Radical Honesty: Joy.

the joy

of the

LORD

is my

STRENGTH

nehemiah 8:10

"Choose joy." That's a popular phrase I've been hearing lately. But every time I see it, I dismiss it. "Choose joy? I already have joy," I scoff. (#pridealert!) Let me tell you - I was wrong.

A friend recently described me as being a person full of joy. I had to think about that for a minute. "Did she say joy? I don't feel very joyful. Has anybody been paying attention to me lately?" Over the past few weeks, the last word I would've thought to use to describe myself would be "joy". I'd have sooner told you I felt overwhelmed or even defeated. But joy is so much more than an emotion. It's more than a fleeting feeling, here one minute and gone the next. Joy really is a choice, and more than that, it's a gift. As we see in Galatians 5:22-23, joy is the second of the listed fruits of the Spirit. This means that joy comes from God, and He calls us to experience it through Him.

When my friend told me that she saw me as someone gifted with joy, I realized that I'd been denying myself the ability to experience joy (note: to experience = active, to feel = passive) and because I was doing that, I was denying a key part of my character. And because Satan is really good at inception (witty credit goes to Brittany), I found myself in the middle of his lies. I thought that because I was wrestling with different issues, I wasn't supposed to experience joy. I thought that struggles went hand in hand with wallowing in self-pity. But all of these lies acted like molasses to my feet and weren't just preventing me from living in my full character but was closing me off from receiving God's transformative work in me.

We are never pushed into a corner in our struggles. We can always choose joy. For me, true strength is manifested in experiencing joy in the midst of adversity. We don't need to have joy in our circumstances, we need to have joy in the fact that we serve the one who is above our circumstances. It is the joy of the LORD that is our strength. No joy that I can conjure up for myself will be able to sustain me. When the winds are raging around us, and the waters are rising up above our head, it takes a ridiculous amount of strength to be able to stand firm in the joy we find in the victory we have through Jesus Christ.

He will

empower you

with

[inner strength]

through his

Spirit.

ephesians 3:16

Radical Honesty: Control.

"For I know the plans I have for you,"

declares the LORD,

"plans to prosper you and not to harm you,

plans to give you hope and a future."

jeremiah 29:11

These words should speak comfort into my soul and, to an extent, they do. It's nice to know that the One who loves me loves me enough to have planned out my future for me. But that's just it - it's nice. I don't rest in this fact, and if I'm honest with myself it kind of bothers me. Hearing someone say, "I've got it under control" or "I'll take care of it" nags at some corner of my mind. It's the same reason I find myself awake at 3am working on projects; it's the same reason my brain nearly explodes before something I've planned: I think I can do it better.

But how do you tell God - who created the galaxies, planned out nature's processes, and determined the formation of our minds - that you'll take the reigns on this one? You can't. At the very depth of my soul, I know that no matter what my circumstances bring, God has His hand over and through the situation. It's an unshakable truth in me that I can't explain, but because I know that I refrain from surrendering my hold on different aspects of my life. I can't blame God for my circumstances because I know in the end of it all this will ultimately bring Him glory.

If there's one thing I hate, it's giving up control. I am not good at delegating because of it. I never ask for help because of it. Giving up control scares me because I know once I do let go it's out of my hands and in God's hands and I have no say in the matter anymore and all I can do then is trust in the One who has paved the way ahead of me.

The Gift of Pain

Once again, here's a link to the wonderful AU Chi Alpha Community Blog that I get the privilege to be a part of. This week's theme is pain, a topic I never thought I would be able to speak about. But it's the areas that we surround with the word "never" that we will experience the most transformative healing in. So here's to pain, here's to healing, here's to feeling, and here's to being honest about the process. Enjoy, my friends.

----

these are the scars deep in your heart

this is the place you were born

and this is the hole where most of your soul comes ripping out

from the places you've been torn

and it is always, always, always Yours.

-always; switchfoot

I am a dramatic person and I thrive on stories. I have read only a small handful of non-fiction books in my life and I understand greater world issues better after being able to relate it in some grand metaphorical context. Most of the time my mind runs like a super 8 camera, translating everything around me into some elaborate film I get to call the shots on. So, naturally, I become unsatisfied with the story my life is being weaved into by someone other than myself.

Starting from middle school, I wasn't satisfied with the events of my life. So I began to escape into the wonderfully inventive caves of my mind. The TV shows and movies I surrounded myself with were filled with broken stories. Families that were torn apart by death or deception, teenagers who ran away from home, forbidden loves, and misunderstood outcasts filled my imagination. My life paled in comparison and the difference seemed to be this foreign thing called "pain" and, in some weird way, I wanted it.

Continue reading.

In Preparation for Finals

I saw a truly brilliant performance last night. Last year, some of my friends saw this band, Scythian (a DC-based celtic/folk/rock/world group), and none of them could stop raving about it. So this year, when one of those friends got excited for the band's return I knew I had to go.

That was a month or more ago, and since then schedules were reworked and finals were suddenly approaching and earlier this week while fighting the flu/bronchitis/fake pinkeye/whatever I really had, I found myself second-guessing if I really wanted to go or not. Needless to say, I told myself "go big or go home" and gathered all my energy and went out ready to enjoy the night.

After dancing for 2 and a half straight hours to a whole ton of fiddle, accordion (it's never looked like a more attractive instrument), and brass instruments in a never-looked-better 9:30 Club I felt ready to take on the world. So, in continuation of the campus-wide finals preparation advice-giving (mainly seen on our community blog), my final words (punny?) are to let it out before you hunker down. Get out your pent-up energy and frustrations and worries about your impending doom and get ready to vanquish your finals.

for more (hilarious) advice on surviving this biannual apocalypse check out these posts seen on our AU Chi Alpha Community Blog (aka something you should be regularly reading):

Tips from Your Most Ardent Studier {aka mbd}

The Freshman's (and Any Other Student's) Guide To Finals {from yours truly}

A Guide to #clublibs {by the #clublibs expert, symph}

Remembering Answered Prayers

The campus ministry I'm a part of (Chi Alpha) has started this mega-saccharine community blog. This week we focused on various thanksgiving-themed posts and I had the pleasure of being able to contribute again. So here's a preview and a link to the original post on the site. And I'd encourage you to check back to it regularly because we've all got something important to share.

My small group just finished a three week study on Esther. It's a short book so I encourage you to go read it to get the full story but the basic gist of what happens is that Queen Esther saved her people (she is Jewish, by the way).

Y'know, all in a day's work.

So, Hamon (our antagonist and the king's right hand man) has a bone to pick with Mordecai (Esther's father figure; another Jew who has been a faithful worker in the kingdom for several years) because Mordecai refuses to bow down to Hamon as he pridefully commands. As the story continues, not only is Mordecai put on the kingdom's death list but so is the entire Jewish community. So Esther must use her favor with the king to appeal to him that her people must be spared. One of the prevalent themes in the book of Esther is God's provision, but the beauty of the story is a lack of a physical presence of God. Instead, his provision is seen through a series of "twists of fate". So at the end of the story, all the wrongs are righted. Hamon pays his dues and the king reissues decrees making it illegal to kill the Jews now. But the story doesn't just stop there. The last chapters are dedicated to recording the establishment of the Festival of Purim.

FINISH THE STORY.

God is not our last resort.

God is not your last resort.

He is not the one you call on when you're at your wit's end,

the end of your rope,

your last act of desperation.

We are not to make pleas to Him saying that although we don't believe in Him, if He could make this one thing happen,

we could go on living.

I am not saying He's distant,

sitting on some shadowed throne, aimlessly moving the chess pieces of our world from square to square.

I am not saying He is powerless or without care.

In fact, I am pleading the opposite case.

He is so full of glory we cannot even see His face.

The God I know is closer than my own heartbeat,

and more powerful than the winds of the strongest hurricane.

The God I know wants what's best for me, every day of my life.

He wants a relationship with me,

but I tell Him He's my last resort.

I tell Him I don't need Him day after day,

that it's my way or the highway.

That just because I can't see His plans scribbled in my moleskine,

I get scared and think He's not around.

When I place my class rank above my spiritual health,

I tell my creator that He's not good enough to save me.

That He doesn't know what's best for me and I can write my own prescriptions, thank you.

God is not my last resort.

He is in every flower that blooms,

every leaf that falls.

He pulls the sun up each morning and lays it to rest each evening.

Although the rains fall, and the thunders roll,

there is always a rainbow to behold.

God is always there.

In the midst of every heartache,

every tear that's shed,

every doubt we act on.

He will never leave nor forsake us.

He even reaches into the deep to save us.

And this is why God is not my last resort,

He is my strength and my light,

my reason and my purpose.

But I'm prone to wander and I'm prone to leave this God I love,

So here's my heart, Lord, take and seal it - seal it for Thy courts above.

Counter Cultural: give until there's nothing left.

As I was filling my smartrip card today, a man came up beside me and asked if I could fill the rest of his farecard so he could make it to whatever stop he needed to get to. I absent-mindedly said yes because I was preoccupied with the machine in front of me and had assumed he was a tourist asking how to get a farecard, but when I was done I realized he was asking me for money. Our natural instinct in this situation is to hold on even tighter to what we have and I was taken a little aback when I realized what he was asking for, but he had noticed that I was using my credit card so there was no backing out of the situation. So after I was done, I added the $3.60 he needed to complete his metro trip and then he left - with hardly a word, and in less time than it took to run up the Tenleytown escalator. I was left a little surprised by this encounter but just shrugged it off and continued on my way when my friend who was with me turned and said "That was nice of you." I didn't feel like I deserved the affirmation, because had I been given more time to think or if he had been on the side of the street asking for the money, I would've thought up some excuse and just continued walking. But, this is exactly what we're called to do:

"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil." -Luke 6:35

I am not sharing the experience in search for praise and attention, but I'm sharing the experience because it's something I struggle with so I'm sure others do to. If we were given those extra seconds to decide to give or not, I'm sure most of us would say no. And, to quote myself from my previous blog post:

i am walking onwards.

i refuse to become stagnant.

it is Christ who compels me to love and live.

to love until i have nothing left,

to live with my final breath.

to give of myself until the goblet is empty,

only to be overflowed by the purest of waters.

So really, I'm just taking the public opportunity to throw my own words back at myself and to keep myself accountable. We hear so often "Ask and you shall receive" but we forget that in receiving, someone else has to give. Jesus gave everything so we might receive life. He doesn't ask us to literally go up on a cross to die for someone else - but in a way, he does. He calls us to give of ourselves, out our selfish nature, against our culture, in accordance with his teachings and his character. If we are true followers of Jesus, we are not just absorbing his teachings from afar, but we are to engage with them on a real level - like unexpectedly giving someone $3.60 of metrofare.