I choose to ooze with enthuuuusiasm

Yesterday was reminiscent of when I was sick. Things seemed less bright and hopeful. Today when I woke up one of my first thoughts was, "Ugh. Kathy calls at 12:30. I should make some calls before she calls me. Ugh. I hate calling. When will this be over?!"

I got up out of bed with this bad attitude in my heart. I didn't like how it felt. I thought I had grown out of that in the last couple weeks. It was like pants that fit too tight and give you a muffin top... so unfortunate. I was quickly reminded of prayer. "Lord, I don't want to have this attitude. Help me to see this as an opportunity. Help me rejoice in the calls that I have to make today and help me to make the choice to be happy about my circumstances."

Immediately, I felt hopeful and almost excited to make the scary calls this morning. I used to enjoy clinging to my bad attitudes and hard heart. I think this might be changing. Maybe that's partly what this epicly long MPD business is all about: beating my bad attitudes out of me by forcing me to face them day after day after day after day after day until I don't like them anymore and want to put them to DEATH.

And maybe, just maybe, it's finally working.

again i say rejoice

A few times in the last month I have looked at my life and thought, "Lord, where is your mercy?" I have seen how MPD has dragged on insufferably and most days seem like a struggle to accomplish anything worthwhile. Each time I have thought these things I have felt my heart harden a bit.

Like last fall when I was struck by McCain's concession speech, today God stirred my heart to conviction. All of a sudden I felt convicted of a heart attitude of pride. Who was I that I felt I deserved God's mercy? What brought me to feel like He owed it to me that this season of perseverance would end?

I felt both my heart and my spirit soften today as I acknowledged God's headship in my life and chose to willingly submit to His will for me recognizing that every gift from God is good and should be received with thanksgiving.

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)

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.

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.

yet loved, accepted & adopted

"...but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope — at the very same time." -Tim Keller

Considering what I wrote yesterday, God's grace is even more impossible to understand. In fact, it seems easier to reject - in some twisted way - because we are so hard-wired to want to work for things. I guess that's the pride our parent's instilled in us.

Keller goes on to write,

This creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth. It means that the more you see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and amazing God’s grace appears to you. But on the other hand, the more aware you are of God’s grace and acceptance in Christ, the more able you are to drop your denials and self-defenses and admit the true dimensions and character of your sin.

It's so true. But one aspect that I'm now really struggling to work with is the implication of grace on my work ethic. If I don't have to earn favour my instinct is to become lazy. University taught me to do as little as possible to get by so I can do other things.

This also creates a radical new dynamic for discipline and obedience. First, the knowledge of our acceptance in Christ makes it easier to admit we are flawed because we know we won’t be cast off if we confess the true depths of our sinfulness. Second, it makes the law of God a thing of beauty instead of a burden. We can use it to delight and imitate the one who has saved us rather than to get his attention or procure his favor. We now run the race “for the joy that is set before us” rather than “for the fear that comes behind us.

Something I need to think about a lot. May this sink into the depths of my heart!

(The quotations come from Keller's study Galatians: Living in Line with the Truth of the Gospel)

wicked, vile, base, corrupt, monstrous, reprehensible, iniquitous

"we are more wicked than we ever dared believe..." Tim Keller

The truth of this statement has become a reality for me these past few months. I had heard this statement last from a friend and I knew its truth then. But now, it has become even more real to me. It has become so clear as I have had a better view of my own depravity. Most of us, when we hear this statement, agree with it intellectually knowing that we are all sinners according to Romans.

But before MPD I don't think I really truly had come to terms with my OWN depravity. I knew that other people were murderers and rapists and global conspirators and by definition my sin was equal to theirs. That made me really bad. But I don't think I really felt the weight of my deeds. It was more guilt by association. We all sinned in Adam, therefore I am a sinner.

However, now I know my depravity. I wrestle with it daily, hourly, on a moment-by-moment basis. I usually lose, to be quite honest. It has been the most humiliating, awful experience as I come to see my soul in a way I never thought possible.

Before MPD, this statement was more like a public service announcement to me. Like "FYI, you suck even though you don't really think you do." But it has moved from being a television PSA to something I have experienced. I know understand Romans 7 in a way I hoped I never would.

I now know the hard truth about my ongoing war against my flesh, and yet it's worse than I can even comprehend.

Oh, how pround I have been in ways I did not know.

I concede

This morning I realized a lot of things about the last few months. As I previously blogged about last week, things seem to be finally changing for me. After a phone call from an older, wiser, MDiv toting fellow staff member last night I feel a lot different about my MPD.

I realize that I'm not alone in the way I've been feeling. A lot of people go through varying levels of lonliness & depression as MPD drags on and many succumb to the barrage of lies winnowing in to their mind as I have. This doesn't make me any less of a person, any less spiritual either. Some don't experience these things and that is OK. He reminded me of God's sovereignty in all this, too. That God is even permitting these ridiculous dreams that I've been having these past few years, but God has offered me a way to stand up under this pressure.

I have been weary in doing good; I've been weary in doing anything, really. In my heart, as the date that I've been praying to be on campus approaches, I have been struggling against God.

I am a defiant person. I am stubborn. I will speak my mind even if everyone is telling me to shut up. In my heart I have been the child in a tantrum and God has been the gentle, patient mother trying to dress me as I flail about. I have been the argumentative, nagging, know-it-all wife who drives her husband crazy and every day he has to push away the thought of leaving her. I am the farthest thing from a woman who has a gentle & quiet/meek & tranquil spirit.

Last night John McCain said something that really struck me in his concession speech. He said "I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president." How incredibly humble and gracious that he would sumbit to the leadership of the one he had laboured so hard against.

This morning I realized that I had been treating God as my opponent and not my Lord.

I've decided to stop exerting so much energy in resisting what will come to pass no matter whether I like it or not. I should gratefully accept the Lord's will for my life, even if it is with a tear-stained face because I can hope in the knowledge that MPD will end and one day I will be in Montreal. One day I will be able to use all of these things I'm learning to His praise & His glory.

It feels sooo good.

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

This morning I finally woke up from a 2 and a half month sleep. 

I have been so lethargic, so lazy, so selfish, so unresponsive. I have not been myself, which is in some ways understandable because I'm not used to living here with my friends far away. But I think the most upsetting is that I haven't been excited to go to Montreal and be on campus. I haven't been AS passionate as I usually am. When I do my presentation, I'm always very animated and it's very evident that I care deeply about this -- I've been told that many times by people I meet with. Some have even changed their minds about supporting me because they see how much I care. 

But I haven't cared as much as usual. Last year, going to Montreal and "reaching" quebec was all I could think about. I'd think about it in class, during my QTs, in church, as I was walking to campus, when I was supposed to be writing my papers - or I would try and make a paper missions or something which never actually worked. It was seriously all I could think about. 

Lately, all I can think about is of selfish motivation. Aside from the few times I've fasted because my support coach highly recommended it, I've really not done any dying to self. This summer I've come into an understanding of the harsh truth of who Jessica really is apart from Christ. My pride has been crushed and I was not doing a good job of putting on my new self, and remembering that I'm clothed in Christ's righteousness. Yesterday, after a concerning dream I realized that I have not been fighting the good fight. In fact, I've really just kind of slunk off into the sidelines and been wondering why the heck my team isn't gaining ground. 

Since when have I been so passive? Since when have I not stuck my heels in the ground, set my jaw and gone for what was in front of me? Well.... I guess I have done that. But what was in front of me was not really the end goal, it was some distraction like Jon & Kate + 8 or Digg or something. 

When I woke up this morning, after another weird dream, things were somehow different. My false-hopelessness was gone, my dry heart felt inspired, the cloud of whatever-it-was had lifted. 

It's business time! (just not this kind!)

till death do us part

Mourning is an interesting thing. It's difficult to know if you're doing it right because it's something so unique to everyone. This is a lesson my granny is learning. "What's the hardest part about grampy being gone?" I asked her. "Everything being so unexpected. I never know when a fit of tears will come; if I'll be in the grocery store or if I'll see his signature somewhere and the tears will come. I hate that."

That song-lyric turned cliché phrase is true, you don't know what you've got till it's gone. It's so easy to take for granted the little things. After having a companion for 36 years and then losing them even the little things in life are strange and absurd even. Granny and I were in the grocery store yesterday and she was getting some bacon for breakfast this morning. She stood there over the bacon and said, "Now I have to find bacon that's lean. That was always Bob's job."

How do you start living alone when you've leaned on someone for so long? when your hearts have been knitted together so tightly, when your thoughts and movements run parallel for what you thought would be for much longer. It's hard for her to see these old couples with their walkers taking evening strolls together, and now here she is a 74 year old widow.

James 1:26-27 carries new meaning for me now: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

the end of the.... telephone receiver?

I know I've been talking a lot about this, but it's because it's all that's happening. Me battling my laziness & procrastination. I admit: I'm a fool. I'm illogical and ridiculous and I waste time. This week I had a few pretty good appointments with some solid referrals. One potentially could lead to some MPs which is neat. 

Today after a conversation with my dad and through reading a few chapters of some book about breaking bad habits, I realized that I'm making this all much worse and longer than it needs to be. And then my dad and I watched The End of the Spear. Talk about reinforcing the point that my MPD is really not that big of a deal. You know, since it doesn't involve martyrdom. I hope it's smooth sailing from here. I pray. 

adventures in driving

Wednesday I drove to Elmira where my dad's family is in order to do some MPD. Thursday morning I had an appointment and right after that I had to pick up Angela from her North Africa STINT debrief. The week earlier we discussed how to get there, which consisted of her telling me the name of the place, me searching it on google maps & getting the map. 

Thursday at noon I left St. Clements to drive to what I was led to believe was a retreat centre just south of Guelph. That was true, but not quite what I had in mind. The following was the map I had found in my quick google maps query:

maps wouldn't let me embedd a map, so here's the link to where the wrong directions brought me & where I needed to go. 

So that's pretty easy, I figured. But when I arrived at 12:30 sharp, I found I was in a residential area with nothing like a retreat centre in site. I had no address. All I had was the name of the place that was in an email on my iPod. It seemed as if I was screwed. So having NO CLUE where this thing was I stopped at a gas station and asked if they recognized the name. Being that it was a Christian retreat centre i figured they probably didn't recognize it. They didn't. They did recognize Puslich, ON and gave me directions to that. 

Ok, I realized at this point that I was on a bit of an adventure.

I got to the lights, drove to the next set of lights and found that there was not a gas station like the man had said. I continued on until I did find another gas station and went in for directions again. The guy pulled out a map (funny, you'd think I would have just bought it off of him since it was a store and everything) and showed me where I was. I had gone in the opposite direction the gas station guy had told me. Minor details. So I was twice as far away from where I needed to be. He gave me directions and as I drove I started forgetting them. I knew I needed to turn left in to the 34 & get to Brock St. but where the heck did I turn? My first left? The first stop sign? I took the first left and drove until the next main road. I found myself on hwy 6. Not where I wanted to be. I went down there and took what look like maybe it was the right road. I ended up back on the road I had turned off of that got me to hwy 6. Ugh. somehow i managed to weave my way to the original place that got me onto the 34. 

ANYWAYS, I got VERY LOST. And I still had no idea where this place was. I somehow managed to remember that where I needed to go was south-east and relatively near to the 401. I didn't mean to get onto the 401 but the road i was travelling on just turned into a turn-pike going east on the 401. haha oops. I took the first exit and found myself at a red light turning waiting to turn left. At this point I was soooooo frustrated and still had no idea where I was going. It was 1:45. I had been driving for almost 2 hours. I had previously prayed for a sign -- a physical sign or something else. 

And then there the sign was, in all it's glory. A van pulled across my vision as it turned left in front of me. And there she was, Selina one of the STINTers in the van. I knew that she had come from the direction that I was planning on turning away from. So I ended up turning right - driving, and miraculously found the place. Reunited with Angela!

For amusement sake I will show you the ridiculous route I took in getting to the place:

The pink lightning bolt is where I had my Selina sighting. I'd also like to point out that the purple line is not even the directions the 2nd gas station dude told me to go. He told me to take the 34 straight to Brock St = I wouldn't have a) seen Selina or b) really gotten to my destination like I had hoped. So the getting-lost thing was to my advantage... sort of.