Engaging with Jesus

So, when I'm not myself & when I'm withdrawn, journaling and having time with Jesus isn't very restful. I realized that I need to find other ways to be with Jesus, otherwise life really sucks. Since most of the time I can't articulate how I feel or even understand what's going on my head, writing lyrics is not an option. That being said, I've been hitting a painting streak. It's super relaxing & wonderful & creative. God is creative. He made me with the ability to create too.

This one was an impulsive thought. I had no words for how I was feelings. Hence...RAWR.

This one I painted for a friend for her birthday! I like it a lot.

Okay, goodnight.

If I could choose.

I think I much prefer the restless sleep with no dreams to deep sleep with intensely vivid dreams. Heck, deep sleep with no dreams would be perfectly fine too.

Becoming the Beloved

So I revisited an article that we read at summer con. As we began prayer seminar, we read the introduction to Henri Nouwen's book Life of the Beloved. I really really liked it. In fact, it was the inspiration for the song I wrote at the end of that week. I'm going to put it here, in case you wanted to read it too. I hope you do because it has amazing things to say. I haven't read the rest of the book, but I'm currently figuring out how to get my hands on a copy. Enjoy.

Ever since you asked me to write for you and your friends about the spiritual life, I have been wondering if there might be one word I would most want you to remember when you finished reading all I wish to say. Over the past year, that special word has gradually emerged from the depths of my own heart. It is the word "Beloved," and I am convinced that it has been given to me for the sake of you and your friends. Being a Christian, I first learned this word from the story of the baptism of Jesus of Nazareth. "No sooner had Jesus come up out of the water than he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on you' " (Matt. 3:16-17; mark 1:10-11; Luke 3:21-22). For many years i had read these words and even reflected upon them in sermons and lectures, but it is only since our talks in New York that they have taken on a meaning far beyond the boundaries of my own tradition. Our many conversations led me to the inner conviction that the words "You are my Beloved" revealed the most intimate truth about all human beings, whether they belong to any particular tradition or not.

Fred, all I want to say to you is "You are the Beloved," and all I hope is that you can hear these words spoken to you with all the tenderness and force that love can hold. My only desire is to make these words reverberate in every corner of your being--"You are the Beloved."

The greatest gift my friendship can give to you is the gift of your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it for myself. Isn't that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of our Belovedness?

Yes, there is that voice, the voice that speaks from above and from within and that whispers softly or declares loudly: "You are my beloved, on you my favor rests." It certainly is not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: "You are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless; you are despicable; you are nobody--unless you can demonstrate the opposite."

These negative voices are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them. That's the great trap. it is the trap of self-rejection. Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can, indeed, present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. I am constantly surprised at how quickly I give into this temptation. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking: "well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." Instead of taking a crucial look at the circumstances or trying to understand my own and others' limitations, I tend to blame myself--not just for what I did, but for who I am. My dark side says: "I am no good...I deserved to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned."

Maybe you think that you are more tempted by arrogance than by self-rejection. But isn't arrogance, in fact, the other side of self-rejection? Isn't arrogance putting yourself on a pedestal to avoid being seen as you see yourself? Isn't arrogance, in the final analysis, just another way of dealing with the feelings of worthlessness? Both self-rejection and arrogance pull us out of the common reality of existence and make a gentle community of people extremely difficult, if not impossible to attain. I know too well that beneath my arrogance there lies much self-doubt, just as there is a great amount of pride hidden in my self-rejection. Whether I am inflated or deflated, I lose touch with my truth and distort my vision of reality.

I hope you can somehow identify in yourself the temptation to self-rejection, whether it manifests itself in arrogance or in low self-esteem. Not seldom, self-rejection is simply seen as the neurotic expression of an insecure person. But neurosis is often the psychic manifestation of a much deeper human darkness: the darkness of not feeling truly welcome in human existence. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence.

I am putting this so directly and so simply because though the experience of being the Beloved has never been completely absent from my life, I never claimed it as my core truth. I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. It was as if I kept refusing to hear the voice that speaks from the very depth of my being and says: "You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests." that voice has always been there, but it seems that I was much more eager to listen to other, louder voices saying: "Prove that you are worth something; do something relevant, spectacular, or powerful, and then you will earn the love you so desire." Meanwhile, the soft, gentle voice that speaks in the silence and solitude of my heart remained unheard, or at least, unconvincing.

That soft, gentle voice that calls me the Beloved has come to me in countless ways. My parents, friends, teachers, students, and the many strangers who crossed my path have all sounded that voice in different tones. I have been cared for by many people with much tenderness and gentleness. i have been taught and instructed with much patience and perseverance. I have been encouraged to keep going when I was ready to give up and was stimulated to try again when I failed. I have been rewarded and praised for success...but somehow, all these signs of love were not sufficient to convince me that I was the Beloved. Beneath all my seemingly strong self-confidence there remained the question: "If all those who shower me with so much attention could see me and know me in my innermost self, would they still love me?" That agonizing question, rooted in my inner shadow, kept persecuting me and made me run away from the very place where that quiet voice calling me the Beloved could be heard.

I think you understand what I am talking about. Aren't you like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don't you often hope: "May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country, or relationship fulfill my deepest desire." But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious and restless, always lustful and angry, never fully satisfied. You know that this is the compulsiveness that keeps us going and busy, but at the same time makes us wonder whether we are getting anywhere in the long run. this is the way to spiritual exhaustion and burn-out. This is the way to spiritual death.

Well, you and I don't have to kill ourselves. We are the Beloved. We are intimately loved long before our parents, teachers, spouses, children, and friends loved or wounded us. that's the truth of our lives. That's the truth I want you to claim for yourself. That's the truth spoken by the voice that says, "You are my Beloved."

Listening to that voice with great inner attentiveness, I hear at my center words that say: "I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. i have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother's womb. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you at every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own as I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover, and your spouse...yes, even your child...wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one."

Every time you listen with great attentiveness to the voice that calls you the Beloved, you will discover within yourself a desire to hear that voice longer and more deeply. it is like discovering a well in the desert. Once you have touched wet ground, you want to dig deeper.

I have been doing a lot of digging lately and I know that I am just beginning to see a little stream bubbling up through the dry sand. I have to keep digging because that little stream comes from a huge reservoir beneath the desert of my life. The word "digging" might not be the best word, since it suggests hard and painful work that finally leads me to the place where I can quench my thirst. Perhaps all we need to do is remove the dry sand that covers the well. There may be quite a pile of dry sand in our lives, but the One who so desires to quench our thirst will help us to remove it. All we really need is a great desire to find the water and drink from it.

You have lived fewer lives than I. You may still want to look around a little more and a little longer so as to become convinced that the spiritual life is worth all your energy. But I do feel a certain impatience toward you because I don't want to waste too much of your time! I have fewer years ahead of me than behind me. For you, I hope the opposite is true. Therefore, I want to assure you already, now, that you do not have to get caught in searches that lead only to entanglement. Neither do you have to become the victim of a manipulative world or get trapped in any kind of addition. You can choose to reach out now to true inner freedom and find it ever more fully.

iPod Shuffle

A friend told me that she would pray that God would speak to her through the music that her iPod would play on shuffle. Thought I'd try it.

1. Love will find a way - Christina Aguilera

2. Mozart

3. Benny Goodman

4. Evergreen - Switchfoot

5. Majesty (Here I am) - Delirious?

6. A Beautiful Mess - Jason Mraz

7. In Love - Jon Foreman

That's all. It was interesting. Goodnight.

Renewed Hope.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/10/13/chile.miners.rescue/index.html?hpt=T1

I love when I'm reminded of the beauty and hope there is in life. I'm so incredibly thankful for the amazing people God has put in my life.

Happy Birthday Little Girl.

This is my baby sister when she was 2. She turned 14 yesterday (20 minutes ago...but the date's october 10th. Go figure?). Why do they have to grow up so fast? In 8th grade, I had to write a speech about an influential person in my life, and I wrote it about Jenna. Before I left for college, and even though there are enough bedrooms for each of us to have our own room and even though Rachel's room was empty cause she was in college, Jenna slept in my room most of the year. Every morning, I would wake up to shower and then when I'd come back into my room to dry my hair, Jenna would get off the futon and climb into my bed. Since Jenna never really liked brushing her teeth or showering, I'd make a game out of it--we'd brush our teeth at the same time, brushing the same spots in our mouth at the same time. We'd also race to see who could shower fastest (although, that probably wasn't a good idea since she probably ended up less clean that way). I remember when she was just about big enough to go on the big kid rides at Disneyland, and in efforts to help her be courageous and try the scarier rides, we made a deal that if she didn't cry all day (since she had a tendency to cry a lot) and if she went on at least TWO scary rides, I'd buy her a souvenir at the end of the day. I remember laughing so incredibly hard when my parents came home from Jenna's kindergarten open house because in an art project, she decided that her dream job would be flying a helicopter over Australia, picking up garbage. I remember when she was just as crazy as me about Disneyland and our stuffed animals. I remember when offering a piggy back ride was incentive to getting out of bed in the morning to eat breakfast. I remember when she equated me leaving for college as me dying because she thought she could never talk to me again. I took one of the Moo-cows to school with me so that we could always talk as long as we each had a Moo-cow. I miss the times when she would talk your ear off about a tv episode she just watched. I miss playing board games with her and helping each other out when the other was running low of money in monopoly.

I'm glad we still get to do stuff together now, even though it's a bit different. Anyways. Happy birthday Jenna.

A new twist on an old story.

You know when you get in one of those terrible moods & you either:

A) Can't pin point exactly why you're upset or

B) Know why and don't want to admit it to yourself?

My answer would be B today. It's terrible when you realize that the emotional exhaustion is inevitable and you realize you have to ride it out. It sucks when you want opposite things pretty much equally. For example, you can't decide if you'd rather go to Hawaii or Alaska because you have an equal desire to go to both places. Inevitably you have to choose one. Oh, and you also know that one of the options naturally makes more sense, yet the other option is good, yet it would be much more difficult and confusing to get to. Yes. It's one of these wonderful situations. Today was a particularly difficult day & I told Jesus I really needed something from him today because I was becoming apathetic. Going to small group tonight was a good decision.

We study the Prodigal Son story--Luke 15:11-24 specifically. I've known this story since childhood, I've heard people preach out of this passage, but I'm glad that Jesus had something very special for me to discover tonight.

Then Jesus said, "There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, "Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me." So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger song gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, "How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands." So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son." But the father said to his slaves, "Quickly, bring out a robe--the best one--and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!" And they began to celebrate.

There's so much to glean from this passage, but these are some of the implications that are striking me:

• The father not only complies with his son's outrageously offensive request, he also lets his son go and live promiscuously. He doesn't demand or ask that he stays.

• The father remained vigilant and saw his son returning from a distance. He then went against all cultural norms to run and embrace and accept his son. He displays a level of affection that is abnormally high for cultural norms, much less for a father that was basically spat upon by the very son he was embracing and receiving.

• The father didn't let the son finish his whole planned speech, which seems to me like the son's explanation had nothing to do with the father's acceptance. It seems like the son's motives for coming back has no effect on the father's intensity of affection. Did the son actually felt guilty for taking money from his father (which he shouldn't have received until his father died)? Did he feel guilty for his promiscuous life and living recklessly? Or did he actually wish to continue that life, but had no money for food to upkeep that lifestyle? Was the return home out of a true desire to reconcile or was it selfishly motivated? It seems like all the father is concerned with is that his son is coming home.

• The father doesn't demand any promises or plans of how the son is going to turn his life around and make changes in his life. His son makes no promise that he won't up and leave the next day. How does the father know that the son won't take the robe, the ring, and a couple of cows to pawn them for more money? The father is incredibly willing to forgive, and not only forgive but has immense compassion toward his son. Dictionary.com says that the definition of compassion is "a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering." I don't know about you, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around that. I don't even know if forgiveness on such a level is humanly possible. I mean, the son sinned so terribly against his father, in such a way that he really didn't even deserve forgiveness, let alone compassion, and yet the father embraces him, even extravagantly welcomes him and celebrates his return. That's beautiful&amazing.

Following the father's model of forgiveness seems like an impossible feat. But, I'm learning. It's messing with my head and my heart lately, but I can only suppose that it's a good thing & that I get to see another part of God's heart as I learn how to forgive and heal.

(Dear friend, I'm trying to learn how to forgive you. I'm trying to learn from the father. He graciously and affectionately takes you back no matter what you did. You don't even need perfect motives for coming back to God--chances are they aren't perfect, but we're human. Nothing is stopping you from leaving again; you have the freedom to choose. I just hope that I will learn how to forgive, knowing full well your decisions and your sin could hurt me again. Thank you for coming back to the father's house. Please stay there. Love Amanda.)