the overflow

peering outside Stribling Cottage, Shrine Mont

After reading Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts a number of years ago, my heart was opened to realize the value of eucharisteo, thanksgiving.

But I don't want to force it. True thanksgiving is an organic overflow of the heart, not a mind-over-matter willpower thing.

When my sister put up a "Thankful" board on our kitchen wall a few weeks ago, I didn't feel very thankful. Disappointment about this year overcame the joys of the many beautiful moments. But lately, something shifted in me. Maybe it's the simple, laughter-filled days I spent with family over the holiday. Maybe it's finally settling into a church where I have been welcomed with their invitations and smiling faces coming up to introduce themselves and welcome me every Sunday; I feel that I belong there, even though I struggle during every sermon, wrestling with discontinuities and my own theological questions. 

Needless to say, for these I am grateful:

01. Jim Spillane and the unlikely friendship in the Kathmandu valley
02. my friend loaning me his guitar
03. bon iver coming to my city
04. my jigsaw puzzle schedule, and so many free mornings
05. waiting with expectation for good to come 
06. one of my dearest friends surprising me with a visit soon
07. tacos and tuesdays and friends
08. Sleeping at Last's I Heard the Bells rendition and our $19 Christmas tree
09. Fawn Street Community Garden and rain barrels and sunshine and Swiss Chard
10. Madame Secretary and cozy fall nights with my sister, drinking turmeric ginger tea

holding onto happy

Michigan Ave, Chi-town

Because I want to remember this state of my soul tonight.

Wonderful conversation with friends tonight, new and old. Nothing like human connection to soothe my lonely edges. Talking about the messiness of life. Not being afraid to dive into the questions.

I realized I'm in this strange land of not being where I want to be (career, relationships, geographical region, religion/spirituality/church) yet I have this peace that where I am right now is exactly where I need to be. There's no mistake.

Life is not at all what I expected it to be at 25 years old/young.

But it's good, and OK in its own way.

And maybe that faint, though often strong, nagging that there's something better, more 'right' for me in this lifetime is just an eternal longing that won't ever be fulfilled this side of heaven. Maybe I should get used to longing. Dang it.

[ Listening these days: The Oh Hellos reminding me how it's sun and rain. Both/and. ]

to take notice of the wonder

morning light at 215D

It seems counter-intuitive.

"We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body" (2 Corinthians 4:10). This beautiful paradox of living in the mess and the beauty at the same time.

Paul writes, "But we have  this treasure [the glory of the Spirit of God] in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us" (2 Corinthians 4:7, emphasis mine).

I am the jar of clay. And somehow it is possible for this treasure to be within me. The mystery.

When Tozer prayed these words, I wonder if he realized the paradox:

Enlarge and purify the mansions of our souls,

that they may be fit habitations for Thy Spirit,

who does prefer before all temples the upright heart and pure.

[A.W. Tozer] 

I have a Father who doesn't reject the pain, isn't repelled by my mess. He runs towards my heart, however upright or not it is. He enlarges my awareness of His love that dwells in the mansion of my soul, that weak vessel so desperately in need of Him.  

The crazy thing is that Jesus came to dwell in the unfit habitation. He enters into our suffering, our brokenness. He opens my eyes to see the glory in the everyday, the unseen eternal. 

To pray is to take notice of the wonder,

to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings,

the divine margin in all attainments.

Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.

[Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel]     

uncomfortable seasons

a quiet morning in Mum's kitchen // 35 mm film

Before I experienced this transition, I romanticized it. I moved back to Virginia after spending three months in New Zealand last fall, and I jubilantly announced, "I'm ready to embrace all! The joys and the pains!!" Yeah, right. It's more like daily trying to ward off discouragement as I continually must re-adjust my expectations.

Here's the situation: I knew it would be a challenge living with my mother and 14 yr old sis. Don't get me wrong, they are beautiful souls and I love them and I missed them terribly when I lived 1,000 miles away from them. But I was on my own for 5 years, and it's quite different coming back as an adult child.

When I was in NZ, I looked forward to the new season ahead. I expected to get plenty of piano students and other part-time work almost instantly, save up the moolah, and then move out from my mom's place in a matter of a few months. Yet things hardly ever go as we imagine them to, right? Instead, this uncomfortable, longer-than-expected transition period is stripping me of a false sense of any semblance of control I tried to maintain by planning, planning, planning. Those plans have failed. And I am receiving fresh reminders of my frailty, my minute-by-minute need for God.

These days, I am not as quick to celebrate the embrace of all. Embracing the pain is not comfortable. But these days are more about my heart's awareness to the beauty in everything than about being comfortable. Ewww, I hate that word. Because I want growth, and often that means mess.

But in the arms of a loving God who brings comfort to my soul, I can embrace that mess.

YES.

Punakaiki, South Island, NZ

A few things:

I'd wear this any day. Would you?

And can I please just grow a flower garden?

I have decided to live assuming that as a 60 or 80 year old woman, I will look back and smile because life was good. To live in expectancy of beauty.

Listening to this Swedish and Icelandic pair these days. Tiny Desk Concerts for the win.

I worship a God who is good and holds all things together. Praying this lately, trusting for provision in the midst of the unknown.

a year in review

530 Hillside Ave. 

Our view of  St. Mark's Episcopal. Not pictured: magical breezes wafting through the windows.

Today I turn 25. And I'm feeling all the feels. So how 'bout a reflective post?

Last year, I finished four years at Bellas Artes School of Music as a private piano instructor. By the end of July, I said goodbye to 39 precious students, their families, and amazing colleagues.

Chicagoland had been good to me, loving me through dear friends, family (my cousin, brother, and soon-to-be-sister come wedding time this April) and church community. But last winter held a lot of unexpected loneliness and frustrations.

I said goodbye to living in Glen Ellyn in August. My family and friends packed my whole life up in my '99 Buick, and I moved to my home state, Virginia. Making room for the NEW.

Just in time for an oldest brother's wedding to his beautiful bride.

And then the most magical week in a cottage on Chebeague Island, Maine, with three amazing women.

And then heading to Great Barrier Island, New Zealand, for an unforgettable three months of deepening and uprooting and quiet and beautiful people and Father's love.

10 days of exploring the South Island, and then it was home for Christmas.

Most recently it has been a building, slow, transitional time.  And I'm grateful for family close by.

This past year brought more CONFIDENCE, and less FEAR. More ACCEPTANCE of who I am, and more FREEDOM to explore and embrace all.

Here's to 25, to taking even more risks and growing in all the ways.

grateful

It has been almost four weeks since I left New Zealand and returned to Virginia. I want to share some reflections from those three months on 'the Barrier' - how the locals refer to Great Barrier Island. 

I didn't realize I was so tangled up in religion and legalism. But words of life from beloved people like JT, a pianist with beautiful vulnerability, and Erik, a tender soul from the Netherlands, helped me see the webs around my mind and heart. In a safe, nurturing environment, I realized my powerlessness to do anything to bring faith or healing.  

But God met me in my brokenness, in that place of disconnection. I distinctly remember the morning when I was getting some deep revelations of His love regarding a specific time in my life fraught with striving, and I was sobbing. With tears and snot running lines all over my face and hands, I looked a mess. But I experienced Jesus' love delighting in me, right in that place of muddiness. And my friend Paul (from New Zealand) and I looked at each other's tear-stained faces, and celebrated the healing that God was doing in both of us. 

I remember one evening, struggling with theological questions. My mind couldn't make sense of the freedom, the mystery. But I was trying. Striving. I remember sitting in the lounge talking with Kora (Norway) and Bree and Andrew (Australia). Wrestling with my questions. And Bree just said simply, "You're OK." And I knew that was truth. Why did I need to have all the "ducks" of "what's Biblical" in a row? There again, my human effort to get to God. 

Oh friends, I have many journal entries trying to depict the breakthroughs of revelation that happened. Most of them begin with the question, "How do I depict in words what is revealed to the heart?" But more than journal entries were the quiet evenings drinking in the sunset over Karaka Bay with friends like Juuli (Finland) and Marit (Norway); deep sharing and hiking uphill through rainy NZ bush with Nan (Thailand) and Khanh (US); kayaking the surrounding bays with Marit, Juuli, and Amy (Hong Kong); eye-opening conversations with Betsy (Philippines), Juuli, Anita (US) and Luke (New Zealand); or stealing away for late-night star gazing from the pontoon. 

I'm grateful for Stephen Hill's thick Irish accent reminding me that any upward movement to get to God is religion, but true Christianity is God's movement toward us.

I'm grateful for the freedom I experienced, swimming towards dolphins in the bay, only to realize they were much too far away to reach. But then they came to me, swimming and jumping around at terrifying speeds. 

I'm grateful for the safe space my small group leader Michael created, to verbally process what was happening. To realize the incredible freedom I was walking into. 

I'm grateful for the dreams roused in my heart there in the quiet, and I pray the same would happen for you too.