reality, desensitized to the urgency of truth?

Because there is urgency.

I like to think that God gives Himself to everyone at the end in a massively-irrefutable display of power and love, such that no one could say no. Basically, that He makes an offer you can't refuse. I don't know that that's true. It's my first line of protection against discomfort with Hell.

My second line is like this: No matter how heart-broken, how sick, I might be at the prospect of a soul in hell, God is more sick. He's more heart-broken. Because He loves that person more than I could ever dream of loving him. In that, I feel a calm. I'm not sure that I entirely understand why.

Either way, I've got no answers.

I think I'll still call my step-dad.

dead dead.

I was driving the two miles from my grandparents' house to the pavement, and I broke.

My grandfather is dead. Like... dead dead. The kind of dead that doesn't talk, or move, or you know, do anything that generally signifies life. Dead.

The last five days have been a bit of a busy blur, so it wasn't until today that the whole thing came to me. It's over. What started with a phone call, and a pitch-dark drive through the Missouri hills ended this morning with a rainy drive back to Springfield, and back to my life. Now there's just the reality to deal with. The absence.

I don't have an epic set of wonderful memories with my grandfather. Sometimes, I think it's easier to process these things when you do.

I have a complicated set of memories. Like us all, my grandpa was not perfect.

I wasn't expecting to feel this way. I didn't think I'd ever be doing this--searching back through my memories for the last time I saw him, what he said to me, for the first time I met him, for the things about him I loved. As I went to tears in my car this morning, I realized that my lack of mourning over the past five days has not in fact been a lack of love. That's comforting, in a strange way.

I knew someone I loved, and he's gone now. But I knew someone I loved.

freedom in the yard

I'm not very good at mourning. Some people have a knack for it. They'll sit with you, and cry with you, and say things like, "I just can't believe it," over and over again. I, on the other hand, can believe it. Death happens. Especially to old people.

I'm not trying to be insensitive. Maybe I just mourn differently. My knack is for keeping water glasses full, and answering the phone, and making sure the deviled eggs get back into the fridge before they spoil.

Today is my grandpa's funeral.

The first time I ever knew he loved me was the last time I saw him. They live out in the country at the end of a 2-mile stretch of gravel, and before I left he and I took a four-wheeler to their "yard." After the yard, he took a turn towards the gravel. There had been storms the night before, and as we rode along, he stopped at each big branch to pull it out of the way. It took me about a mile and a half to realize he was clearing the road so I'd have an easier way back.

That's not the first time he loved me. We've always had a good relationship. I think I had a special place in his heart for being "the funny one"--he would still repeat jokes I had made to him, years later. It was just the first time I really thought about it, the first time I saw something tender.

My second knack is for turning anything back to spirituality.

I think I first saw his love then because of Christ. That trip is the first time I'd spent extended time with them since accepting Christ, and in the time that I've known Christ, my heart has gotten bigger, more expressive, less afraid of emotion, less skittish in mourning. He's not just saving me from condemnation in the after, He's saving me from a life lived in walls in the now.

How wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.

surprises and nonsense.

I spent yesterday with my grandmother. She lost her husband, and I lost my grandfather, and being alone together for the day before family arrived from the North was, frankly, alternately heart-breaking and then awkward.

We made phone calls. We sat with neighbors. We went to the diner and picked at a plate of cheddar bites. We looked through every family photo taken since 1939. She wandered. I texted. She cried. I held.

She began grieving immediately. I just realized I might be grieving.

Some things about her grief surprise me.

It seems to come in waves. She's okay, she's okay, she's okay, and then, suddenly, I see the panic come--she realizes it's not okay, she thinks, "It won't ever be ok again."

She wanted me in the room with her more than I expected. "To talk for me if I start crying too hard," she told me.

Some things about my own "grief" surprise me.

I want to be around people. But I don't want them to talk--not to me, anyway. When they start talking to me, it's too much, too many decisions. What will I say back? Am I supposed to say something funny, something relevant, something sympathetic?

I'm very pragmatic about his death as a personality in my life, but completely shattered over his death as a soul before God. I keep wondering at God's own brokenness over the loss of a child. Does God grieve?

That last part--that's the thing. I'm haunted by the possibility.

None of this makes any sense.

come Heaven or Hell.

My grandfather died a few hours ago. Four, to be precise.

With grandparents, you know that at some point, the call will come. I'm not trying to be morose, but everyone dies, and as the closest family member (the rest of them live 10 hours away), I knew it was coming. "Ash, he died. Can you go be with her? We're on our way."

That's actually exactly how it happened.

So I got in my car, and en route to Hancock, MO, my faith became violently real. At mile marker 104 I remembered that my grandfather does not claim Christ. In fact, he has always been fairly antagonistic towards Christianity. Then the panic hit.

But wait...

If he never accepted Christ. And he just died. Does that mean...?

Now I will tell you that no close family member or friend has died since I accepted Christ, and so I have never prayed before like I prayed tonight. I'm all up on the phone to God, like "Isn't there ANYTHING You can do?!?"

Then I'm back-pedaling. "Do I actually believe that those who have not accepted Christ's sacrifice and come to Him for life will in fact live in Hell?" I'm in my car thinking how crazy that is. Then I'm thinking that it's crazy, sure, but true in my heart, and logical in my mind.

The next moment, I'm looking at this gorgeous skyline of trees and stars in the Missouri countryside, and knowing that though I cannot bear the thought of eternal punishment for someone I love, God loves me, and He loves my grandfather, and whatever happened at the moment of passing, no one felt its impact more deeply than God. Because no one loved my grandfather more than God did. And that, come Heaven or Hell, is greatly comforting.

In the end, Christ absorbs it all, doesn't He? Our sin, our worry, our pain...

I pray that tonight, He absorbs the pain of a grieving family (and selfishly, the wonder of a questioning Christian), and turns it to His good, to His glory.

dead words to the Living Word

I've been thinking more about words. Specifically, about words in the Christian blogosphere (/twitterscape). I've come to this:

If my words don't inspire you to seek The Word--then they are poor words. Empty words. They've got nothing for you. If my words don't turn you to Christ, they're dead words.

Obviously, there are a great many words and many great ideas that turn us to Christ, and what spins you might leave me standing still. So...how do we decide which words to speak, and which to leave?

I'm not sure.

I do think this issue is tied into holiness. A person who writes, or speaks of God is one who does something a little dangerous. If what you say, or write, doesn't come from wisdom, from prayer, or truth--you're opening yourself to some pretty heavy stuff. Because words are not idle. The words of a believer especially. There's plenty in the Bible to commend the practice of watching one's tongue. God cares about what we say, and now, what we blog, what we tweet.

Because His work is "to believe in the one he sent." And in believing, we understand. And in understanding, we love. In loving, we share. We share words. But what are the words if they don't start and end in belief?

So back to the start. If my words don't inspire you to seek The Word--they are in fact poor words, dead words.

words about words.

I don't feel like writing much anymore, because sometimes, I don't think that the world needs another voice. It doesn't need another opinion. Another somebody's re-framing of some or other nominally biblical concept.

So I've been keeping mostly to myself on issues of faith. I'm not saying that's the right thing to do. It's just what I've been doing.

Lately, things that people said to me early on in my time at James River, are starting to make sense. I didn't understand at the time. Now, I do.

Tonight, I've been thinking about this conversation I had with a pastor's wife at the Newcomer's Dinner I went to back in September of 2009. She told me that thinking or reading too much about different ideas in faith can "muddy the waters." At the time, I thought that was about the most anti-intellectual piece of junk I had ever heard. I even wrote a blog post about it. Now, I think I get it.

I've been writing less in part because I've been reading more scripture, and spending more time in prayer. As I do, all of the opinions and books and articles that come out of the complex of Christianity start to seem not like tools, but like distractions. So many voices. So much well-intentioned advice. So much to read, and look at, and think about, that steals time from what will save you--the Gospel; from what will grow you--His word. I've been writing less because I don't want to be another voice, another distraction.

What the pastor's wife meant was not what I heard at the time--that reading and thinking outside of scripture will prevent the sure indoctrination of evangelical dogma. She meant that though sometimes useful, and often entertaining, all of the thought and literature outside of scripture is not saving, not ultimately an actual supernatural source for life and growth. It muddies the waters of life.

Some people see it as their calling to write about God. To put out new ideas, and to challenge old ones. I did. I was sure that I was a voice of change. Now, I wonder whether we oughtn't be so much more careful with our voices, our words. Not because words are particularly powerful in creating change, but because often, they're not.

Charles Fox Parham, an early figure in Pentecostal history, wrote that we shouldn't go around knocking down other peoples' houses. Rather, we should come alongside their houses, build better ones, and invite them over.

Words can be a shell. They get out there, and then...that's it. They're out there. That's all. The house is still old, it's falling down.

God knows this. There are no shortages of references to wordlessness in the Bible, in the face of great joy, or great sorrow. That's the great thing about tongues--prayer that circumvents our ability to talk about God, to say clever things to or about Him.

When in the Presence, we stand without words. I wonder sometimes if we shouldn't stand that same way in the presence of one another.

no time for timid.

Last week, a girl started her testimony by telling me that it was "just a silly, mushy story."

I totally called her on it. Nicely.

"I'm not saying this is you, but I really struggle with how I talk about God's work in my life. I want to say things like, 'My story isn't that great,' or 'It wasn't really a big deal,' and then I realize that what God did in my life is so much bigger than those words, you know?"

Yeah. I did. I know. I'm that girl.

I think she understood. I think it was perceived well. And besides, this post isn't really about her response to my self-righteousness. It's about my own hypocrisy.

For Easter, I talked about my story with God for a video testimony that was played during services at my church. It was an interesting experience, about which I have a bunch of thoughts, but mainly, right now, I've got one that keeps looping back around: I never told my parents. Not really, anyway.

I may have mentioned it quickly, and in passing--"Oh yeah, I talked a little about God for a video for Easter. Is it still pretty cold there?" But I didn't tell them tell them--"I'm filming a video at church, talking about how God reached into my life last year, and convinced me of His truth, and about how my whole life has changed because I chose to accept what He did for me in dying on the cross, and now I seek a life guided by His spirit. So, um, yeah."

The discrepancy between those versions is about to bite back. The church is playing the video during James River Women's Designed For Life conference next month. The one to which I invited my Mom. She said yes.

I realized the reality suddenly, and violently, during breakfast with a friend this weekend. I knew the video was on the docket through a weird sort of "word from the Lord" kind of deal, but that whole "my Mom seeing it" thing hadn't yet hit.

I love my mother, and she knows I love God, and I know she loves God, but I'm very emotionally open in that video. We don't talk like that in my house. We don't get into the nuts and bolts of faith. We don't share about our loneliness, or pain, or whatever it is that brought us to Christ. And the idea of her sitting next to me, watching me talk about how the church loved me to Christ is...more terrifying than exciting.

But then...who am I, and who is Christ, if I can't let those parts of me be known? Who am I to call a girl on her saying her testimony is "just a silly" story? Who is Christ to me that I'm running scared about my mother knowing the real me, the me that really loves God?

It's time. If God is working in my life, and I believe He is, it's time. If I love Him, and I do, it's time. If I feel as passionately as I do about other people knowing His love, it's time.

So...it's time.

new place.

My faith is changing drastically. It's growing.

Like so: I found a job that is a stable job, but one with challenges, and definitely not a job I love, and the deeper my heart sinks, the more I find my love for God. I cry a lot more than I ever have, and as I do, I remember this prayer I used to make on Wednesday nights. When the "sick list" would come up, I'd pick one or two names, and pray fervently for Felicia, or Elmer, that more than healing, they'd experience joy in sickness. I prayed for healing, too. But more than that, I prayed that in the midst of the pain that wracked their bodies, or the anguish of their hearts, they would lift their arms, and give full praise, and all honor to the God who called those bodies to be.

Because I think that praise in weakness is the source of strength.

I don't mind saying that I'm fighting hopelessness recently--anxiety about how He'll work His promises for me from what looks like impossibility. I've won some battles. I've lost some. But it's so interesting to me that in the middle of the most intense time of uncertainty I've experienced, maybe ever, He is working some of the greatest change my faith has yet known.

Even in the last month, I've come to know God more closely. I love Him now in a way I didn't in May, or June, or July. I trust Him. I believe in Him. I find my heart softening, and my wisdom going deeper.

I'm crying more lately, because I feel scared and sad in these circumstances, and I'm wondering how this will all come together, and how to keep the faith in the meantime. But I'm also praising, and in that, there's joy.

I'm praying. I'm finding a need for His Word that is...driven. It's all very different, and not that it was bad before, but whatever it was, it now IS awe-some, awe-filled.

I've neglected this blog recently, but I don't want to miss this moment. I write to remember, to read later. To track the times from each moment to the next so that at each new place, I can read back and see His goodness.

This is a new place.

benched.

I think I may be living a tremendously important part of my faith right now.

There's nothing happening outwardly to suggest that's the case. In fact, quite the opposite.

I feel as though my life is on hold. Nothing I thought would happen in ministry happened. I took a job that is good, but certainly not a passion for me. I'm barely pulling through on my thesis (to be honest). I'm looking at some major things that have to be paid off, wondering how I will handle that and keep progressing through new seasons of life. I'm dragging.

A few months ago it seemed like if I wanted to walk into ministry, it was all going to work out. As though I could throw the full force of what I've got into the cause, and really excel.

And really excel. Interesting words.

Instead of being in active vocational ministry, I am now learning deeply, in an incredible way, the reason for ministry. I was so intent on using my skills to "advance ministry" that I think I may have missed the reality. I wanted to do well to help people, but didn't fully understand that I'm not just helping them--I'm helping them to Christ.

Now, benched from the possibilities of excelling, I have no choice but to love God alone. I can't love results, and I can't love my "job" in vocational ministry, because those things are not gifts I was given. And in the interim, I'm learning that life is ministry, and the people I cannot stand at work are those to whom I was sent, and that my faith is both tremendously stronger and outrageously weaker than I had thought.

There are points over the last couple of months at which I thought I'd surely go under. One challenge after another--I've felt as though any weak spot I possess has been targeted and hit. But instead, I'm finding a passion for God, and a belief in the Gospel, that is much purer than any I've ever known.

I don't know what the plan is. I do know that these moments, however much they drag, are formative.

college Christian weird.

Question.

Where are all of the campus ministries in which the core activities are things like kicking it in coffee shops with some Dylan in the background, talking about theology?

Why is it that if I want to be involved in college ministry, I have to be down with a whole host of weird?

Let me pause for a second to say that I know that I'm weird. My secret talent is a dead-on impersonation of Britney Spears, I once watched all three Lord of the Rings movies (which I own) in one day, and when no one is watching, I dance to Christian pop. I am unavoidably weird. But...I am not unapproachable. And nothing is more unapproachable to on-the-fence seekers than college Christian weird.

What do I mean?

Do this: go the webpage of almost any of the ministries of [your college here], and peruse their photo albums. Then ask yourself... who is being ministered to?

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that the vast majority being ministered to in some of these organizations haven't been extensively unchurched. They've been very churched. That's why their college ministry albums are almost indistinguishable from their high school ministry albums.

They. know. youth ministry.

They're comfortable with it. And let's be honest--it's fun! But not for everyone.

I wonder... where's the ministry for the college Ashley? For the girl who wasn't about to bounce with some Christians having an ugly Christmas sweater partay, unless there was some rum bouncing in that room? For the guy who considers himself to be above ice breakers? For the students who feel caught between curiosity in Christ, and the seeming normalcy of their own non-Christian circles?

I couldn't have been the only one. Certainly, had there been a ministry, a different kind of ministry, one that reached out to my friends in college in ways they understood, they might have paid more attention to the cross.

There's nothing wrong with the fun and the silliness of some college ministry. It has its place. But I wonder...how are college ministries reaching the people who either don't understand or aren't attracted to the youth ministry feel of a lot of those groups? How are we reaching those who don't have concepts for "small group" and "outreach event"? Who don't know how to be reached?

It's not just our words that need translation from Christianese. It's our concepts, our intentions, our actions, our structures. It's not just a stylistic issue, it's also an intellectual and philosophical one.

Admittedly, I'm writing on a topic about which I know little. But, thinking on my own experiences with college ministry, my heart breaks. For reference, John Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff, went to my college--what if he had given his life to Christ in those four years? Ismat Kattani later became president of the United Nations--what if he had fallen to Christ while at Knox? On and on. How many students passed through--brilliant, brilliant people who could literally have turned this world upside down for Christ--never having been connected with the Truth? Because they saw the ministry and not the cross. Because they thought differently, their minds worked differently, and the Christian ministries, in full love and amazing intentions, didn't know it. Were set in the ways of ministry. Didn't catch on.

Francis Schaeffer begins the unbelievable "the God who is there," with some simple words: "The present chasm between the generations has been brought about almost entirely by a change in the concept of truth." He wrote these words in 1968, asserting that the greatest crisis in Christianity was then that Christianity had missed the crisis! The thinkers, the teachers, and the leaders had missed this fundamental shift in the understanding of truth, and kept on as though nothing had happened, and in so doing, had lost touch with the culture, with the souls they were appointed to assist.

I think Schaeffer's words are fresh.

I fear that they're fresh for college ministry. I hurt for the students who pass through--unfamiliar with the structures of ministry, and the presuppositions of faith, with the style and the substance--never meeting Christ.

fessing and failing.

I was at a training this morning, for the New Life workers--the volunteers who pray with people who come down to accept Christ during the altar call. Before I hit the room, I realized...

This is my passion. Oddly. Crazily. Outrageously.

The girl who is kind of shy in faith, and won't even tell her family or friends that she has this blog.

This is my passion. Figuring out how to reach people with the promise and hope of Christ. Watching them grow, as I am growing, in relationship with the God who loves them more than they can imagine.

Somehow, this is my passion.

I'm not sure what that means. Immediately, I make it mean something terribly negative. "You can't ever help someone know God. You don't even share God with people in your life. There's no way. You're crazy. Or stupid. You're so not ready. You'll never be ready. You can't share a blog URL, but you think your passion is sharing Christ with people? Stupid. You can't ever help someone know God."

But...how about something different? How about it means that God is working in me? That He wouldn't place a desire where He didn't also place an ability. Maybe not right now, maybe not tomorrow, but gradually, surely.

The moments I feel most alive have been those in which I am talking with someone about Christ--even when I was theologically liberal! How crazy is that? And how crazy is it that I spent more time speaking of Him when I believed He was a moral teacher, than now when I know Him to be so much more?

I don't know how this will all end up. I do know that I don't want to be too afraid of failure to fess up to a call.

campus courage.

Every couple of months, in college, I had coffee with a guy named Doug. He and his wife were the regional coordinators for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. They were over-saved. I assume they still are. But they were/are also top-notch people. They loved God, and obviously loved His kids, if our coffee meetings were any indication.

I didn't know why, but in the midst of my partying, in between week-long drinking sessions, and awful sexual decisions, I would sit down some mornings, and send Doug an email. "You want to grab coffee sometime this week?"

He would say yes, of course. And we'd find ourselves in the middle of Innkeeper's Coffee, having an adversarial conversation about how any Christian could claim that Christ absolutely wiped away sin, if "sin" was a real thing.

It went pretty much the same with my best friend, Judy. She was the campus coordinator for IVCF, and she was not, thankfully, over-saved, but loved God with all of her heart. I would show up at her place, crying and drunk, at 2 or 3am. She'd settle me in her guest room, and the next morning, over an inordinately large glass of water, she'd let me cry and talk. I'd tell her the same thing I told Doug--it just doesn't make sense. I know I'm messed up, I know that something is wrong, I know that I have a strange call to God, but He just doesn't make sense.

Doug and Judy showed me love, albeit in different ways, and their love is not the only I was shown. On a campus that had little respect for Christ, or for Christianity, they were willing to reach out to someone on the other side--someone who drank and partied, and studied neuroscience, and hung out with all the people who called "bulls**t!" on their faith. Granted, I sought them. I wanted God badly. But they could have done much differently by me. Much, much worse.

As I look back, from faith, I'm so grateful to them. I think it's their love that sinks into me, that pushes me towards campus ministry. I remember who I was, and what it took to reach me, and I want so badly to give that to someone else like me. Those people never saw the fruit of their work with me, and I think that's kind of beautiful. I want to give that.

I've had a million excuses for avoiding it. I'm too young. I'm too old. I'm not mature enough in faith. I don't know enough about faith. There's no opportunity. I would stink at it. I'm not funny enough. I'm not serious enough. I'm not kind enough.

It's all ridiculousness. So I'll pray, and I'll try.

On a side note, one of the greatest pains I now know is that Judy no longer believes. When I first moved here, I grieved because I needed her faith, her strength. Now, I grieve for her because I know that she needs her faith. Please join me in prayer.

mine alone.

Thank you, Father, that my faith is mine alone.

I'm thinking tonight about how sometimes, I feel as though I've given things up for God when really, I've been giving them up for this culture, this place, these people.

And...screw it. I want God. Not something built up around God.

There are ways in which I have changed that I wouldn't change back. You're going to have to pry my glitter pumps out of my cold, dead hands. I've come into my own. In shoes, and in faith. Then, there are changes that haven't been my attempts at greater faith, but greater assimilation. Those changes, you can have back. The part of me that thinks I'm really something, and so has to fight to keep the something.. you can have that.

I believe in one God, and in one heaven and in one hell. I believe that my faith in that God incarnate, and my acceptance of the gift He gave in death, endows me with eternity, with all the powers of timelessness.

It feels good to say. Feels good to feel the strength of faith. To forget the hurt of being misunderstood, and of having my ideas dismissed as things they are not. To buck the expectations. To throw off the appearances.

This faith doesn't belong to others, but to me. And that is so, so good.

ice loves coco.

Let's get real up in here.

Do you think we can be given unwanted gifts by God?

That is...is it possible that God has given me the "gift of singleness" though there are in fact few things I want less?

My roommate has this theory that there should be confirmation inside us of the spiritual gifts we've received, such that if we are "blessed" with singleness (often heroically repackaged as an ability to singularly focus on God), we'd know it, and have a desire and heart for it.

I'm not so sure of this. God doesn't always seem to work that way. We get all sorts of things we don't want. Like tornadoes, and obnoxious coworkers, and scurvy. And we're told that God is big and mysterious, and even though I don't understand why Suzy won't stop freaking chewing that gum with her huge, wide mouth open for 8 hours a day, God has a plan for my relationship with her. That gum-chewing is an opportunity for grace, and some day, when she's with me in heaven, her jaw will be quiet. Hallelujah.

So we get things we don't want. Bad things happen.

Will I be single forever? Is it possible that though my desire is to have a partner to help me in all of this--to encourage my faith, and for whom I can be an encouragement, to help push me towards greater acts for God, and on whom I can push--that God has no such plans for me?

A lot of girls get tripped up by insecurity. "I'm single because I'm not pretty enough." Or smart, or funny, or normal, or kind, or Christian enough. And while I of course have insecurity, mine isn't quite like that. Mine is like this...

I'm single because I haven't met that guy who is both ready to step into the role my faith requires, and is interested in me. I'm single because in my entire life, in 26 years, I know of only three guys I'd consider for more. One of them is now married, one is not interested, and one I've never met.

Thus, my real insecurity right now is that I will never meet the one. And if I never do, it'll be because God willed it. Because He gave me the flipping "gift" of singleness, which frankly, I'd sooner throw into the ocean, or send to the desert, or leave at a Joyce Meyer conference.

So...can God give me a "gift" that I don't want? If I pray hard enough, will I want it? If I can honestly say, "Your will, not mine" will I miraculously begin to think that singleness is as fabulous as marriage? Because I watch "Ice loves Coco" and that shh looks great...

On a serious note, I've not yet dealt with this as I am now because I haven't felt ready. Until recently, I've felt a check inside of me, telling me to hold off, to wait on dating. Now the check is gone, and there's a mess of new challenges in Christ.

Ultimately, I choose God. If marriage is not in the cards for me soon or ever, I choose God. But, in full honesty, I need His help in keeping my heart from bitterness, from the hurt and anger of wanting something I don't have, something I think would be really great.

And that's real.

without oxygen.

I've been realizing lately that I miss God.

I know. How could that be? I pray. I read the Bible. I clock some hours at the church. I talk with Christian friends about Christian things.

I miss God?

Yeah. Yeah, I do.

My pastor has been on a tear recently about grace, and when I hear him preach about how God chose me, and planned for me, and adopted me, I want to fall to my knees. I want to shout out my praise and prayers alike. I want to cry. I want to live fully in the grace he's preaching, the grace He's giving. Literally, I sit in production, watching the sermon on the monitors, hoping that my friends around me don't notice that my eyes are glossy, that my heart is out in the open.

I'm being too honest. My heart is out in the open here as well.

Maybe it's not that I miss God, as much as it is that I'm learning Him newly. I'm finding something different, something deeper than I've known.

Makes sense. I've noticed a pattern in my faith. My periods of new growth and greater faith are almost always immediately preceded by some of the worst moments of doubt. This is no exception. A couple of posts back, I openly admit to my troubles with the atonement. Now, I'm telling you that my heart is breaking for God. It can't contain the desire, or the reality.

My difficulties with the intellectual aspects of the atonement are being met with a heart-breaking awareness of His love.

Before I accepted Christ, actually for as long as I can remember, I would periodically see this one image in my mind--waking and asleep. From darkness would come a set of scenes, racing across my mind's eye, over dozens of different terrains, and all of time. It was like watching a time-lapse movie, in milliseconds. Then, suddenly the images would stop short, a complete collision, in an eyeball. And the view of the eyeball would widen until I saw that the eye was in a face--Christ's face, while His body hung from the cross. The message was clear-- I've known you from the beginning of time, and I've known this moment from the beginning of time, and I have always planned on dying for you, and even if there were no others, for you alone.

I've seen this so many times, I can't count. I don't remember the first time, I've just known it for as long as I can remember. I've seen it day-dreaming. I've seen it in my sleep. And until recently, I assumed I had seen the image in a movie or something--that it's presence in my mind had been entirely impersonal, and meaningless.

Now, I cannot believe that it is meaningless or random.

I "miss" God because my heart is His. Because my commitment to Christ can't allow me to live as though I'd never made it. I can no more live without God as I can live without oxygen.

for the taking.

One of the great things about writing a thesis, and doing research on how better to get people connected to the life of His Church is that you get to talk to people who are really great at getting people connected to the life of His Church.

I've been blessed in the last week to talk to people who are engaged in relational ministry at its best. People who live knee-deep in grace. I see their passion for helping bring people to Christ, and it makes me want to know Him better.

And in that, I realize...I don't need to know Him "better." When I said yes to Christ, I said yes to all of Him, all of what He did, once and forever. I'll come to understand grace and love more and differently over time. But the freedom found in Christ is a freedom not gradually gained, but given once.

I've gotten tripped up this first year of faith by thinking that I'll somehow become more Christian as I go. That's not right. I'm as Christian now as I'll ever be. The freedom is for the taking. Kind of like His power. It's not that God's power grows in me over time. I've got it all right now. The question is...what am I gonna do with it? If I've got the full resources of Grace in me right now, what am I waiting for? If the power of Heaven is with me already, what can stop me?

I'm meeting with these amazing people, looking at their ministries thinking, "some day," and let me tell you--that is some BS.

How about tomorrow?

I ask myself, "What then, Ash? You've got passion, but what about direction?" As though a thesis in which you're being allowed to study discipleship in one of the country's largest churches isn't a direction, isn't an open door.

There's wisdom to come. But the Grace is there. The direction is clear.

the oceans deep.

My life is about to change.

When I moved here, it happened in a whirlwind. I applied late to MSU, and was accepted and offered funding seemingly on a whim. I came down twice, for about an hour each time, to meet my adviser, and sign a lease. Then, suddenly, I lived in southern Missouri. Even more suddenly, I attended a Pentecostal megachurch.

Now, I have a life here. I'm about to graduate from school. I have an apartment, and friends, and "family" and a faith. I'm about to start a job, and buy a car. I live here.

This wasn't ever the plan. Two years, and then onward into a Ph.D. That was the plan. Now, here I am, having just thought long and hard about going to seminary, and working in a church.

I want to say that I'm scared, because I am. And I want to say that I'm confused, and that would be true, too. But, really, mostly, I'm in awe.

I was talking with God the other night, and I heard this: "I am the God who made the oceans deep." Sometimes, when I pray, I start by remembering who God is. Maybe that's weird. I remind myself who He is. I think about how massive this world is, physically and spiritually. I picture the most overwhelming of landscapes, and I say to myself...He did that. As large and awe-some, and truly terrifying as that is, He is bigger. The exercise reminds me of to whom I'm praying. Reminds me not to be timid in prayer. Reminds me that behind my prayers, and my faith, is the full force of heaven.

So when I heard it the other night, the phrase was meaningful. "I am the God who made the oceans deep, and the mountains high." As I prayed, I felt a power I'd never felt. An assurance that if I pray to the God of the deepest lake, and the highest mountain, there's nothing impossible. Impossibility is impossible.

It's a good time for that kind of reminder. As I leave school again, and head into a job so far from the call I feel, I wonder if I'll ever be "there." Sometimes, I doubt it. And then, He reminds me... He is the God who made the oceans deep.

"There" isn't so very far.

yes.

I accepted a job offer today. And as I did, I felt a tiny tug--it's not in "ministry." It broke my heart until something else broke. A light. The realization that I am now more free to do "ministry" than I've maybe ever been.

I'm redeemed. I've got everything I ever needed to "do ministry."

Something about realizing that I don't need to work in a church, or a denomination, or a "ministry" to do ministry set me free. Reminded me why I said yes to Christ to begin with. Brought me back to that overwhelming love for God that has brought me so far.

And in that grace, I find the willingness to do things I thought I wouldn't do a week ago.

Like walking. Forward. "In ministry."

to love and to like.

Tonight, John said that part of grace, of the halting of deserved condemnation, is that if God spoke to us, He would do so as He did to Jesus...

"...my beloved child, with whom I am well-pleased..."

It took my breath away. I felt jolted. Incredulous.

Because I immediately thought, "He wouldn't say that to me." Though I know that He loves me, and I could end this sentence with any number of scriptural references to His promises, or His purposes...I couldn't believe that He'd say that to me. Still, right now, I can't believe that He'd say that to me.

I'm sure He'd call me beloved, the part that trips me up is the "well-pleased." I didn't realize until tonight that I don't ever imagine God would say that to me, because I instead have pictured that God would say to me what I would say to me. Maybe something like,

"...my beloved child, who is really messing this up right now, and needs to gain more discipline, and should not be sinning that way, and is making awful decisions, and is completely beyond even my power to save now, but has a great hair color..."

But. But what if He is pleased with me? Do you think that's possible? I always kind of think He loves some things, sure, but that He probably spends way more time tsk-ing me, than smiling at me.

The idea that God is pleased with me knocks the wind out of me. It brings instantaneous tears. It's almost too much. I mean, honestly, do you think He loves me and likes me?

Maybe that sounds pathetic, or as though I don't like me. I am thrilled with me, but I've just always imagined that those above me, my parents, my pastors, my advisers, my God...maybe love me, but aren't really very encouraged by my quirkiness, my odd sense of humor, my sarcasm, or my headstrong sense of independence.

Do you think that God delights in those things? That He would ever say that He was pleased with me?

Grace might be a little more incredible than I had considered.

losing loving.

I'm reading through some of the first posts on this blog, and you know what I love most about them? They're so, so pure. They were written back before I knew anybody, or anybody knew me. They're pre-volunteering, and before the Easter video. Before I applied to James River, or AGTS, and started feeling the pressure of my own perceptions of Christian perfection. They're so honest. When I didn't believe, I said so. And when I really, really believed, I said that, too.

Most of all, I miss that faith. The faith that put everything out there, and didn't seem to care about the costs and the benefits. That faith was ready to walk...be it towards God, or away from Him. Now, it's so complicated.

Sometimes, I want to shut out everyone. Just to know God. Just to remember what it was to be new with Him. Not to worry about the perceived, and the legitimate, pressures of ministry.

Because, there are pressures. And I know that sounds outrageous for me to say. I'm not actively on staff with a ministry, I'm not "on the stage," so to speak. But all the same, the pressure is there. The pressure to feel constantly "right" with God, because...how can you help lead services from production on a Sunday, knowing that thousands of people will shuffle through below, and also knowing that you're not on top of your game spiritually? How can you have discussions with pastor after pastor for a thesis that's all about bringing people closer to God, knowing that you yourself are feeling weak? How can you make decisions about ministry and seminary and relationships, knowing that you're blowing it big-time?

I miss the gentleness of first faith. The part where I didn't feel responsible for anything or anyone else. I got to amble through, figuring it out just for me. Now, it's so much more. Now, when I figure it out, I figure it out in relationship with and for other people. I feel a call to use what I have for Him, and in that, I fear failure. I feel pressure.

Somewhere in that, I think I lose the simplicity of loving God. Just loving Him. Allowing Him to love me. I miss the moments untainted. I miss the sense that there's no call. Feeling called to something is so serious to me, so heavy.

But what about God? What was great about those early posts was that they were all about God. Can I live in ministry, and love God? How do people do it? How do they balance the pressures, on time and health and heart, with the point of it all?

grace in the giving.

The topic was grace.

I was talking with a friend tonight and as she spoke, I realized that grace is everything. I mean, grace is everything.

And grace, see--it's not reciprocal.

I'm not showing grace to someone when I pay her to paint my nails. It's not grace when I return the book he lent me. I'm not showing you grace when I thank you for sitting with me at the hospital.

I am showing you grace when you hurt me, and I hold you. And grace is everything.

Deep in conversation, I realized that the only thing that could possibly save the situation she described is grace. Unconditional love, without reason, without hope for a better tomorrow, without the assurance that the gamble of grace will pay off.

Only, we have the assurance. We get the grace and the promise, both. Really, the grace is the promise, no?

In that moment, thinking about grace and its totalizing power, it occurred to me that if in fact grace is the only answer, and grace is not reciprocal by its nature, then nothing makes more sense than the atonement.

Grace is what cures us, but if grace, if wildly unrestrained and undeserved love, is the antidote, what is the ill? Something too dark for the ordinary. That's for certain.

I get tripped up over the atonement because it's complicated, it's intellectually confusing, and frankly kind of crazy. I don't always understand my relationship with both God and Christ, and how they are one and also distinct. I get lost. But then, nights like tonight happen. When I see the barest, most simple cross, and, in the opportunity to live it out simultaneously, I understand that grace is powerful in the giving. Christ is made alive, He makes sense, He's here, when I live out the grace He gave me. Which is kind of beautiful. If God's truth worked only on my mind, and not also on my heart, and in my hands, His creation might be wasteful, maybe silly. And without the opportunity for all of me to know His great love, to discover it in the passing, what would I know of faith?

So I pray for the grace to give to others. And to myself.

a gospel or a gospel.

It was the altar call that got me.

A missionary spoke at James River tonight. A missionary with a great story, and a great ability to tell it. As he spoke, I felt more alive than I've felt in some time, and more hopeful that my struggles in faith will somehow work out for God's glory, and my peace. I felt...great.

By the time we got to the altar call, I felt almost strong again. Almost ready to face the mistakes I've been making, to go back to God and allow Him to work. Ready to acknowledge how my denial of His love has been affecting my ability to love others.

Then, the altar. The missionary had asked people to come forward to pray if they were willing to sacrifice their own lives for the cause of Christ, and as I watched from up in production as they all streamed forward, I thought...I'd stay in my chair. Firstly, because I have a deathly fear of a crowded altar. Secondly because, as the missionary had spoken of martyrdom, I knew I didn't have that kind of faith. But as he called people forward, I realized why I don't.

It's because I don't believe. Not really. I mean, if you really believed that all people needed Christ, of course you'd lay down your life to bring others to Him. I don't. I find that to be a fuzzy no man's land of theological doubt. Whenever it comes up in my mind, I've ignored it. Because I don't want to think about it. Because I know the truth about my own mind and heart.

I think...but, Ash--you applied to seminary, and to work at a church, and you're doing your thesis on how better to engage people in the life of the church. You've done all of that sincerely. But each of those things is tied up in some other idol. I love learning. I love well-run organizations that help people right their lives. I love helping people right their lives. For me, it comes back to what it always was when I was liberal theologically--people. I like people. I like seeing their lives transformed. But can I say with certainty that I understand and believe that He died for me? That some metaphysical reality shifted as a result of that death? That ALL people need Christ to live?

I can't.

Here's the problem. I also cannot say that I think there's any hope without that story. Not just the story. The reality. I can't say that I think that we have the ability on our own to love people to rightness. Not with therapy, and not with kinds words, or kind deeds, and not ever with drugs or money, or our own sense of righteousness or grace.

So, on the one hand--I searched myself tonight and found no real belief in the Gospel. On the other, I found an absolute inability to accept any possibility aside from the Gospel.

What does that mean? What will happen to me? Is there hope?

frank.

"If a client of yours killed himself and someone else, could you still do what you do? Could you still care?"

Yeah, I think I could.

"But why? How could you?"

I don't know. I guess...I'd just...I'd keep going.

"No..no.. you need to be protected. You need to be kept away from all of this. You're too pure for this. Let me help you. Let me protect you."

He stared at me so deeply. With so much innocence, and so much pain. Our conversation came a couple of weeks into my first job out of college. I was working in a cesspool of a psychiatric facility--a swinging door for the state criminal psych ward. Frank had been assigned to my caseload, and, as I hadn't been hardened by the awful conditions of the facility, and draining rawness of the clients' stories, I cared enough to spend more time talking with my clients than they had ever gotten from a case manager, probably in any of their various hospitalizations and placements.

That special attention paid to Frank landed me in the precarious conversation above. The director of nursing called back to the case management office at around 9pm: "Frank is in the cafeteria threatening to hurt himself--he says he'll only talk with you." Thus, with little training, and minimal background in counseling psychology, I was sent to the cafeteria to talk with Frank.

He was pacing the room when I got there. The aids said he'd been holding them off with a chair, demanding to talk to me. I felt like a negotiator on one of those cop shows. An extremely under-qualified, and terrified negotiator.

I sensed that he wouldn't hurt me, though, and so I sat down with him, and we talked. He touched my arm as he told me, "I want to help you. You're too young, too pure, you care too much, to be ruined by this world. Let me be your psychiatrist. You can be my patient."

I suppose he could have been hiding a knife. In a second, he could have slit my throat, and it'd just be a crazy headline. I'd be the "someone else," in the scenario he'd been asking me about.

Weird, right? We live these lives so oblivious to the rawness of the worlds outside our own. Somewhere, right now, there's a girl just graduated, pulling a late night in a psychiatric facility, dealing with her very own Frank. Somewhere, there's a girl moving to a new town, meeting God for the very first time. Somewhere, she's wondering where this is all heading, how all of the crazy worlds in which she's lived will be tied together into one, huge and glorious, God-sized dream of redemption and grace.

Somewhere, she's reaching out for faith.

to walk in the dark.

Here's a whole mess of honesty, minus the grammar and literary pizzazz.

My heart is kind of broken.

Today, I turned down an offer to work at James River, and simultaneously turned down my acceptance to AGTS. Financially, those opportunities just wouldn't work. Apparently, it's not the time.

But for a while, I had really thought it was the time. I had begun to imagine the way things might be. I had fallen in love with this new plan for my life.

I know I made the right decisions, but leading up to them, over the last few days, I've been so bitter towards God. So ready to just throw it all away. Because I don't see how turning from these opportunities is going to result in the end I feel He's called me to. I don't see it. I don't. And I don't understand it. And I had to say no to things I really, really wanted. And it hurts. And now I feel lost, and set adrift, and like I have no clue how to get to where I think God wants me.

So I was ready to turn from God, to turn from His church. But I prayed for peace. And I woke up this morning with peace. Now this is interesting--the peace didn't take the pain. I'm still incredibly sad that I had to say no to things I had so cherished the thought of. But the peace gave me at least two things. Firstly--reassurance that I'm making the right decisions. And secondly--the sense that though I've never felt more lost, I have never been more entirely in His will.

There is this most incredible sense in my heart that God is moving. He's moving. I read about these people with great, big, trusting faiths, and I think--I could never have faith like theirs. But He's building it! This sucks, but He's building. At the end of the hold wasn't an obvious victory, a "Here, Ashley, let me take care of that problem for you." It was an "I've got you all the way out here on this branch, and you're learning how to depend only on me, and that is so so so good. You'll have faith like those yet."

And the most amazing part is that He's not even angry with me for my wanting to turn. He has been so loving, so gentle, and caring all day, I can't...I don't understand. It's raw, and beautiful.

I understand the Cross a little better. It is so far from underwhelming.

runaway Christian.

I like the Old Testament. A lot. Like... a lot a lot.

I was reading in Job today, and there's all this stuff about the awe-someness of God. About how He commands the sun, and set the stars, and stretches the skies, and walks on the oceans. Sometimes, it's easy for me to fly by that kinda thing as metaphor. But today, I stopped. That's not metaphor. It's literal. He's God. He can do all of that.

Here's my problem. I don't know that I deep down believe, or understand that. I think I believe it, in the sense that I believe that He's God, and I've got a good enough grasp of the dictionary to know what words like "omnipotent," and "almighty," actually mean. But I don't know that I really understand it, that I really grasp it in my soul. I am sometimes underwhelmed by the power of God.

That's probably never a good place to be.

It leads to things like running. I've been thinking a lot about running recently. It's probably not kosher to say this, as I've been applying for a job at the church, and just got into AGTS. But it's true. I feel so completely inadequate to take on the work that I feel called to, that I've been thinking of running from God, from the church, from the call. Thinking of saying, "God, you've got the wrong girl." As though He could ever be wrong.

There's a problem though. I absolutely suck at running from God. I mean, I am really, really terrible at it. My best "running plan" is to become a "casual Christian." And I have never been able to pull that off. As a child, I prayed to a God I didn't know. As a teenager, I left the church feeling like they had Him wrong. In college, I wandered drunk calling out to Him. I would talk to coworkers so passionately of the example of the person of Christ, I'd be in tears. I moved here, and refused to leave a church I had major disagreements with, because I felt I'd been placed. Liberal theology, or conservative--casual spirituality is just not my thing.

If I try to run, I will be miserable. That's a fact. So what are my options? As usual, to keep walking. I guess?

Here's the real problem. I cry out to God, quite literally, but I know that the promises are there. I just have to believe them. I'm closing my heart, and calling out, and that's illogical. I'm holding on to some things that need to be released. Control, fear, certainty. And I can't claim that I don't know, or that I'm too young. So I get discouraged. I stink at faith. How do I make this work?

I don't. From the beginning, I've asked God to sustain my faith. Literally, to put faith where it just isn't there. To move my heart, to change it, to do everything that I can't do, which is...everything.

I have never stopped believing that He honors that prayer.

Hmm.

help.

Last week I was holding. This week, I think I might be drowning.

I'll be honest.

I'm not living this faith very well. I need help. I need guidance, and encouragement, and wisdom. I need for someone who is older and wiser to come alongside with me, and offer advice, and pray with and for me. Because I feel like I have absolutely no clue how to stay afloat at this stage in my faith.

I don't know what to do with my life. Some doors seem to be opening in great ways. Others seem to be opening, but I sense I shouldn't walk through them. Some I really wish would open, but they won't budge.

I'm afraid that I'm now too young in faith for the wisdom, and the courage I need to make it gracefully through this time. There are so many decisions in front of me right now, and so many that are seemingly life-defining.

I need help.

on hold.

I'm holding.

Seriously. I'm on hold.

Is that normal? Do you think that's valid? Let me explain.

I have a couple of big decisions right now. One of them is what to do about AGTS. The finances are not as neat as I had originally thought they would be, and I'm fairly certain that taking on more student debt at this point is not the route I should go. But, as I think about it, I feel a hand. Stop. Wait. Don't make the decision right now.

Um. Ok.

What does that mean? What am I waiting for? Is it a legitimate check? Or just my own heart and mind putting off the decision?

But again, and again. Stop. Wait. Not now. Hold on.

It's an odd sensation.

I was thinking the other day about how awesome it would be to live a life in patience for His Spirit. How incredible to be so entirely dependent for information. You know that's radical, right? I mean, for anyone, but particularly for me. I love information. It's my thing. I like to know about people, so I can predict their behavior. I like to know about things, so I can...know them. (Does anyone need any other reason for knowing than for sheer pleasure?) But to live in waiting. To see new knowledge. Knowledge that isn't given in books, or passed on in lecture. Those kinds of knowing certainly have their place. But the Spirit...

It occurred to me, at the end of all of this, that you live that life one Spirit-filled fact at a time. The more you listen, the more there is to hear.

So...I'm holding. I don't know why. I don't know until when. I could be wrong about the whole thing. But I'm holding.

completely cross.

I worry that I can't live up to the work I'm supposed to be doing for God. That I'm not smart enough. That I can't think quickly or deeply enough. Then that I'm not humble enough. That I don't have the right wisdom. That I'm not strong enough for what comes when you pray for, and work towards, helping people come to know God.

Maybe the worry is what comes. The worry is masking the arrogance of believing that I'm the one at work. That's the real sin that kills the glory. For me anyway.

And again, the cross is the key. People always say to stay close to the cross.

It's a short phrase that works on an incredible number of levels. And that works incredibly on each.

Right now, it reminds me that in my absolute worship of Christ, there's not time for worry. There's not reason for it, either. The work is complete.

now.

Now more than ever, I need Him. Whispering, I say, "Now more than ever, I need You."

I'm a big fan of words, obviously, but I have found that my words don't have much to do with God. Through them, I've learned of Him. And with them, I speak of Him. But at the end of it all, maybe at the beginning, they don't touch Him.

I'm trying to think of a way to write about worship. About longing, and grace, and moments spent in such absolute awe. I can describe that to you. I can tell you that when I lift my hands to God, I never feel safer. Never more right. At the end, my words are a poor substitute for the truth of the matter.

I'm thinking about this because those moments are real.

Last week, I met with the scholarship office at AGTS to talk about the logistics of my enrolling there. Tomorrow morning, I'll interview to actually work in ministry. Most every Sunday for over a year now, I've helped in production at James River. My thesis stands to possibly improve the way that new believer ministry is done. The church that was once a little intimidating is now entirely familiar and comfortable to me.

At the center of all of this stands still a Savior.

I pray to remember that in the midst of the craziness. I've had an odd experience so far. From foul-mouthed skeptic, to involved believer. I've had something of a rapid tour through the church. I've been given opportunities that seem...strangely advanced. I'll be honest. It's easy to begin thinking that I am somehow extra-blessed, more talented, smarter, or "marked." Easy and so terribly dangerous.

Oh, Father, protect me from that. Let me love You first and always, and too intensely to ever stray, to ever believe that whatever good in me comes apart from You, and can be rightfully used away from You.

Now more than ever, I need You.

country church.

Since coming to know Christ, I think the same thing every time I get out of my car to visit a different church...

"Could this have been the one?"

Could this church have helped me come to know God the way that James River has? If I had found this church first, what would my life look like now? Would I, in my skepticism, have tossed this place off as crazy, more of the same, confirmation for my liberal theology? Was it just my time? Would any church have done?

Obviously, I don't know.

I do know that when I think about what could have been, fear rises quickly. I have to remind myself that what could have been is not what is. That I'm safely with Christ, and no one can take the closeness we now share.

I wonder if what I'm feeling is common. When you come to Christ as an adult, and when you've struggled with Him for so long, there's some panic that comes with re-imagining that struggle. When I get out of the car, and I wonder how this might have gone differently, and I feel the fear, I also feel panic. A millisecond of panic before the joy.

What if I had decided I was too tired to go that first Sunday morning? What if my roommates had never mentioned that crazy megachurch I couldn't miss? What if I had stopped going last January when I was so close to stopping?

Then, the conscious reminder. You went. They mentioned. You kept going.

I remind myself...Ashley, you made it through. You're safe. I know that you feel the fear because for so long you fought so hard against God. I know that your mind flashes to a hundred unhappy moments lived so far from God. I know that you wonder if your mind can go dark on you yet--if you'll live again in the belief that uncertainty is certain. But you made it. And if there's any doubt about making it, look around. You didn't make it in a church that's comfortable to you. You found God in a pentecostal church. In a megachurch. Your first friends were wildly conservative. You fought through a glitter-infested womens' conference in your first month, back when you abhorred glitter. You got close to the culture, and have made it through all of the things that can be challenging about church cultures. You're safe. It's okay.

Then again, the best part of the reminder...

If I had done all of those things, I might have reason for panic. Maybe I'd be reaching the end of my own possibilities? I'd already have reached them. Thankfully, those things are all God. He has brought me through every hurtle. The panic is unnecessary because the reality is God's. That's the joy.

I don't know if that little church out on the country could have kept me when I first moved here. I probably would have passed out (not to be mistaken with being slain in the spirit) on a regular basis. I do believe there's a place for smart strategizing in the church. But, ultimately, that moment, that question, on my way into a new church, is a moment of praise.

It's a moment to remember that almost two years ago, I got out of the car, walked into a church, and that's when everything changed.

tricked-out prayer.

Prayer is a crazy trick.

Saturday, we helped clear the rubble of someone's house. Not just someone. Two someones who have names. Don and Thelma. We stripped their house down to its foundation, shoveling away pile after pile of soggy debris, and sifting through it all to find just one picture, then another, just something, anything, to connect them to the life they lived only a week before. As I stood in the area that had been their bedroom, thinking about how that tree used to be outside their window, Thelma walked over to me. I could see her tears. I jumped down. Putting my arm around her, I asked her how she was, and she wrapped her arm around my waist and started to cry. What do you do? You cry, too. My own tears came, and she leaned her head against me, saying that they'd been married 50 years, lived in this house for 42, and now it's all gone. We closed our eyes, and began to pray. And I have never known God as I knew Him in that moment.

As I held Thelma, and prayed, I saw my whole life fill in around me, and hers. When we stopped praying, we stayed close, and she told me that her favorite bible verse was Philippians 4:13. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," she whispered. There! Standing in the middle of a neighborhood-now-warzone, watching as a crew of people shovels away the remains of her belongings, she's telling me that she can do all things through Christ. She's showing me hope.

The faith of this woman thrust suddenly into dark circumstances threw open the doors to every step of faith I've said I'd never take. Not so much because if she can do it, I can, too...as because He's working in both of us. She reminded me. We stand through Christ who strengthens us.

Last Monday and Tuesday, after the tornado had ripped through, and without any idea that I'd soon get thrown into the relief efforts (thinking I'd give some groceries and call it a day, frankly), I had spent hours in prayer down in Clark Chapel, begging God for some direction. I can't help but link those moments with that in which I prayed with Thelma.

In the chapel, I called out for help in choosing a direction, through a change in my heart. I asked God to work in me, and make me into whoever it was I'm supposed to be. And then, there was Saturday's prayer. The skeptic, timid in faith, and too self-conscious to step up to a crowded altar, out in a field of decimated houses, praying with a woman I'd only met, in front of all of the people I'm most awkwardly faithful around. Maybe disaster just changes everything--makes you do things you'd never ordinarily do.

Or...maybe prayer does. Either way, Thelma's prayer, and her faith, brought me to a moment of stunning clarity. As I stood there, I realized...I want to do this. Whatever "this" is. This thing here, where I'm caring for people, and praying with them, and letting God work through me as a reminder of His constancy.

I don't know what job that is. That's actually not a job as much as it is the basics of Christian life. So, thanks to Thelma...I know what I want to do with my life. I want to be a Christian.

Joplin, again.

Joplin, day two.

I was on the phone with a woman wanting to donate childrens' toys when AGTS called to tell me I've been accepted into seminary. I walked back out into the waiting room to a man who told me he'd lost his family in the tornado. He looked stricken. Honestly, I just wanted to sit down next to him so we could look stricken together.

Another woman refused clothes, didn't want any food or shampoo, but finally said she'd accept a case of water. Her brother lost everything in the tornado, but he had a chemo treatment this afternoon, and the doctors said to drink lots of water.

Another woman came in pregnant. Her husband, and four children had been killed around her.

Others just stared at me, half-smiled.

We're working out of Family Services, providing support and encouragement to the staff, and attempting to fill the needs of the families who come in, under the umbrella of James River's Cherish Kids ministry. As people come in to speak with case managers regarding their financial assistance, or the status of their children, we meet them in the lobby, and have the opportunity to ask them what they need--food, water, clothing, hygiene items, etc. A lot of them are hesitant to say they have needs. When we find out how we can help, we have a room set up down the hall from the waiting area with donated items. We put bags together, and bring them back out to the person while they're meeting with Family Services staff.

Other churches and individuals are also contacting us to find out how they can help support us--today we received the most amazing donation of boxes and boxes of clothes. This is important, because we had turned away people who needed them only moments before. Tomorrow, we're looking at getting food donations--food is running low. One woman called saying the Lord had told her she needed to bring new toys--a total God-send, as we're attempting to minister to kids in the waiting area.

It's basically triage at this point. There's a lot of confusion about what's needed where. So, for instance, the people who brought the clothes had stopped at six other places and been told they weren't needed there, before arriving at us. There's still a boil-order in the town, so there's bottled water everywhere. Certain parts of the destruction are blocked off--you can't drive in, or you have to snake around to get to where you're going. People seem generally confused about where to go to get resources--like food or clothing. People who've lived there their entire lives say they get lost in their own neighborhoods because the street signs and landmarks are gone. When you're out in the worst of it, you just see people climbing around in the rubble, setting aside piles of things that are salvageable. There's still search and rescue going on.

Though you focus on the details at hand--getting someone a case of water, or chatting encouragement with a staffer--the destruction is unfathomable. It's almost like it didn't happen. While I'm out there staring at it, I can't believe it. I mean, I see it, I understand cognitively what happened, I comprehend the basic dynamics of a tornado, but I don't get it. It's unreal.

gone.

I need a hug.

I know that that is uncharacteristically vulnerable of me to say, and I feel bad saying that after a day spent meeting people who need more than a hug. So many of them need a hug, and a home, and a car, and just a pair of shoes.

I went to Joplin today with some people from the church, to find out how we could be most helpful as we look for the most immediate needs after the tornadoes that ripped through on Sunday night.

The devastation is breath-taking. The residential areas hit hardest look like the pictures of war zones in far-off lands that you'd see in newspapers, or history books. Block after block of bombed-out homes. Everything inside of the house, all of the intricacies of your daily life--the cabinet where you keep your medications, and that box of old family pictures you keep in the living room, and your junk drawer of empty tape rolls and rubber bands and chip clips--all exposed, all scattered for everyone to see, when only you understand. They'll never know that you got that chip clip at a charity walk for dogs on the same day that your niece threw up all over your golden retriever. They'll just see it lying there on the sidewalk, maybe pick it up and throw it away with the rest of the debris.

Maybe that all sounds dramatic. But there's something so outrageous about the whole thing. What was in is now out. What was whole is now broken. What was normal life is now so entirely abnormal. So shattered.

As you drive north through Joplin, you pass through the worst of the damage. There's broken glass, and pieces of wood and aluminum everywhere. Entire stores look as though they've had bombs dropped on them, or as though quick-burning fires ripped through their insides, hollowing them out. Emergency crews are out attempting to re-string the power lines. In some sections of town, no business are left intact. Everything's gone. Decimated. There are piles of debris everywhere you look. In the blocks behind the business are residential areas similarly war-torn. We drive over downed power lines, unable to find the right turns because the street signs are knocked down. Cars sit in unnatural places, right up against trees and houses, at odd angles, upside down, and all with the glass blown out of their windows. A dryer sits perched atop a roof--one of the few roofs upon which anything can still be perched. Most of the houses in these neighborhoods are roof-less. The lawns are so littered with debris, there's no grass to be seen. You look right into the house, into a person's bathroom, where four days before the person took a shower in privacy. Now the walls are gone.

As I see all of this I think of the terror of being in the house at the moment at which those walls were taken. It's unfathomable. One family described it like a freight train. I can't imagine.

what is mine.

"Let what is mine be mine."

I heard it, so clearly. And again, then again.

"Let what is mine be mine."

Sitting in the chapel at AGTS, asking God, "How is this going to work out?"

I'm scared because I'm off the grid. I had a plan. Go to Missouri. Get the Master's. Get a psych doctorate. Graduate. Teach. Be happy forever after.

Then there came Jesus. Suddenly, I'm applying to seminary. I'm learning how to give in ways I haven't before. I'm thinking twice, and becoming comfortable with the unknown, and seeking out wisdom, and holding my tongue.

And like that afternoon at AGTS, I'm praying in tongues. I'm begging God to give me a sign of what's to come. I'm telling Him that whatever He has in mind, I can't possibly be the girl. I don't have the strength. My faith doesn't have the maturity. My life isn't in order.

But, "Let what is mine be mine."

I thought, "God, everything is Yours."

And there's the answer. Everything is His. I'm worried because I'm not ready spiritually or financially or intellectually for what I'd really like to be doing. But everything is His. There's no scrap of wisdom, and no dollar that doesn't belong to the king.

So. Again. I'll keep walking.

deeply held.

Why do you want to grow up so fast?

As to an 11-year-old begging to wear some make-up, I'm asking myself that question.

Ashley, why do you want to grow up so fast in Christ?

It's been a month of failures. There've been victories, to be sure. But failures as well--my own, and others'. And it all has me thinking about the depth of faith. About how some things that grow fast don't grow deep. About how talent or intelligence or ability are all poor substitutes for experience. About how important is the wisdom before me, the faith that grows deep before God.

The last year has moved fast, and in some ways, God has given me wisdom far beyond what I'd expect to have at this point. There have been moments in which I've known myself to be on the receiving end of calm, or peace, or understanding that I did not come by naturally.

I'm sensing, though, that there's some deep growth that has to happen if I'm not going to find myself in a bad place sooner or later. I'm excited about the stuff going on--I'm writing this awesome thesis on the discipleship process, and applying to seminary. But am I trying to grow up too fast? Am I ignoring some of the big issues of trust, stuff that few others can see, relying instead on momentum and academic skills to push forward my faith? I don't actually need to ask. I know that the answer is yes.

Maybe I sound as though I'm being too hard on myself, but I'm not. I don't feel guilty, or bad about this. I feel hopeful. In realizing, I can go to God. In approaching Him, there's power to be set right. Maybe I sound as though I'm attempting to right myself. I don't think I am. I'm using the wisdom in my heart, currently a wisdom that says to slow it down and get real with God, to seek more of His wisdom.

I don't ever want to be one of the failures I'm seeing. Not for my own sake, and not for the sake of the people I'll love and who'll love me, and most certainly not for His sake.

I don't think this means that I need to stop what I'm doing. Just that I need to be more intentional in my faith, to keep Christ as the focus of all of it. To slow down my thoughts, and be ready to accept wisdom from within me, and around me.

To be more interested in growing deep, than in growing fast.

sinfully sad.

Do you think sadness can be sin?

Here's why I ask... I have this friend. And it just seems like her heart is so broken by distrust, and anger, and hurt that sometimes, it hurts me just to be with her. I start to think how much worse it must be to be her, and the sadness is too great. Thinking about it makes me sad for her. So sad that it's a struggle to remember God. I coach myself through our conversations, mentally thanking Him for hope, and love, and reminding myself that He is so much bigger than all of it. Yet still, the negativity of her spirit is overwhelming. She's not trying to be negative. It just rolls off of her in big waves, threatening to drown us both.

When we part, the residuals are still with me. I have to fight my way back to reality--that God loves me, that He loves her, that this world has a power for Good. Maybe this sounds intense. Am I alone in this? Am I crazy? Has anyone been in a similar situation?

Tonight, I'm not going to drown in it. If sadness can be sin, I'd rather choose obedience. Whether I feel it or not, I'm going to make the choice to live in love, to live in hope. Because that's truth, and because, in a way, she really needs me to.

passing fancies.

I'm too exhausted to put one thought in front of another. But here's a couple all jumbled up.

I wondered, when I was partying with friends, how anyone had fun when they weren't drinking or messing around. It seemed so impossible that you could have fun without all of that. But I've had more fun with new friends over the last year than I've quite possibly ever had, and there's no booze involved. No dramatic walks of shame. No sordid details. No shame. That feels good.

For maybe the first time ever, tonight I felt anger at my parents for not raising me with even a passing knowledge of Christ. I understand. I get that they were not with Him, so though they'd both been raised to know Him, they couldn't help me. But in a moment, the anger flared, and I thought, "How could they have known the story, have heard the Gospel, and not have told their own daughter?" The anger passed to shame, a new and different kind of shame, as I realized how many people to whom I don't tell the story.

Encountering thousands of Christian women is still overwhelming. Within a couple of months of first moving here, I attended the Designed for Life Conference. I had never seen so many Christians, nor so many women, in the same place,and I remember, very well, ambling into the bathroom at the end of that first night. I stared into my own eyes in the mirror, the disorienting chatter of female voices all around me, wondering if I was drunk. I felt drunk. I knew that I hadn't been drinking. But I didn't know if I was okay to drive home. Somehow, the combination of so many women, and so much Jesus, all drenched in pink glitter, had hit my system like a half-dozen shots of Patron. I've come to love the women's ministry, but sometimes, I can't lie, I still want to hide in the bathroom.

More some other time. Exhaustion great. Must sleep.