For now, I thought I’d share a portion of a journal entry from last week in hopes that it will be encouraging to you and your faith. And also because, in spite of the roller coaster of events in my circumstance that I could talk about, this is the most important thing to share because it’s what the Lord has been building IN me for months. The Lord has gone to great lengths to show me that this journey is much more about what He’s been working IN me and between us than what is happening outside of me.

LUKE 8:52ff
“‘She is not dead but asleep.’ They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But he took her by the hand and said, ‘My child, get up!’ Her Spirit returned, and at once, she got up.”

“Lord I love that the people KNEW she was dead while You declared that she only slept. Who was wrong? Neither. But their knowledge was immediate and incomplete, while Yours was eternal and whole. She was dead. But You, knowing what You would do, knew that this death was merely sleep–a small frame of time in which to them she was lost forever.

So they were wrong, for they misjudged the separation by looking through the lens of the logical, the probable, even the possible. But here you stood, the incarnate impossible, ready to blow their minds and all categories and confines of possibility. You would work the absurd and they would stand amazed. You came in the midst of the turmoil of grief and You spoke life. They did not believe, for You sounded like only an ignorant fool–short on knowledge and small in understanding. So like Sarah, they laughed. But instead, it was they whose thoughts were too narrow to comprehend how You would follow such an absurd declaration, for You would prove in action that her death really was temporary–more like a nap from which she would quickly awake. You would restore her to them. You would raise her from the dead. You would wake her up. “Wake up oh sleeper and rise from the dead and Christ’s light will shine on you!”

How insensitive were Your foolish words of hope, cutting into their grief like a dagger, reminding them of the irrevocable, reminding them of what death had stolen too soon! To declare this hope was to speak foolishness! What a tease Your word was! How harsh and unthinking!

But then you work a miracle and suddenly Your word is no longer salt in an open wound. Instead Your absurd word proved to be the precursor to absurd action and so both were transformed to life! From the backside of the miracle how startled they must have been that they were wrong! How Your word was transfigured before them! For no longer did Your word appear as a goad for despair, but alas it was unveiled as a word of hope, for now they had seen the unfathomable made actual! For certainly you “made miraculously, the preposterous actual!” (s.k.)

So what do I learn from them? I learn that always my view is partial at best, my understanding grossly incomplete. I learn that always faith lures as a noble lover to believe the absurd, to trust Your word even when logic and all human concepts of possibility stand against You. I learn that while there are times faith is to be tempered with reason, most often authentic faith will leave me the fool, perhaps even make me a madman. I learn that to believe requires trust in my own inability to perceive the whole of what is true and real, that which actually IS. So also I learn that to believe requires trust in your absolute comprehension of me and my circumstance; and that with such comprehension always your determinant of action is love. To believe requires trust that my impossibility is still always your possible…

So Lord, the time lapse between Your word and Your action is either a place for plummeting into despair and confusion or a place for standing in hope and belief. Had you not spoken such to me, I would not feel caught in the middle waiting…But upon Your word, I am bound to wait and pray, and precariously slide from despair to belief…So now I stand in the middle, feeling that Your word betrays much of what I see and tests my very perception of reality. Your word is indeed the formula for me losing understanding, but also it is that I might win you. And this is my journey all year long–what you have spoken is not yet evidenced in my reality and the decision I have in the wait, is to despair or to believe. And so Lord, I have chosen to believe.”

(For good measure: S. Kierkegaard continues to influence me deeply as I consider faith and particularly as I wrestle with the incomprehensible story of Abraham on Mt. Moriah. You will clearly see his influence from his essay “The Sickness Unto Death” p. 71…

“The decisive thing is, that for God, all things are possible. This is eternally true, and true therefore every instant. This is commonly enough recognized in a way, and in a way it is commonly affirmed; but the decisive affirmation comes only when a man is brought to the utmost extremity, so that humanly speaking no possibility exists. Then the question is whether he will believe that for God all things are possible–that is to say, whether he will believe. But this is completely the formula for losing one’s mind or understanding; to believe is precisely to lose one’s understanding in order to win God.”

“There are times when we can do all that a fellow creature needs if only he will trust us…In getting a frightened beginner over a nasty place on a mountain, the one fatal obstacle may be their distrust. We are asking them to trust us in the teeth of their senses, their imagination and their intelligence. We ask them to believe that what is painful will relieve their pain and that what looks dangerous is their only safety. We ask them to accept apparent impossibilities: that to go higher and onto a more exposed ledge is the way not to fall. To support all these incredibilia we can rely only on the other party’s confidence in us–a confidence certainly not based on demonstration, admittedly shot through with emotion, and perhaps, if we are strangers, resting on nothing but such assurance as the look of our face and the tone of our voice can supply…Sometimes because of their unbelief, we can do no mighty works. But if we succeed, we do so because they have maintained their faith in us gainst apparently contrary evidence…

If human life is in fact ordered by a beneficient being whose knowledge of our real needs and of the way in which they can be satisfied infintiely exceeds our own, we must expect a priori that His operations will often appear to us far from beneficient and far from wise, and that it will be our highest prudence to give Him our confidence in spite of this…We trust not because “a God” exists, but because “this God” exists…For the question is not about being helped out of one trap or over one difficult place to climb. We believe that His intention is to create a certain personal relation between Himself and us…complete trust is an ingredient in that relation–such trust as could have no room to grow except where there is also room to doubt. To love involves trusting the beloved beyond the evidence, even against much evidence. No man is a friend who believe in our good intentions only when they are proved. No man is our friend who will not be very slow to accept evidence against them. Such confidence between one man and another is in fact almost universally praised as a moral beauty, not blamed as a logical error. To believe that God-at least this God-exists is to believe that you as a person stand in the presence of God as a Person. You are no longer faced with an argument which demands your assent, but with a Person who demands your confidence!

There would be no room for trust if demonstration were given. When demonstration is given what will be left will be simply the sort of relation which results from having trusted, or not having trusted, before it was given.”

It’s at St. Mary’s University, a Catholic school and the job is the Assistant Director of the Service Learning Center. Service Learning is basically the idea of utilizing community service and civic engagement for learning and development. Some of my absolute favorite ministry experiences have been starting, facilitating and leading the ministry teams to Los Angeles and New Orleans. I LOVE facilitating people’s engagement in the city, training around issues of justice etc. and empowering people to learn through experience. So it sounds to me like that is what this job is, but from a secular standpoint. Basically I would be working with students to empower their learning and provide opportunities for them with non-profits in the city. So I think this includes training and recruitment as well as individual coaching for students. AND the external component is networking and building relationships with a lot of non-profits in the city to know their needs and to match students with them as volunteers. SO SO SO FUN!! Honestly, I get really excited when I think and talk about it!

So I’ve applied but the job doesn’t close until May 31st and I shouldn’t expect to hear anything until 2 to 3 weeks after that. So I’d love your prayers for this job! I’ll continue to look for and apply for other positions in the mean time! We’ll see what the Lord does, but it feels so good to be excited about something and from what I know right now I think that this would be a really amazing opportunity and something that would release me into some of my passions and gifts that I wasn’t utilizing at Multnomah as well as some that I were!!! I hope I hope!! Thanks for all of your support everyone–it’s meant so much to know you are standing with me!!

There are at least a few times in my life where I have distinctly felt to be the oppressor. In truth, it is this feeling has driven much of my passion, much of what I believe to be true, much of how I lead and love. The most recent time I felt this was on a bus ride. We had just traveled down a deep, zigzag mountain (where I feared for my life hanging over the cliffs at the back of the bus!!!) on our descent into Jericho. I wrote furiously in my journal on our ascent later that afternoon and posted it as a blog last June (My Name is Americana), so I’ll spare you the details again. Distinct in my heart was the contrast between my comforts in the West and this town I was seeing. I was pierced with the dagger of arrogance, of power and of wealth in comparison to the few people I saw in that city, but the obvious erosion of its streets and homes. I hated the fact that I rode up in a big air-conditioned bus that must have screamed these things, naming me immediately by my resources, by my luxury, by my opportunity and thus immediately forming a chasm between the people and me. That day I was so frustrated, wondering how many Christians like myself travel to the Holy Lands every year to look at dead ruins and pay no attention to the living people in the midst.

Since my time in Israel/Palestine I’ve read four books about the area and the conflict and am currently reading my fifth. As I was finishing up a book this afternoon I came across a story about the Said family. Their story was not particularly unique to me, for at this point in my reading I have heard many stories like theirs. But their story touched me uniquely and brought me back to that day in Jericho. The Said’s were a Christian Arab well-to-do family living in Jerusalem when the war broke out in 1948. The Said’s left their mansion in what is now called the German Colony and fled to Egypt. Upon their return they discovered that their home had been given to Martin Buber, the famous philosopher. Martin would not return the home and appeals in the legal system were unsuccessful. Eventually their home was given to Chile for use as their embassy. And finally their home was passed on to an Evangelical Christian organization. What organization? The International Christian Embassy of Jerusalem. The shock: I sat in that building this summer having a great meeting with one of its staffers. I remember walking up to a surprisingly gorgeous building reminiscent of homes in Southern California, beautifully landscaped and closed off by a security gate. I’ve been reading of home confiscations like this…but today it hit me that this summer I sat in the Said’s home…a home that was stolen. Today as in Jericho, it feels personal.

So what will I do next? I’m still pursuing jobs, but there’s an inkling in me that it might be time to return. I’ve been in touch with Musalaha (the other organization I met with this summer) and am waiting to hear about an internship for the fall. If they have a need and if I choose to do it, I would live in Bethlehem in the Palestinian Territories with an Arab family and commute by bus to Jerusalem for work.

Whether it’s now, or later, I believe that that day in Jericho the Spirit of the Lord was prompting a woman like me, with no understanding of the history, politics, economics, theological complications, no understanding of the world I was viewing every day, to recognize that something is wrong, and so drawing my heart to learn more so that eventually I can do more. That day, the Lord prompted me to consider the role of the Western Church and I wrote this:

“We drove only a couple minutes more into Jericho and the site of an archeological dig, unearthing what may have been the Jericho of the Hebrew Scriptures…the city you brought down without battle. I sat at the look-out with the dig behind us and the lush oasis in front, my eyes filled with tears, considering that we’re studying the dead while ignoring the living …I sat with these ruins of an ancient people behind me–ruins given intricate and thoughtful attention–when before me lay also a lush ruin of humanity’s hostility and the enmity between God and Satan… I wonder how many followers of Christ come here more to see markers of the past (as I have) than to manifest Christ as peace in the present… Oh my God! You ARE peace and you will bring peace and may your people be its bearers!”

I’ve learned a lot since that day, and what begun as a nudge has grown more deeply rooted and better understood. I think the words I wrote were prophetic in my own life as I considered whether we (the Church) are ignoring the living for sake of the dead and wondered what impact we could have if we were to serve the people when we came to the Holy Lands. Turns out that Christian Arabs (Jericho is in the Palestinian Territories and is Arab) have made the same connection and like to call themselves the “living stones.” When I read this, I flashed-back to Jericho. I can’t help but think that the Spirit of the Lord in them was groaning in my Spirit, asking me to pay attention to the living.

So as I pursue jobs and wait to hear from Musalaha, continually my heart is being stirred and I wonder if it’s time to return. I’d love for you to pray with me!

Since elementary school I’ve had goals and dreams. They’ve changed over the years, but I’ve always been a dreamer. Right now though, I’m stumped because all the doors that opened for me to walk through have led to new doors that have turned out to be closed doors and I don’t even know where to knock anymore. And it’s okay, I’m just stumped, knowing that I’m supposed to jump to Him, but having no clue what that means right now. And the thing is, I’ve lived a lot of my dreams already and there’s nothing left that I want to do alone. I have a lot of life I want to live, a lot I want to become, a lot I want to do, but it’s just tiring to attempt to do it alone anymore and the thought of it just seems to drain some of the passion from my passion. I’m ready for shared dreams and shared passion. I still have a lot of passions, it’s just that I don’t have a great desire do them alone anymore, and I think that for now, it’s okay that I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to shepherd and make disciples, I still want to take risks in faith, I still want to train up leaders, I still want to care for the oppressed and I still want to live my life discovering what it means to be an administer of justice, but I also want to be a wife and a mother. I still want a lot, it’s just that something in my heart is hitting a wall, trying to summon up enough strength to start into a new ministry alone again.

Friends in similar positions can relate when I’ve said to them, “I just don’t want the center of my life to be my job or ministry anymore. I’m tired. I’m tired of pouring my life out into so many people, carrying the weight of leadership and the responsibility of shepherding…alone. I want a person to be the focus of my investment and together to pour out.” Yep, that’s where my missional vision tour has left me stranded…and it’s good, just confusing. Now after all the travels I come back with nothing to do: no role, no leadership, no ministry and it’s liberating in a sense because I know how much it demands of me to carry by myself. I know how much my role at times has made me feel unseen no matter how hard I try to be seen. But eventually I have to choose something, and I want to choose faithfully in alignment with the gifts He’s put in me. But I really don’t even know where to look to find it anymore, or even what “it” is. Maybe I’ll know when I see. But in all honesty, part of me wonders if the Lord wants me to push at all. The night before the Teach For America verdict I was literally saying that everything in me “doesn’t want to have to choose this”…making a job the overwhelming place of investment. Well, I guess I didn’t have to…and maybe I don’t have to choose to…but that’s what I’m confused about.

I was just at the gym and before I went decided to download a Francis Chan message to listen to as I exercised. I’ve listed to him maybe once before and turns out that this message was his announcement to the church he began 16 years ago that he and his family were leaving. They aren’t even sure where they are going, they’re just leaving. Jumping In. It was absolutely compelling to listen to a humble, honest and deeply personal narrative of how the Lord has led them to this step that I know is far more intimate with the Lord than their words can touch. I thought wow, a year ago I left a community I’d invested 8.5 years in and I know that for me that was a huge jump–a big risk, big loss, more at stake, more to lose than ever before, outside of my comfort, outside of control, a separation of identity–it was a big jump. So to hear he and his wife say that after 16 years they were jumping into something new without knowing what it was, led me to say out loud on my little spinning bike “YES! YES!”

I’ve been trying to live that way, you know, willing to jump when He says jump. This last year has been intense and I’m left feeling that it is unresolved. Francis said he expects loneliness, pain and greater difficulty in what He is going to than in what He is leaving. I’m wondering if I should have expected this, with joy and hope, but prepared for it, because the reality of the jump leaves me one year later still unsure what I jumped into and where else I’m supposed to jump. But what I love is that Francis knew it was for the Lord–that it wasn’t about what he would do, but about Jesus, about loving Him because He’s worth it…He’s worth the risk, He’s worth the loneliness and He’s worth the loss. If God did withhold his own Son, but graciously gave Him up for us all…then He is worth it. I finished listening thinking that this is the relationship with the Lord I’ve been trying to live all these years and that Francis’ relationship with his wife and children and their unity in risking all to follow Christ wherever He leads is what I’ve been waiting for all these years.

It’s interesting to be a single woman striving to follow the Lord wholeheartedly because, if you wait long enough, inevitably some will think that you don’t want marriage or family, that you are perfectly content leading and shepherding and ministering alone. Inevitably there will be men who wonder if there is room in your life for them or strength enough in them for you. And then inevitably there will be this battle in me, wanting to show that there is space, but also striving to be faithful to use the gifts He’s given me, follow the passions He’s planted in me, even when I know that my doing so may convince them of the opposite. It feels like a catch-22, but I know it doesn’t have to be. For many years I’ve been a woman that wants it all, but sometimes it seems that the reality is that it’s one or the other. Sometimes I feel like I can be a wife and mother OR that I can be a passionate leader, but that I can’t be both at the same time…that either way I have to give up a part of who I am, a core desire of my heart and what I feel to be a call upon my life. Even more, one I feel like I have control of (to whatever extend I have it) and the other I feel like I don’t. So I’m left waiting to be given the freedom to be both at once.

That’s why it’s so encouraging to hear Francis and his wife doing this together and their kids right there with them convinced that it’s time to jump and my heart says, “Yes!” and “Amen!” I know that it’s possible for a family to live taking steps of faith your whole life long and I know it can be even sweeter because it’s together. And something in me thinks it’s stunningly beautiful to live that journey together–a risky faith that abandons all to jump–kinda like a tandem skydive–not only trusting each other, but trusting the Lord together. Beautiful!

I was on a backpacking trip in Montana in high school. At the end of the trip we went white water rafting and at one point pulled our boats over to a place where we could cliff jump from about 30 feet. It’s funny how it always feels higher once you are up on the cliff looking down. So I stood there maybe a bit longer than some, calculating the risk and instead of jumping I stepped off the edge precariously. As my head popped up out of the water my friend Zach said something to the effect of, “Bri, you freaked me out, you were so close to the edge you almost hit your head!” I thought of that today after Francis’ message, how sometimes it can be more dangerous to be tentative, to hold back and to only step half-heartedly.

Even now I think about a high ropes course I’ve been on numerous times and an exercise called the “pamper pole” or “leap of faith.” Basically it’s a huge telephone pole (but a bit wider) like 30 feet high and you climb to the top and find that the top is cut off unevenly. One of the hardest parts of the exercise is to climb from the last handhold to the top of the pole and just stand. Once you do, in front of you, dangling by ropes from opposing trees, is a trapeze bar that you are jumping to. The interesting part is that the trapeze bar, only like 3 feet in front of you, is totally reachable by everyone. But something happens when you are suspended 30 feet in the air from a tall wobbling pole with no bigger space than the size of your shoes on which to stand…if you decide to jump at all, it’s really hard to jump full force. Most people don’t even touch the bar, let alone grab hold of it.

After a couple times at it my routine became to cruise my way to the top and with much shaking and precision with my long frame, get one foot up on that pole. Then with a gust of courage get the other foot up and crouch. Next: Stand. Next: Turn toward the trapeze. Next: stand with my eyes closed long enough to make others uncomfortable, not worrying about the timeframe…and sing, pray, feel the breeze, the whispers of the people waiting below. It’s interesting, when I closed my eyes and used all my other senses it was one of the peaceful, freeing places and I felt like I could stand there for hours. Next: Simultaneously open my eyes and JUMP!! The word “simultaneously” is important in that sentence. There couldn’t be more then a seconds delay between opening my eyes and jumping if I was going to jump with abandon. And it’s amazing how even in that split second, something inside pulls back. I’ve never grabbed hold of the bar. But I have touched it, and just by touching it I am burned with the sense of possibility concerning something that seems impossible to me.

I like to live whole-heartedly–to be all into whatever I am in. I don’t always do this, but I do try, because it seems that if I try to hold back–one foot on the edge, one foot in the pool–then the jump is awkward and it’ll hurt more then jumping all in, or the fall will be a lot funnier to watch! When I say “yes” I want to say “yes” with every fiber of my being, not walking half-heartedly, partially restrained, part tentative, part tepid. Let’s be honest, to live like this is exhausting at times, but I think we were made to live with a passion and fire, and I really don’t know how to live otherwise. I’m not just saying that, I really don’t know how to live otherwise: I’m so driven by passion, so driven by being wholehearted and intentional about everything I choose to invest in, that it can be immobilizing if I don’t feel this passion because then I don’t want to choose anything. And that is not always a good thing!! So I’ve been struggling lately, to know what to do next when my heart isn’t driving me toward anything that I have freedom to choose.

A lot has to be counted a loss to jump: relationships, resources, comfort, pride, security, fear, control…you name it…a lot. I think of standing up on that pole about 7 years ago with a bunch of women I would be discipling all year watching. I was in a time of deep wrestling with the Gospel and how latent my life was with the quest for affirmation, the burden of pushing myself to be strong for everyone around me, the chains of fearing imperfection, vulnerability or brokenness. And though these words weren’t the ones I thought then (and excuse my language), it’s almost as if my heart cried from the top of that pole: “Damn what people think!” because I was beginning to understand that if anything would keep me imprisoned in the hell of myself and my own works–imprisoned apart from Christ and the Gospel–it would be the approval of men. And all of the sudden, suspended in the air in this moment of divine encounter, I was alone with God in the jump, singing in delight, because I could trust myself entirely to Him. No one else could take THAT jump. No one else could take its consequences or rewards. No words can touch the intimate place of the unique jump for each person.

The beautiful thing about that pole called the “leap of faith” is that everyone’s step of faith is different. For some it’s to say no and not attempt it when everyone is watching and some are pushing. For some it’s just to attempt the climb. Some it’s to get half-way up. Some it’s the step up and stand on top, or at least to make the attempt. And for others it’s jumping from the top, touching the pole or outright grabbing hold of that pole and swinging like Tarzan! We might look like a fool. We might fail huge. We might get a hurt a lot. I might lose my home, my job or people I love: I might not grab that pole or even make it to the top. But there is such liberation in the jump–abandonment that is the freedom of faith. The gain that comes as a result of the risk of faith is unsearchable. I think that if I regret anything at the end of my life I will not regret the risks, I won’t regret jumping. Sure I’ll wish I wouldn’t have been hurt or wouldn’t have fallen on my face. But I won’t regret jumping. I’ll regret more what I didn’t try than what I did. I don’t want to end my life with a list of questions that cry “what if I would have jumped?” In a recent conversation with my dad he said something that struck me, “There are few things in my life I regret, but the ones that I do haunt me.” He was concerned for me and didn’t want me to look back with the “what if” question looming over my current crossroads.

So by His strength I am willing to jump, but I’ve just been looking to find where and can’t seem to find it. And part of me wonders if he just wants me to stand at the edge of the pool singing and quieted by the stillness of communion in the wait. So with my eyes open, watchful and attentive I’m waiting to know where, knowing that wherever it is, He’s worth it and He’s in the pool ready to catch me. But for now, I attempt to rest standing up, poised but patient.

(Francis Chan’s message “Surrender” can be found on the Cornerstone podcast on iTunes. Just search Francis Chan and you’ll find it. The message is from 4/18/10).

I have seen the Lord work in my life in a certain way: He will bring an idea to mind to pursue and investigate that will not be the door He opens or the door I choose, but the pursuit of it had me consider things that I would not have considered otherwise. So what began as looking into opportunity A, actually led me to land on B or C, but I would not have gotten there had it not been for the process. So I really believe He is doing the same now. I may have shared this in a different blog, but again a quote by Steinbeck comes to mind, that goes something like this, “One thing late or early can disrupt everything around in, and the disturbance runs outward in bands like a dropped stone in a quiet pool.” I’ve felt all year that the timing of the Lord in arrange the context of my life and my next step will be very specific as He maneuvers different pieces to fit them together!

I really don’t know what to pursue at this point, but the Lord has been speaking consistently and faithfully in unexpected ways to deep places in my heart and I know that far more is happening beyond my vision and that none of this process has been merely about a job. I honestly don’t know what to do right now, but I know the Lord is not done and that at just the right time He’ll bring me to the right opportunity or bring it to me.

I still don’t really have something I want to pursue long term, but I do have a thought of returning to Israel/Palestine for a few months for an internship with Musalaha in the fall, so we’ll see what the Lord does with that. I’ve been reading a lot and am in the midst of three books right now on the conflict and am super intrigued by what I’m learning. The Lord is fostering a passion for that area that I never had, specifically for the church in the West to be taught well and to engage the pursuit of justice and righteousness in that region. I don’t think it’s something I’d pursue long term in terms of living there, but the Lord is augmenting my heart for reconciliation!

Thank you so so so so SOOOOO much for your love, support and excitement for me in this process. I know that so many of you have prayed and remembered me and asked about it and it has meant more than I can say!! Much love!

The last time I sat here was one year ago on a wet Easter Sunday, working on maps for Israel-full of hope, excitement and a sense of new adventure and fulfillment lying ahead. Today I sit on a beautiful spring day that makes me want to live nowhere but here–the kind of day that makes the long Portland winter worth it. What was before me then is behind me now and has proven to be different than I expected, seeing as I knew not what to expect. The land I viewed on paper I have now seen with my own eyes. The life I had hoped would be restored was in fact restored, broken, now being restored again. So today, as one year ago, this place speaks hope over me, speaks memories of joy and anticipation of its soon release, having been cultivated by disappointed once again.

Again and again you have bent my heart toward the eternal, luring me as the sun lures the moon, and always through the the absence of what I had hoped to find or the loss of what I had thought might last. Applause doesn’t: People can only clap so long. Accomplishment doesn’t, for soon I will fail and in the failure discover the true friends and those who were only along for the ride. Success doesn’t, for the more one has the more one wants and it only serves to feed an unappeasable want until the emptiness of “success” is experienced and one realizes that the quest is always incomplete, a desert mirage. Adventure doesn’t, for what began as an adventure morphs into the common so that an entirely different sort of adventure is needed to keep one from the collapse that inevitably chases an adrenaline rush. Love that is true will certainly last, but sometimes because it is true it must be separated from the beloved so that even love carries loss, something You knew all to well on the cross and still know in this very moment in which my pen strikes this period.

And a period is meant to complete a sentence, yet at times I wonder if not a comma would be of better use, or rather, should I say more accurate to Your story, to eternity and its infinite nature. And this is exactly the beauty in all the loss: the promise of restoration, the promise that the period was all along a comma and that what appeared utterly absent or altogether broken was not in its final state. It was yet incomplete, undone, unfinished.

This is distinctly how I feel about this past year, that something is still undone and that perhaps my punctuation of the events, experiences and relationships and their purpose or meaning are ignorant at best. Perhaps my question marks will prove to be exclamation points when all is said and done.

One year ago I sat here with great hope–a sense of freedom to explore new parts of the globe and new parts of myself. All this I was excited to do with You. All this we did. I sit now with a similar feeling that something is rising, something approaching. Something draws near that will bring both liberation and conclusion-beginning and completion. Again it is time to go, but this time I do not yet know to where, to whom, to what, but I do know that the coming week will prove a turning point in my story, in Our story.

On Monday I will know either an opening or a closing, and with this, a decision that will shape my coming years. Ironically, at a time in life where I am tempted to throw in the cards and curl up as a ball and sleep in the corner shadow, You are instead fostering a readiness to go nearly anywhere. I may go to another state in this country and find myself there in seven weeks. I may return to Israel and find myself there in five months. I may be walking new streets with the eagerness that comes to one seeing things for the first time, or, I may be walking streets I’ve walked many times before that have the footprints of old memories, the sweet scent of the familiar or the cut of the same.

In any case, what I know is that the step I take from this place at this time is not significant as much for where I go, but how I go. You have asked me to take up by faith what I have long been laying down by faith (but also by fear). You have asked me to believe. So I pray continually that you will help me in my unbelief and that as a result hope will flourish as it never has and be fulfilled as I never dreamed.

Something is coming. What has been held up within me will find release. What has been restrained for my best will soon be sent in fury for the same. What is broken will be healed. What is empty will be full. What is dead will be raised to life. And as Job’s restoration, it will be restored ten-fold in riches. As Christ’s resurrection it is by faith that I say it will be raised imperishable, raised eternal. For the eternal glory far outweighs the light and momentary troubles because you are the God who redeemed the years the locusts had devoured, and always your restoration of fortune is better than the original treasure. The resurrection is always more beautiful than that which died. Always redemption fosters beautification–a sanctifying of that which is being redeemed. Always what is given back is infinitely better than what was given to You.

Dad always taught us to leave a place better than when we found it. You leave things better than you find them! Yet You do not leave You remain, continuing to make perfect that which you first made holy!

So of this I am fully confident: it matters. All that you have led me to and through in this past year matters. You will waste none of it even though I do not understand what most of it meant or accomplished. Your attention to me is as an artist to his divine masterpiece. You do not miss an arch in your sketch. You do not miss a shade, a color, a texture. You do not, as our postmodern friends might, splash color blindly in hopes that the colors will blend and a portrait will be be painted miraculously. You do not call chaos art. You will not regard the indiscriminate as if it were intentionality. You are intimately acquainted with all my ways, not for my harm, but for my delight; not so that you might mar me in your hands, but so that you can take the wrecked mess and make me beautiful. That I ever even began to doubt this is a disappointment. That I have travelled so long down this road carrying this seed of mistrust is an untold sorrow for us both. For this you have forgiven me. From this you are restoring me. And as the days of first loves fire, I am beginning again to trust your hands.

After all the years Lord, I love you more than at the beginning. I love you more for the hard words you’ve spoken, refusing to patronize me and tickle my ears. I love you more for the pain, more for the valley where deaths shadow nearly consumed me and I felt you gone, more for the tears, more for the loss and more for the delight. You delight in me, an unfading delight increased by the years and the wrinkles. And this I am learning to trust: as a daddy loves to delight his baby girl, so you love to delight me.

So today I take up the pen and refuse to put a period, awaiting your word to complete the sentence, or write a run-on as a I love to do!

Follow these next instructions carefully:

1. Take the dvd player and gently set it on your floor
2. Get a Philips head screw driver
3. grab a chair and place it 1 ft away from the dvd player
4. set the screw driver within viewing range of the dvd player
5. verbally abuse the dvd player, paying special attention to threats of dismantle if it does not work
6. try the dvd player again
if the dvd player does not respond put the screwdriver closer and get a hammer and set it on the opposite side of the screwdriver
7. stand on your chair above the dvd player
8. repeat step 5
9. if non responsive get on top of the chair once more and as hard as possible jump down on top of the dvd player
10. repeat step 5 and 6
11. if still non responsive take the hammer and hit it 5 times then take the screwdriver and dismantle it’s eyes (the laser)
take it’s cord and hang it outside from your balcony as a reminder to all the other dvd players
12. go buy another $30 dvd player at wal mart
13. show the new dvd player to the old and taunt it’s lifless frame once more for good measure
14. install the new dvd player
15. after one week bring the old dvd carcass back inside and subject it to watching sound of music for 8 hours on the couch
16. throw the dvd player in the garbage
17. make threats to the new dvd player, suggesting this could be it’s future if it decides to be a slacker and stop working one day
18. grab a bowl of ice cream and have a good evening watching a nice movie.