OF ALL TIME

Have I mentioned on here that I was the worst co-leader of a women's Bible study of all time last semester? Well, now I'm letting you know. The word "worst" here is not a reflection of the quality of my "leadership" or whatever during the actual study. It's in reference to being a co-leader... or not being one rather, alongside the best co-leader, Ashley Peterson. If you've read much of my blog from this past semester, you know I went through some pretty basic spiritual crazies. Self-inflicted, no doubt. It was ridiculous, and it made for a flaky semester as a Bible study leader as you may or may not imagine. Sometimes I just wouldn't go. Sometimes I'd go but not really talk. Once I went and forced my thoughts on people. It was weird. But it brought me to a few days ago when I hadn't even opened my Bible to Hebrews, the book we're studying, let alone opened my thoughts to it. Then, not so out of the blue, I got a text from Peterso asking my thoughts on what to do for Bible study next semester. No thoughts. No prayers. No nothing.

And this brought me to a few minutes ago on the phone with Peterso. My thoughts and prayers have been on the Bible study since her text, but my thoughts continue to be uneasy. And a minor scheduling conflict gave me just a bit more confirmation to know that I really need to step down. For this semester at least. And though I feel like I've pulled the ultimate flake-out and am the ultimate quitter, I do know SO well that it simply is not about me. I most definitely have needs, but I am most most definitely NOT needed. And I firmly believe this chick will be a great leader with or without me, and as she told me, she has been prepared to lead this on her own ever since she thought I wouldn't be returning to school for this past semester. So, Peterso, if you're reading this, thank you for being such a strong leader all semester, and thanks especially for putting up with my weakness. Who you were was who I needed as a co-leader through all of this, and I love you. :-* (Yeah, I just pulled the awkward off-center kiss emoticon out on you.)

So now I'm kind of all "que sera sera" about next semester. All I know is that I need to be a for real student who does homework and studies finally, which may require more library time. I also know that I'll be back to working the mail room and copy center jobs I love for 9.5 hours a week, and I'm ecstatic about that. AND I've got one of my best friends not only back at school after studying abroad last semester but also residing in my apartment with my absolutely fabulous roommate and me. Oh, and I've got an awesome God I've flaked out on entirely too much, who is deserving of all my efforts and attention and who has been humbling me in all the right ways these past few days, so I'm just a be throwin' my "que sera sera"s all up in his business now. I'm sure you'll be reading soon enough how that works out.

More on Joey

Here's an article that actually portrays Joey as a real person.

I'm not sure how the Bells are doing currently, but they've been floating around in my thoughts since the Joey incident. A couple of weeks ago, I was hanging out with Carrie next door and she was going on about having girls nights, going to the movies, and all kinds of fun things that she wanted to do when Deb finally showed up. Needless to say, none of that has happened. Well, they have been happening but without her. She's been with her family probably trying to figure out how to be a rock for her grieving husband... during a time that her marriage was pretty severely suffering already. No one really prepares you for these things, but God never throws anything at us that absolutely cannot be withstood.

The Real McCoy

This Christmas was pretty perfect, and I would have to say that had a lot to do with the presence (or presents?) of the Martins. You know there's just something about having the whole family dynamic that makes everything feel complete. It's not often we can all be together and just... be. We closed out the night just chillin' and talking in the living room while my mother was about to pass out from exhaustion as she waited for Amanda to finish her movie so that she could put her to bed. Chillin' and talking is my favorite thing ever. Ever. It's so hard to pull out of it, because it really is just sort of happening because it's happening... and then you realize it's happening because it's so necessary. All parties in such a conversation find common ground and run with it, and it feels so right.

At one point in our conversation, we got to talking about love languages. As usual, it was pointed out by someone that mine is most definitely physical touch. This always brings me back to the day that strange woman came to 5Alive and covered all 5 love languages. Once she said "physical touch," all eyes were on me. Now, that was pretty funny, but ever since then I've thought how strange it was that I am the only one whose love can be straight up identified that way.

Obviously, I experience love outside of physical touch. I would be a lonely soul otherwise... or I would have resigned myself to prostitution straight out of high school (Too far?). So I got to thinking about the other languages, and I can see where I've learned how to love people in different ways and do. This brought me to the flip side. How do I receive love? See, I've told some that even though I am classified under physical touch, I most often like to initiate the hug or cuddle or whatever. I sometimes have a hard time receiving it. And then I got to thinking about how bad I am at receiving gifts... and how bad I am at receiving words of affirmation... and my general lack of enthusiasm in gratitude that has plagued me since being classified as an "ungrateful child" long ago.

(These were the thoughts that were in my mind before I rolled out of bed and decided to come down here and start typing all of this out.)

My immediate reaction to this sudden connection of pieces was: "Oh, another realization of just how extremely selfish I am." Upon further inspection I realized a deeper root to this issue, a root that could quite possibly be familial, is that I always want everything to be right, true, and genuine.

Not such a bad desire, huh? After all, shouldn't things of life be right, true, and genuine? Yeah, I'd say so. But one truth that keeps laughing in my face is the relativity hidden within these staunch terms. I have a hard time receiving gifts. Why? Probably because of the social conventions marked by gift-giving. Once my mind decides something is conventional, it gets tossed into an ingenuine category. Appreciation is lost. Why can't I accept words of affirmation? Probably because I can't know whether it's really what is right that is being affirmed. Does that make sense? Kinda?

What I'm getting at is that my natural tendency is to decide whether I see something as real or a pursuit of what's real and reject whatever I deem not in these ranks. Feign enthusiasm when enthusiasm is not a real emotion for me at the time. Offer an awkward thanks when I don't really know how to react to what you said. So what am I saying about the person who was genuinely excited about giving me that gift or about the person who identifies something in me that he or she firmly believes should be affirmed?

......

.............

Boo, Katie Jones. Boo.

Enough of that. Carrie called this morning to tell us that the long search for Chris's brother's body had been stopped. I'm sure Chris is over there, "feigning" the joy and excitement of Christmas with his three darling children, but that's okay. Because he really truly does love them. Because there really is nothing fake about love, no matter how you want to categorize it.

Joy and Misery, Misery and Joy

My precious baby nephew arrived this afternoon as planned, and I've enjoyed a wonderful day spending time with Deb and Jared whilst cuddling with Leo. He is unbelievably adorable in person, but I figured as much.

However, the joy of their arrival was quickly quelled by two unexpected visitors. My cousin Carrie Bell lives next door, and her husband Chris has two brothers. I met one of them last Christmas, I think, and he and his girlfriend were the two unexpected visitors who came up and knocked on our back door. Chris's brother came in frazzled, asking where Chris was. My mother explained about Chris's father being in town (they have different fathers) and Chris probably being at a hotel in Gloucester. So after phonebook searching and various hotel trying, he managed to get in touch with Chris... to tell him that he thought their third brother was dead.

You can read about it here.

As you can imagine, the lot next door to me is having a tough time right now, so I'm writing this post just to simply ask for your prayers for the Bell family. Christmastime will always bring back the memories of this day for them, draining Christmas of its fully intended amount of cheer. But Jesus, of course, is the same Savior he was before. Pray that Chris can keep a firm grasp on that key truth as he mourns.

...and so, yes, loves Leo. Pray for that little guy, too. :D

Thanks for the prayers, and Merry Christmas!

newsy things kinda but not really

Victoria's Secret discontinued my favvy-fav unda-pants! Unnecessary!

In other news, I may be getting sick. So that's fun.

Is this all sounding too depressing?

Well, I get to see this face

very soon. Very soon meaning in approximately 5 days. NOT depressing... unless I get the baby sick. :-/

In God news, I just remembered conversations I used to have with Melissa Bjorklund where we'd talk about how annoyed we get by free will. The cycles of stupidity and all that result from the freedom of our wills. And so I was just reading Psalm 54 (since you read the Psalms when you're feeling under the weather, duh). Verse 6 caught my eye.

"With a freewill offering, I will sacrifice to you; I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good."

Good indeed. I suppose I insinuated a subsequent personal exposition on the verse, but I am too tired. Bedtime.

How My Faith Is Going

I woke up to a message from Amanda Keller (hi, Amanda) asking me how my faith is going. I've opted to respond to her on here since it's probably a thing worth blogging about. To begin with, it's a thing worth thinking about, which I admit I haven't been doing so much recently.

And I'm not sure where to go from there. I just went back and read all of my blog posts from the beginning, which didn't take all that long since there really aren't that many. However, it did leave me pretty confused as to how to answer such a question as "How is your faith going?" I'm not bashing the question; it's valid. But looking at faith requires a particular perspective. I could look back on my blog posts and formulate a big picture of what God is doing with my life, or I could recognize each of my highs and lows for what they are, placing my current stance into one or both of these categories or somewhere inbetween.

Going home usually involves me leaving my personal obligations to prayer and Bible-reading at the front door, which is just weird. What's beyond weird and just plain not right about this trend is that it suggests my peaceful, non-thinking time at home is only peaceful and non-thinking when I ignore my relationship with God. Please raise one confused eyebrow at that one, folks. It's like I really am pinning all the blame of my frustrations and pain in constantly searching and seeking on God. This also reminds me of the time Katie Titus and I were hanging out during my "darker days" and she asked me if I'd been reading my Bible. I said that I had been reading it a lot and I was really earnestly wanting to, because I was, in fact, searching and seeking. This brings me to another question: Should I really only reserve searching and seeking for my own personal times of despair? Do these two words have to be so connotatively full of muddled desperation for me? Well, shouldn't be. I know that much. What I don't know is how to catch these "inconsequential" life patterns I have before they seep through the cracks and prove their consequence. Living for God could be looked at as a game of catch-up, and that's my default mode of seeking--I can't understand God but I have to try, dagnabbit. It sounds so desperate.

Why can't I take this time at home to enjoy God for being God? Elephino! (hi, Sadie)

Perhaps I'll take a crack at that.
Sheesh.

All I Want For Christmas

Is it weird that the only thing I've *wanted* for the past few Christmases is more Victoria's Secret underwear? My girl Tori provides the goods for all Sir Mix-A-Lot's laydayzzzz!

Small Town Charm

Earlier this evening, my mother and I were walking down our lane when mom said, "This is what's nice about living in a small town--having a parade be so accessible. If we lived in a big city, I wouldn't even try to watch the parade." I responded in agreement... until we actually reached our destination for viewing the annual Mathews Christmas parade and were greeted by the opening theme banner, displaying the words: "Farming on the Bay". So yeah... apparently farming on the bay means some random 17-year-old's Cadillac with a red bow on it, a huge truck that looks like a toilet, and random middle-aged men and women (since that's the prevailing age of a Mathewser) walking by giving you candy--to which my mother referred when she turned to Rebecca and me and said, "If we just grabbed a bag of candy, we could march in this parade..." (Also, my mother is a 5-year-old when it comes to getting tossed candy at a parade.) It's true there are a lot of charming things about small towns, and Gilmore Girls displays several of them pretty well. Fortunately, all things that are meant to be charming but fail epically simply result in me ROFLMAO. Welcome home, me. :)

As claimed in my Thanksgiving post, I really do love soaking up these final lingering moments on campus. They do possess those special qualities I spelled out before, and I can't help but think about how much I'm going to miss these moments as well as the beginning moments of August and the in-between moments of everything else. If I was honest with myself, though, I'd look back and remember the pain I felt throughout most of October and part of November in having such a drastic and willful separation from worshiping and living for God. Maybe I wouldn't miss it all so much if I relived that tight feeling in my gut of not knowing what my life was for. Maybe... except for all the other Good that came during that experience and out of that experience. I wouldn't necessarily say this is me desperately scraping for an optimistic thread of thought. And while my ever-positive roommate Sadie Smith has definitely injected some of her bright-side serum into me, I've also come to realize a lot of the "honest" and "realistic" thoughts I used to compose my words before weren't quite as honest or real as I thought they were. If I want to be real, if I want to be honest, I have to see the Good all the time. Call that plain optimism if you want, but I'm gonna call it living with a purpose beyond worth. As for missing all of this, I will. I have a lot to look forward to in the coming month, but I really can't get over the blessing it has been to be here for the past few months when I didn't think I would be. To see the ways my friends have grown and learned, to grow and learn with them. To fight my resistance in order to finally call Jesus Christ my Savior with the most genuine warmth and knowledge inside. Thankfully, I shouldn't ever have to miss that.

...To the Life!

I remember one day when I was working at camp during the summer of 2008, I was talking to a fellow college kid on staff, Geraud, about school and careers and whatnot. He told me all about his potential avenues of work and other general things he was interested in pursuing on the side. As these conversations tend to go, he flipped the question around and asked me what I wanted to do after college. Whether he liked it or not, he also flipped the switch that turned my mouth on auto-pilot. "I don't know." Now saying, "I don't know," may seem like a cop-out to thinking about it, but Lord knows I have no problems in that area. "I don't know" is a genuine answer to the question of what I want to do after college. I really don't know what I want, which I have pretty well established on this here blog. Sometimes I perceive I'm growing increasingly aware of what I need. Not just after college, but right now. Obviously the need I've been continually falling on my face before is Jesus, and blogging is making me ever-aware of how frequently this is happening to me and how necessary that frequency is. But I do realize the grand plan God has for my life is not limited to me falling before Him every two seconds. Rather, He wants to root me in that attitude o' servitude so that all the work of my hands and all of my toil won't be in vain. All that *I've* done should wind up at His feet (along with me) every day. Although, as you may have assumed, Geraud wouldn't accept "I don't know" as an answer. He pushed and prodded a bit, even throwing out suggestions--one of which was teaching. I told him that I'd had several people in my life trying to convince me to become a 5th or 6th grade math teacher, but that I also didn't know if that's necessarily where God wanted me to be. His response to this actually did throw me off a bit. He suggested that since so many people were telling me this, perhaps it was time for me to hear God speaking through these people. Perhaps. Perhaps I shouldn't wait for fireworks to shoot out of my ears upon the eventual utterance of the *right* career for me. Ever since the camp experience, my mother will occasionally throw out the idea of me becoming a missionary because of how well that *fits*. Now, I can't know whether she's just a wee bit jealous that one of her sister's daughters is down in Mexico teaching deaf kids about Jesus or if this is something she prays about for me and is, as I am, listening for an answer from God. Either way, I know that my future does not lie simply in the respective wills of my beloved family and friends, but I do know that God put 'em all up in my business for a reason. Which brings me to the sermon preached by Pastor Van Loomis at Redeeming Grace Baptist Church this past Sunday. He's been doing a series called "What is a Disciple?" At the end of this particular sermon, he said, "Alright, I don't know if I really have time for this, but I feel like it's important to take you to 2 Corinthians 11:16-33 as we close..." This is where Paul talks about his sufferings as an apostle: "Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one--I am talking like a madman--with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness." -v. 23-30 There have been few times in my life when a sermon has really pulled and contorted my mind and heart at the same time, leaving me feeling a bit like mush in my seat once the Benediction has been offered up. But this was one of them, and all I could think was "Canada" ...Canada? ...I don't know, but I do trust in the providence of God.