Thursday, January 29, 2009

things I haven't felt for a long time

eager.
courage.
purpose.
energetic.
light hearted.
anticipation.
happiness.
strength.
hope.
joy!

welcome back.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Challies on Weakness

Tim Challies' post today on weakness voices a lot of what I've been learning the last few years and months. The following three points are things that God has been showing me during my time in university and I thought I would pass on to those of you who don't read his blog.

I have come up with a list of three reasons that Christians need to be honest about expressing weakness and need.

First, expressing weakness is an expression of humility. Conversely, it is only pride that keeps me from making my needs known and asking others to minister to me. When I am filled with pride, a strong and ever-present foe, I would rather suffer silently than humble myself and allow others to extend help to me. Far too often I have feigned strength when I am filled only with weakness. Far too often I have allowed pride to overwhelm humility and have suffered in my sinful silence.

Second, expressing weakness allows others to plead for me before God. There are times when my prayers are weak and filled with doubt. There are times when I don’t even know what to pray or how to pray for myself. In these times it is comforting to know that others are praying for me and holding me up before the throne of grace. What a blessing it is to be part of a body where we can express the needs of others and bring these before God.

Finally, when I refuse to express my weakness I refuse to give other people the opportunity to minister to me. I withhold a blessing from them. It is a strange fact that, while I am always eager and willing to help those who reach out to me, I am far less eager to reach out to others. I cannot count the number of times that I have been blessed by having the opportunity to help others. While I attempt to see extending help and charity as a selfless act, an act primarily for my own benefit, it is sometimes difficult not to! I have had my faith challenged and strengthened and have been greatly blessed in helping others. When I have heard expressions of gratitude by those I’ve been able to help I have often had to say, with honesty and humility I think, that it was surely a greater blessing to be able to help than it was to receive assistance. Why is it, then, that I am so hesitant to allow others the opportunity to be blessed by helping me? It seems to me that I must be as sinful in refusing to help those in need as I am in refusing to allow them to bless and minister to me when I have need.

I hope you find this beneficial.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

changes

For awhile this past month I've been secretly horrified with myself, quietly confused with what's been happening in my heart and my head. It started one not so great day at Winter Conference when I was in an elevator with some french students. As they were talking, I realized I reallllly couldn't decipher much of what they were saying. In that moment it occurred to me that I didn't want to go serve on a french campus. In fact, in that moment I didn't want to be on campus at all.

These sentiments continued for most of the month. Not because I suddenly disliked campus ministry or the french language. It was, I think, mostly out of a fear of what felt like the impossible. How did I ever think I had what it takes to spend most of my time speaking French? (especially after it's been approximately 2 years since I've taken a french course).

But, as the end of the month approaches and with it comes the very likely prospect of MPD again, and as I considered the possibility of going to Colorado this summer for IBS I became excited. Excited!

And with that excitement came (get this!) a desire to get this MPD thing over with.

I'm getting antsy.

this is a very good sign.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

The Source (Pt 2)

That was a dream I had when I was about 16 or 17. It's always weirded me out, as I'm sure it did you as well. I still have no clue what the whole 'tribe of Judah' thing is in relation to my dream. Part of me wonders if one day that dream will make total sense.

I was reminded of the dream last weekend when I was talking to a friend about development issues. She brought up a story that she had heard that Brian McLaren had mentioned in one of his books. I just found it on Google Books and it turns out he is quoting Jim Wallis. The story goes like this: you see someone drowning in the river beside you. You wade out to rescue them and bring them to safety. As this person is drying off, you hear another scream for help and you see that another person is drowning. You wade out and help save this person, too. you bring them back to the hard, dry land and get them a towel. And then you hear another scream. You're starting to see a trend here and it occurs to you to look upstream, and there are many other people in the water. So you, or someone with you realizes, "We have to go upstream and stop these people from falling into the water in the first place!"

While helping people in crisis is really important, so is stopping those people from getting into said crisis. That's what my heart has been about development, and that is why it's been so upsetting to me because I want to find a source and cut it off. In the face of giant corporations who make more money than most countries do, in the face of rabid armies and all the other various huge challenges, like I've said before. Seems hopeless.

Last night, I was reading Romans 12. The last verse of Romans 12 is one I've heard countless times before. This time it hit me in a new way, as the Word of GOD has a tendency of doing. The verse is, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." I imagine you can see what I saw. I had been overcome by the evil in this world. This verse assumes that it is possible to overcome evil with good, an assumption I had never made before. In fact, I assumed it wasn't possible to overcome evil with good.

As I reflected on this, I could feel it rising in me. I'm getting my fight back.

The Source (Pt 1)

I am under water. In the deep, dark depths of a body of water. I start swimming towards the surface, and can see as I'm traveling too slowly upward that the sky beyond is brooding. There is a storm at bay. But the storm in the sky brings much less fear to my heart than the realization that I am running out of air. My lungs burn, not with the feeling of a race well run but of the desperation of a lack of oxygen. I pump my legs and arms harder and harder. I begin to think that I might not make it to the surface.

There it is! I can feel my hand break the membrane of water into the cold, windy air above. Just before my head breaks the surface I realize the answer to my problems: the tribe of Judah! Somehow this brings relief, from what I'm not sure. As I gasp!!! for air, filling my lungs as deeply as possible with the sweet, sweet oxygen I had been denied for so long, I realize that I am in a very, very large body of water. An ocean, perhaps, as I cannot see land. What I can see all around me, though, are people in various stages of breaking the surface towards the life-bringing oxygen.

But after the wonderful, sweet realization that I have survived I come face to face with the terrifying understanding that I am one of many people here in this angry ocean, with no life boat and no land. I don't know who these people are or why they are here with me; I don't even know why I am here in this ocean, together with these strangers in anxiety but completely alone.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

quarter-life crisis

So I have this bad habit of blogging when I feel kind of crappy and then not updating it when I feel much better a few days later lol. Or in the case of my last post.... hours later?

Last week I kind of had a bit of an identity crisis. Actually, it's kind of ongoing, but it came to my attention last week. I was feeling like I didn't really know what defined me from any other Christian woman my age. I know there are things that make me different from my friends, but for some reason I guess my identity isn't rooted in those things.

I spoke with my counselor about it and she pointed out that if our identity is rooted in our ministry, clothes, family life, friends, money, or other things like this women especially tend towards depression because it's like building your house on sand. It wont hold up in the long run. I've realized that a lot of my identity is based on my personal ministry & who I am to other people. My big question is: if I decided to not finish my MPD (which I wont, I'm just saying hypothetically) what would I do???

I have no idea.

Formerly, I would have been allllllll over something international development related. But at this point in my life, I can't deal with that. Which, I think also lends itself to why I'm kind of identity confused. I used to be the person who would talk about injustice and corporate greed and all this kind of stuff; I was passionate about it. I'm not that person anymore. Well, in some ways I am but in other ways not really. I'm really struggling with knowing how I'm distinct from other friends who also love Canadian indie music and nerdy internet/computer things and art etc. A lot of what I like has to do with other people. I like to bake because I like when people really love my baking and praise me for it. Lame! Where did the self-assured, confident, strong, in-touch-with-who-I-am Jess go from High School? I'm like a giant blob of insecurity now.

Thankfully my counselor gave me a couple exercises to work through to help solidify in my mind "who I am". I realized that it's kind of a process of me understanding how i'm being inwardly renewed day by day. I know that there are parts of Jess from since I was born that are good and will stay a part of me and there are parts that I picked up in my university days that are also good, some that are not so good and need to be discarded. Some things need to be polished and others need to be gutted. This is what's happening to me right now and it can be kind of confusing inside haha. I feel like I'm 15 all over again! Thankfully, though, I'm a little less boy crazy this time around.

But in all, I realize this "identity crisis" that's going on is really important. It feels good to see the fruit of this time being sick. Before I didn't know why this was happening but now I see what it was that needed to change in my life and how I needed to be built up before I get on campus. I was talking to a friend about this and she kind of got all excited because she saw that God was rooting out of me my identity associations with ministry so that I can do it in a healthy manner when I actually get to campus. It's true.

I'm glad.

(side note: I titled this post after I wrote it & found out that my pet name "quarter-life crisis" is a reality for many people my age. Well, according to Wikipedia)

Thursday, January 15, 2009

fact over feeling

Yesterday I was thinking about how a year and a half ago I started to investigate certain doctrinal issues more closely, namely election. As I've investigated more and more I've come to accept and appreciate it. In fact, in the last several months I've really come to find comfort in this theology that keeps God's Sovereignty at the heart of it. In difficult times, I can rest assured that God is sovereign.

Today was another crappy day. Last week was great, this week not so much. At what was probably my worst moments of the day I found these words that Job said:
He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass,
and he has set darkness upon my paths. (Job 19:8 ESV)
The ESV Study Bible note on this verse says:
God's fence had at first kept trouble away from Job (1:10), but now it was a wall that gave Job no way of escape (cf. 3:23). The very scale of his suffering is, for Job, a sign of its divine origin.
God's Sovereignty can feel so wonderful at times and in moments of despair it can feel like a crime against me. Knowing that God allowed me to feel this, allowed me to feel disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. But I know that's the depression talking.

I guess this is just another opportunity for me to learn to love and praise him for what I intellectually know is a very very good thing but right now on this bad day doesn't feel so nice.

Beni soit le nom de Seigneur.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Shepherd

The Lord is my Shepherd.
At December training several problems became apparent in my life. At the time I didn't really know how to deal with them, but God put people in my life to help me identify the changes I needed to make and he gave me people to help me make those changes. Over the last few weeks I've seen Him remind me of these things that I need to process, face, deal with and understand. Realizing & accepting the fact that I'm sick right now has really changed the dynamic of my relationship with God. Finally, after 22 years it has taken burnout and depression to make me really understand the truth that I am a child of God. Child. Admitting that this child needs to be led, taught, disciplined and take lots and lots of naps, admitting that I am not the person I thought I was - and I shouldn't be the person I had been striving to be -- these things have helped me submit to God better and to accept His Sovereignty in my life.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside still waters
Whether we like it or not, whether we feel we need it or not He will bring us to these green pastures. In my case it was kind of forced on me. But as with all things that are introduced to us by God, it was good and I came to like it. As much as August, September, October, November and December were extremely difficult for me; even though I went through many emotions of frustration, anger, weariness, impatience etc. all of these things were good because they brought me to the breaking point where I realized that the life I was living couldn't be the abundant life that Jesus promised me. When Jesus broke me he didn't leave me there to wither and die on my own, he started to put me back together in the most gentle, loving way: he made me lie down and rest in green pastures. These green pastures were hope that after the death of fall (and the death from the Fall of Man) comes the rebirth of spring (and hope in Eternity).

he restores my soul
Burnout was devastating. I was telling my counselor yesterday that burnout wasn't like being broken. In the past when I have felt broken it was like a mirror falling off a wall and breaking. The pieces were still big enough to put back in their original place, even if the mirror didn't look the same as it did before. Burnout felt like being turned into a pile of dust. I felt like even if I knew how to I couldn't go back to who I was. At times, I didn't even know who I was. I felt alienated unto my own self. I do not wish this on my worst enemy. Miraculously, it only took a few months for me to feel like mostly Jess again, even if I'm still not fully healthy yet. It has taken me more than a year to understand in my heart that soul restoration is so much better than going back to being able to function normally. Functioning, getting by, whatever is enough to get work done..... these things are cheap forgeries of the life God intends for us.

And that's the thing about asking God to make you the person He wants you to be. Oh, friend, He will. It just might not feel like rainbows and bunnies and lolipops and giggling babies. But after 6 days of work there is a day of rest, after war is peace, after this sin-filled earth is Paradise and after brokenness/being ground down to a pulp is restoration. Glorious restoration.

Monday, January 12, 2009

i feel like i need to defend myself

For the record I remembered that I'm not totally cynical about the world. There is one topic that I can talk for ages and ages and ages about, with much hope, anticipation, excitement, and zeal. I will explain later, although I'm sure many of you already know what it is.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

l'augmentation de la douleur, le fardeau

In this one book my dad had for his role in church it was listing some traits & cautions of one of the gifts I supposedly have. It was really interesting because one of the cautions really impacted me and brought up what I have been trying to avoid dealing with these past months. It was a verse I know I have read before because I've read the book of Ecclesiastes, but I don't remember it affecting me like this before.
Ecclesiastes 1:18
For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow (ESV).

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief (NIV).
There are a couple reasons why this really hit me. The main reason being that I kind of feel like a bit of my spirit was killed because of my program at university. The information that I obtained about the world and the state it's in was pretty devastating. The nitty gritty details of sin so profound and perverse is overwhelming at best. In the last several months since graduating I knew I needed to do something about the attitude I had developed in response to the pain associated with my program and social justice movements. I just have yet to figure out a way.

A lot of you were at Eastern Winter Conference this past winter break and saw the film that Ken showed at the end of one of his sessions. It was a hard hitting short about the brokenness of the world and the questions we have for God that follow an awakening to this world's evil. I sobbed through the entire thing because it was saying everything I had been feeling. In fact, I couldn't even see the end because my weeping became so uncontrollable and loud.

When I was in university doing readings for my classes, it was not uncommon for me to cry throughout an article. It was not uncommon for me to have to take several breaks from reading just to read scripture to calm my soul. Four years of going deeper and deeper into the darkness of the human soul has got to impact a person. It did. In fact, it impacted me so much that I've felt like I had to completely compartmentalize everything I learned and ignore it because it was just too much to bear. All of the criticisms of each NGO, all of the boycotts of Wal-Mart for terrible human rights infringements and even acknowledgement of these HR tragedies, all of the economic war being waged under our noses in silence, all of the literal war that rages through Congo and Sudan and Gaza, all of the people being assassinated in South America by militias for Coke because these people are trying to fight to be unionized and get a wage they deserve... I've had to ignore it all because I just. can't. deal.

I know that God is Sovereign and that Jesus brings hope to this hurting world; to be very frank, this knowledge is likely the only thing that has kept me from the depths of despair as I've slowly lost all hope for humankind to save itself. I used to be a bright-eyed teenager who really, truly believed that sure there was sin, but there was still hope for us. Sometime my cynicism is overbearing and overcomes the Truth of God's Sovereignty as the weight of the knowledge of sin presses down on my weary little heart. Sometimes it's like I can feel the sin. It feels like an oil spill on humanity. The thick, unrefined oil that kills entire ecosystems in oceans, suffocating birds and fish alike and devastating coastal economies in its wake. Sometimes I see images in my mind of the atrocities going on in the world. Of children being torn from their mother's arms as their village burns in the background. No longer will that boy go to school to achieve his dream of being the village doctor, he is now a soldier. No longer will that joyful girl help her mother fetch the water and care for her little sister, she is now the sex slave of countless young militia boys for the LRA.

This is why I just don't think about it.

And yet, I feel bad about that too. I am confident that God got me into that program. It was a small-ish program of 60 students. My average was 5% lower than the cut-off and I got in when I know they rejected other students. So I know that somehow I should be using this knowledge I received. I know that had I not been in that program there would be a significantly smaller chance I would have joined staff and thus have the joy that seeing lives changed brings in my life.

So what do I do? I think I need to figure out how to channel this douleur into something good... and learn to cope with the vexation that knowledge brings. And talk to my counselor about this, since it seems to have similar roots that all my problems have: understanding what is my role and what is God's role.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

(untitled)

What is it with my email address that I get so many random emails that are meant for other people? Just now I got the following email:
From: S. P.
Subject: paragraph
Madame Losiels superficial outlook on life and only caring about material possessions and destroys their life. Madame Losiel claims “ Oh, nothing. Only I don’t have an evening dress and therefore I cant go to the affair” ( Maupassant 200). Madame Losiel is selfish because she gets invited to an affair and she cant go because she doesn’t have an evening dress. Madame Losiel wants a new dress because she doesn’t want to look poor. She doesn’t care about what people think of what’s inside but what she looks like on the outside. When Madame Losiel thought about her life she couldn’t help but “…. grieved incessantly, feeling that she had been born all the little niceties and luxuries of living” (Maupassant 28). She only cares for material possessions and luxuries. She should be more concerned with the happiness of her husband and a little bit lee of her own. Her own selfish leads to her down fall.
And so, being the person I am I replied. And corrected his/her grammar and wished him/her best of luck. For being someone who is validated by emails, I sure get annoyed when I get other people's mail!

Monday, January 05, 2009

my tragic flaw, according to my 17-year-old self

The last several days I've been going through all my old blog posts from my two previous blogs beginning at age 15. How embarrassing some of those posts are! I've started to put them into a format so I can publish it as a book for my own personal use; I really want to have a copy on my bookshelf! It has been really interesting to read my candid thoughts. I definitely was an annoying 15-year-old. Some of the posts are actually pretty decent. Here's one that I found that still totally applies to who I am today. I remember writing it after we were talking about tragic flaws in an English class.

Friday, December 12, 2003
wheel of fortune
I do. I trust you. I don't even know who you are, but I trust that you wont take what you read, and betray me. You don't even know me well enough to know how to betray me, but nevertheless, I trust you. I walk into relationships trusting, and I continue until that trust has been violated. Is this normal? Maybe. No matter what, it's how I function, how my world keeps spinning. It is how I feel like everything is still ok in the world. It is my justification for all of those starving kids in Africa, for all those children who are slaves in India, for all of those 8 year old girls stolen from their families and put in brothels, for all the things I can't control. It's those scary things that make me trusting. As contradicting as that sounds, it's true. If I give you a chance, if I trust you, if I believe in you, maybe I can do my part. And the thing is, even if you ruin me, eventually I'll forgive you. But, depending on the severity, I may never trust you again. Cunning, though, as you are, you will probably convince me that you aren't as bad as I'm making you out to be. It's not that I don't have any self-worth, and that I an attention seeking person who feeds on acceptance of others. It's far from that. I just like to think that the world is, in the end, a nice place. Sometimes I shelter myself, others I don't. I have met girls whose parents sold them into sexual slavery. My trust has been violated in the deepest way a child should ever know. Yet, I still trust. So, there it is: my tragic flaw. My trait that will, ultimately, (if I were a Shakespearean character) be the cause for my demise.
The only difference between me then and me now is I'm no longer able to believe that the world is truly a nice place anymore.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

praise the LORD!

I've gained 15 pounds since I graduated. I'm at the heaviest I've ever been. It's mostly because of the fact that I don't need to walk that much to get anywhere and so that was my main form of exercise when I was in University. It started to bother me because I kind of envisioned it never leaving and only getting added to more and more and more.

Today dad bought a treadmill. JOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

Goodbye excess weight, hello fitness!

Thursday, January 01, 2009

sovereign hands

Winter Conference this year was quite different for so many reasons. I wasn't really sure how it would go considering my health, but it was pretty good. In fact, the last few days have been quite wonderful. On the evening of the 30th after a fantastic session a bunch of students from McMaster did as they always do and started a worship circle that lasted quite a while. For the last few years it's been the highlight of my conference experience; there's something so different about that student-led worship that is totally incomparable (in my mind) to the corporate worship in the sessions. It's so much more lively, joy-filled and dynamic. I stayed up until 2am taking it all in. The next day I was chatting with Angela and she commented that it was the first time in a long time she had seen me so happy. It's true. I realized I couldn't remember the last time I was that happy.

The rest of the time was just so much better. I felt more like myself as I joked around with my friends I hadn't seen in so long and enjoyed my time with them. It wasn't just that I was with people I hadn't been with in awhile, it was also the joy that I saw in other conference attendees like Mac Cru. There's just something about the Mac students that makes me happy. I love their energy, their creativity and how they seriously know how to have a good time. I felt happy just by being in the same room as them.

So here I sit, alone in my room, having said goodbye to real-life physical interaction with my dearest friends for who knows how long. When I was thinking about it earlier today for a moment I wished I hadn't felt the happiness because it made it so much harder to feel it slip away as I came face to face with my imminent isolation. And as tears stream down my face I realize that wishing it hadn't happened is the hopeless response. If I learned anything this weekend is that I have hope. Christ conquered the grave, so He can surely tear the veil of loneliness and return to me my heart of flesh still beating in His warm, strong, sovereign hands.