be still

for the past while i have complained about how God isn't saying anything to me.
about how He'll say things to me, but not say anything.
or rather, He'll say things to me, but not say things to me.

by that i mean, He won't say what i want to hear.

(God won't be my yes man. dang it.)


i have had slow realisations, however, that He has spoken; He's even repeated Himself. the message has been fairly clear the whole time. and i mean....the whole long time.

some of you will remember when i went to new zealand for holidays over Christmas...in 2009...that was the first time, at the beginning of this rather long season, that He told me to be still.

surprisingly (read: not surprisingly at all) i spent the first seven days of that 10 day trip not resting. i spent it trying to get answers and a plan from God. 10 steps to everything's-great: go!
didn't happen.

on the 8th day (i'm pretty sure on these numbers, forgive me if they're a little off when my memoir comes out) God gave me a but of a....rebuke? no, He just asked me a question: why did I ask you to come here?

BAM! knife to the heart.

to be still, God; you told me to be still.

so here we are, nearly two years later, and it has only just (in the last few months) occurred to me that i have spent a large portion of the last two years being DISOBEDIENT to One who asked me to rest. to be still with Him. to find safe pasture in His heart.

why?

honestly, safety sounded lame.

i think i've written that before. safety sounds so lame when the four years previous to that command ("enjoy safe pasture") were spent waiting for the next big adventure, waiting for my life's calling to the farthest reaches of africa, or the village in the opening scene of the hulk.
missionaries, as a general rule, are waiting to be sent to places that no one else wants to go. even if they don't passionately desire danger, it's always in the back of your mind: God could ask me to live in a cave in iran to minister to cave dwellers. that's probably racist. there are probably as many cave-dwellers there as here. but you get the point, yes?

the point is: i have not waited the last five years for the next great safe-place God was going to call me to. and now that i'm here, in this safe place, i have had a very hard time not resenting it. but God is protecting me, wanting to restore and refresh my heart and my soul and all the rest of me.

He is a good, good Father, who loves His children. He's so great, and i'm so ungrateful. bleh.

here's the thing about rest and restful places and whatnot: if you don't give in, you don't get it.

when you were a kid, did you ever protest going to bed for as long as you possibly could and then once you were in bed you stayed awake for as long as humanly possible just to prove a point?

or kids who don't want to take naps. naps are good. you will be a happier kid the rest of the day if you'll just go to sleep for a half hour right now.

that's me, metaphorically. who loses out on that one? me.

"just go to bed, holly. just rest," says God. *whine, whine, complain* "I'll wait as long as it takes," replies God.

part of me, for a while now, has known what He was asking of me...and i think part of me secretly hoped that if i held off long enough, He'd give up and move on. ridiculous, right? totally. and a word of advice to fellow followers of this hope: He's pretty patient. He could wait years. literally. just for you to learn that one point. just for me to learn to rest in Him.

Be still, O my soul, be still.


one day i'll write about how i've learned to be still. and i'll write about the incredible restoration i find there. the peace, the joy, the contentment, the certainty of faith and the absoluteness of hope.

i still wish He'd just move on, but He's too good for that. and secretly, i'm pretty thankful.

one day i'll get it. i just can't quite figure it out yet.

devoted follower #176

it's been three months since i last wrote anything...coincidentally it's been three months since my favourite funny blogger has written. i think my inspiration may have died with the beginning of the book project that seems to be stealing her from regular posts...(if you've never read hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com, please do, you won't regret it.)

The past few months have been absolutely crazy schedule-wise, and in the midst of all that it's been hard to pinpoint over-arching themes...or even a coherent train of thought...to put into words for a post that's worthwhile. 

so many excuses, so little time. 

the last few weeks, or maybe a month, i'm not sure, God has been highlighting to me the truth and the incredible importance of remembering what all of this--work, days, life, etc--is all about. 

at the end of the day, really every moment of the day, 

it's all about God. 

he started the story long before we were a part of it and he will continue the story (does it really have an end?) after we leave this lovely little planet. when we are born, we enter his story, not the other way around. sure if someone wrote a book about me there would be a page on which God enters my story...but the thing about this life, this present moment, is that we're not all in a book about me. heck, i'm not even in a book about me. we're all in the story of God's eternal kingdom. 

it's not that we're not important...

we're not those people on LOST that no one had ever seen before and therefore it wasn't a big deal when they got killed, or that random guy on the Office who got fired...where'd he come from? 

no. we are shockingly important to God. he is limitless in his capacity, but it's still nuts that he can care so deeply about so many people all at once! however, i think the fact that we know God knows us so well, loves us so much...i think we've turned it around a bit. like cats.*

have you heard that christian you're-super-special slogan, "if you were the only one, Jesus would have died for just you"? it may or may not be true, i'm not sure, the bible doesn't say it, but it has recently begun to annoy me...because he didn't die just for you. he died and rose to reconcile HUMANITY to himself. he died and rose to save us...we are meant to be the embodiment of his kingdom...so he died and rose to save his kingdom. right? (colossians 1:20, aye?)

if, in the beginning of time, God had not desired relationship with a people on earth that reflected to the rest of all creation the beauty of his kingdom come...would he have saved us? 

would he have saved me if the whole goal of the deal was to give me the desires of my heart, as i so often pray? 

or

did he rescue me--die and defeat death--to gain the desires of his heart? 

but the desires of my heart! my inheritance in Christ! my purpose! these are rightfully mine! it's good to seek them with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength!

wait, no. i am to love the LORD with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength. i am to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. not the stuff he gives, not even the desires he gives. just him. him for the sake of all his glory. 

and the desire of his heart that he died to redeem....is me. and you. and us. and those people over there. (crazy.) he is my inheritance, yes, but i am his inheritance. i am rightfully his. 

i have spent so much time seeking the Lord for what he has for me. and when. and how. and why not now? and give it to me now! but i am learning that it's all about, "what are you doing, God? what are you desiring to do? and where shall i serve in that story?"

i don't have an answer to that last question yet, but what i do have is a better perspective of God, his kingdom, and his work on this planet that has allowed me to shake off despondency due to lack of personal calling or vision. i think God has been waiting for me to quit looking for the next page of my own story and start looking at the story he's writing, the next page and chapter in his book. 

because if i'm not keeping a watchful eye on his story--no not just that--if i'm not completely enthralled and obsessed with his story, then what am i doing? i'm just writing some side story that mentions him sometimes, frequently even, but never fully enters or bows to his authorship. his will. his authority. his kingdom come. 

i would rather be Devoted Follower #176 in the credits of God's movie than Holly The Great in my own. 

that being said, i want Devoted Follower #176 to be the girl whose devotion invites into the story Devoted Followers #177-1000, by whatever means the Lord should allow it. 

all for him, only for him.

Oh for grace to love him more...

i am the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be done to me according to what you have said. -luke 1:38

*you know that whole cat attitude..."you love me, so i must be awesome"...random thought, i know, but it was there and i had to write it.

bullet points.

alright. so i'm a little behind my own personal blog-schedule of one per month...
i have sat down a few times (and thought about sitting down a few times) to write, but i just haven't been able to think of anything blog-worthy.

i sort of like to blog mostly as a "note to self: you learned this," but sometimes it's hard to figure out what exactly i'm learning. so i might just, true to my thought processes, do a bullet-pointed list...we'll see how we go.


-pride & humility-
the first shall be last and the last shall be first, aye? but sometimes... sometimes i think that we (read: i) assume that we already are "last" or something, because we don't act like we don't need God and we're not as lame as the pharisees (or are we?) and so we actually start walking around like that "shall be first" part has already come. news flash to self: it hasn't. God does the exalting, i do the bowing down. lower, lower, lower.
like a waterfall: the joy of going lower and ever-giving. (props to hannah hurnard for that observation, and to God for pointing it out to her)
[sub-point: humility before God is a whole new sort of thing. not a new idea... just so much different than humility before people. isn't it? or is it not... because humility before people tends to be stuff like, "sorry, i was wrong," and not acting like you're better than everyone you meet and what not.
humility before God is more like..."woah, i do not know what's best for every person and situation in the world," and in a similar fashion, "not my will but yours... seriously."
my biggest downfall in this is that i have a hard time accepting this moment for what it is, without the things that i want it to be... people and places and such that i think should be in the present moment but are, apparently, in the future (or not).
i'm impatient, and my impatience says to God, "hey, you're not very good at planning." pride.]


-joy & strength-
what strength have we without joy in the Lord?
my day-to-day life doesn't always make me leap for joy; it's a choice to stop and rejoice in the Lord, to remember that my strength comes not from gritting my teeth and making it through, but from delighting my soul in the Lord. why? because i am a spirit with a body, not the other way around. i have to remember where the real food is.


-perseverance & honour-
i have recently been reading excerpts from the aforementioned hannah hurnard's journal, which has been uh-mazing. (do you ever read something that just stuns you? like you just can't make your eyes move past this word, this phrase, this thought...) she wrote, "Shall the clay vessel on the Lord's wheel and under his loving, molding hands, think of pain in the last stage of a long, joyous yielding to his patient fashioning?"
to my heart this said, "have we come so far only to give up now?" and what would such a concession to failure say of our Lord's faithfulness? here we have walked along toting a message of God's unending faithfulness and and unwillingness to concede the fruitfulness of his children, when suddenly all has ceased and we are yet to reach our boldly proclaimed destination. the truth is that it is i, not the Lord, who stops short of the finish line, but the message spoken to a curiously observant public is that maybe this so-called "faithful God" is not so faithful after all. the question that hits my brain and brings tears to my eyes is how could i thus dishonour the Lord? the one who has been so faithful to me? how could i let him be thought of as such? so contrary to the truth i know. (yeah, sometimes my brain talks to itself with words like "thus" and "as such". don't judge.)
surely it is the Lord's to defend is own honour... certainly he is able to make his glory known in all the earth, to every creature... but it is my glory to add honour. it's my glory to defend his name.
if i don't praise his name, even the rocks will cry out. no thanks, rocks, that's my gig.


-the value of blood-
i can't explain this one terribly well, but it's quite certain that the shocking value and necessity of Jesus' blood has been hitting my heart over and over recently, pounding me like sneaker waves. i am nowhere without it. more accurately: i'm somewhere i do not want to be.
the veil is torn and i get to go in now. the sacrifice is made my ransom is paid now. grace. how does that work?
it's like the reality that i am washed clean by Jesus' blood has hit my heart without really going through my brain... i don't get it, but i feel it.


i think that's sort of the end of it. there's more, surely, but one could go on forever rambling about thoughts and such...

oh i lift you high and bow down low;

how high can you be? how low can i go?

compassion: to suffer with. (and the reappearing of hope.)

i have been blessed, after a few months of somewhat aimless search, with two fantastic jobs. when i say "fantastic" i don't mean something along the lines of manning a ride at disneyland or being a chocolate tester at the hershey factory...i mean something closer to, in one case, holding a sick child to whom i can offer little more than a soothing pat and, in the other, teaching a similar child to take his own medicine and feed himself, and hope to shout that he takes the lesson to heart.

a youth shelter and a coffee shop/youth mentoring program.

the one breaks my heart, and the other has that potential, but thus far has only given me incredible hope.

in the process of meeting these kids and hearing their stories, i have rediscovered that compassion is not a gentle, "aww, that's sad," it is, rather, the heart breaking on the rocky ground of another's shattered experience. walking barefoot through the shards of another's hurt.

compassion hurts; it has to.

i left the shelter at midnight last night, taking a deep breath and almost laughing in shock at how intense the last seven hours had been. my first few shifts were with pretty quiet kids, or at times when the kids weren't even around. this shift was anything but quiet, and the kids were all very, very, present...

...i heard more f-words in those seven hours than i have heard...ever in the sum total of my life.

...for the first time, i had to mediate between a parent demanding to take her child home and a child who didn't want to go.

and when i got home, i went straight to sleep so i could get up and work at the coffee shop this morning at 8:30.

i woke up with f-words streaming through my mind, snippets from the kids' shouted "conversations" last night, and sighed a few times, hoping to clear those things from my brain and praying for the child who had gone home with her mother in an attempt to lift the blanket of overwhelmed/defeated feelings.

part way through making lattes i began to feel frustration and tears bubbling to the surface, but explained it away with coffee-related frustrations, until it finally hit me, like a pile of snow collected on a tree branch that finally gave way over my head: i was heartbroken for those kids.

i made it to my car before letting that heartache spill out in tears, and as i drove home past a playground full of kids my heart broke even more over the probability that at least a handful of those kids had similar stories. more of the kids from the shelter came into my mind and their stories and the fact that this shelter, no matter how much they rebelled against the rules and complained about the chores, is where they feel most safe.

knowing that their homes don't feel safe. knowing that their fathers aren't speaking identity and strength, that their mothers aren't speaking love and beauty. that their sense of value comes from things they shouldn't have even experienced at their age. that i can't fix it. it kills me.

i cried for a good long while, and prayed for the kids, and cried some more.

what do you do with that sort of heartache? i collapsed under it for a while.

(and this is where hope enters, or rather, makes itself known.)


this afternoon i recounted my night to Mark, who leads the mentoring program. i shared my heartache, and my frustration that i can't just fix it. we talked for a bit about the possibility of getting some of the shelter kids into the mentoring program, and then he reminded me of one of the most foundational principles of the mentoring program:

we focus on what we can do, and go from there, gradually expanding our circles of influence.

it closely resembles a great thought from one of Mark's favourite people, John Wooden:

"Don't let what you can't do interfere with what you can do."

this reminder brought me back to the surface after my morning plunge into the depths of hopelessness. it brought me back to a healthy level of hope and truth.

i can't fix everything, all at once, but i can do something. and i am doing something: being present. and i need to focus on that until i discover something more i can do. and then focus on that. and go from there.

i realized the importance of this sort of heartache, the holy ache for redemption in a broken world. it's the aching of God's heart. and it made me thankful for the opportunity to feel that pain. and be a part of a band of people who are working to change it.



it's so important to feel your heart break over something completely outside of yourself. to hurt simply because someone else is hurting. to learn compassion in a non-theoretical way. to learn to suffer with. and to remember always that you carry the key to hope. that hope is alive inside of you.



there is (was) this fabulous show called Joan of Arcadia, about a girl in high school who meets God face to face. throughout each episode God shows up as different people, some reoccurring through the series, and gives Joan little missions or tasks that teach her things about herself and life and people.
there are a million objections you might have to this premise, but it's a fabulous show, and after my morning cry-fest and my midday hope-injection from Mark, i watched an episode that i had forgotten about, which brought on another small-scale cry-fest.
i won't spoil it for you (because you will watch it, it's called "Trial and Error", from season two, fyi) but at the end of the episode Joan is heartbroken and hurt, sitting on the city bus telling one of my favourite God characters, a sweet but straight-forward old lady, that she will never love again because it gives the person so much room to hurt you.

God puts her arm around Joan's shoulder and replies, "Do you know what innocence is, Joan? Innocence is more than the absence of guilt, it's having faith that there's goodness in the face of cruelty and pain. Some place you still feel that way. And that's me. And I'll always be there."

God is hope. and he is everywhere. and he is in me.
therefore there is always hope, and hope is always in me.
the key is learning to focus on that hope, no matter how it may seem to shrink beside the tragedy, because it will overcome, is overcoming.

always hope.


"the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." -john 1:5

"if i say, 'surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,' even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you." -psalm 139:11-12

there's a place where i can go and tell my secrets to...

my room has recently acquired some much-needed prettiness after a few weeks of making me want to scream. some of the loveliness is thanks to the morning light peaking through my blinds, and the peaking (rather than gleaming) is thanks to one of them being broken and one being hard to reach, haha. 

due to my love of sharing pretty things, and requests from a certain person, here is a little documentation of some pretty additions, and a few things that still need some prettiness.

how pretty is my doorknob?

bedside. breakfast at tiffany's eye mask courtesy of tessa meakins,

poverty and justice bible courtesy of christina cupitt,

alarm clock courtesy of general mao. 

my bed and such. ignore the chaos to the left...

that lamp has hopes of being a pretty yellow on the bottom 

and having a yellow bird stitched on to its shade in the near future. 

unless i change my mind.

His banner over me is love

  

the o and e are a little hard to see. i'm might have to give them a thin shadow.

the top part of those shelves needs a colour...not sure which one yet.

i knew there was a good reason to have old books: prettiness!

and that little bike is from oxfam, thanks to cayla little!

aww, my little warm friend. thanks to hayley campbell and auspost

(he has a bag of wheat inside that you can heat up and then hug him for hours! it's great)

frame and cup from one of the best antique shops here; paper doll from my mum

1950s phone table? yes please.

my cute little tray, complete with the burley griffin lp, 

from the same shop as the frame and phone table. love that place.

stuff i have, on my dresser. that dresser is hideous without pretty things on top...

it needs to be lovely on its own, but how? we'll see.

who says rubbish can't be pretty?

just to finish, because they're prettying up my kitchen,

some flowers...they're not mine, haha, but i can enjoy them, and i can put them in my blog.

i have recently been reminded by the Lord that he loves when i love to spend time with him.

just for him and not for answers.

he loves to be with me.

and he's with me everywhere, every moment. 

but isn't it nicer to hang out with him somewhere pretty?

there's a reason he put adam and eve in a garden to start with.

beauty is where it's at. beautification is a good thing.

that's all i've got for the moment.

you gotta do what you gotta do.

sometimes you've just gotta blog. and use "words" like "gotta" (and later, awesome things like "btw").
i cannot, in good faith, say that i have very much to write about at this moment, but if i don't start writing nonsense i'll probably never write any sense.

next wednesday marks two months since coming back to oregon. how do i feel about that...





dunno.

but i will say this: God is good. and not because of this or that, it's just who He is. yes He has done good things, amazingly good things, and He will continue to, i am certain of it. and, for that matter, He's doing a good thing now. i just don't see it, sort of how a plant doesn't see the goodness in the pruning.

but faith isn't faith if you can see. faith is faith precisely because you can't see, yes?

and obviously the blindness alone doesn't prove the faith, blindness+belief is what we need--what i need.

this is how we bash down the enemy and combat his lies. he says that God is not good, not faithful, not just. he tells us, just as he told eve, that God is withholding something good from us. and when we give up and agree--there is no point in persevering, God will not come through--we say that satan's rebellion against the Lord was completely justified. we say that the deceiver is telling the truth.

pfff. in the words of the great wrestler, nacho libre: get that corn outta my face! (okay so it's not totally applicable, but it's the feeling of it)

the deal is, standing strong in the face of total chaos or confusion or unknown voids or broken dreams, dead ambitions, relinquished desires: if you can stand there and declare, even in a whisper, "God is good. God is faithful. God is just." then you say to the enemy, "you are wrong." and to the world, "don't listen to him."

"curse God and die!"
shut up, woman!

the victory of Job was not that he skipped and giggled his way through his trial (which satan gave him, not God, btw) his victory was that he refused to side with satan and man (and woman) and say that God was unjust, unfaithful, inherently not good.
he was confused and hurt and his perspective shrunk as the trial went on and he asked hard questions, but he refused to stand down. refused the concede that God must really not be good.

and God refused to concede job's fruitfulness. he refused to let job's life fizzle out into oblivion.

what a beautiful partnership...

God had to remind him of a few things towards the end there ("hey dude, do you know when all the forest creatures have babies? have you counted the stars?") because job wasn't perfect, he was human, but job knew God. and he stood by God. and he knew that God was standing by him. and satan hung his head (or haughtily put up his nose) and walked away defeated.

what an honour. to be on God's team. and win. every time.

i feel like a benched player at the moment. but the team is [always] winning. and i only lose if i defect to the other side. and i will not defect. and i know i'll be back in the game when i've had enough rest, recovery and gatorade (or coconut water, google it).

but mostly i feel like i'm standing blindfolded, knowing nothing of where i'll be led or when or how or if, perhaps, i am presently on a barge floating slowly toward some magnificent unknown land. and i question it, admittedly, quite frequently: still? why? can i know where yet? here? is here okay? can we go faster? did we really have to move in the first place?
but each question has a secondary punctuation of Godisgood. Godisfaithful. Godisredeeming.

and there's the underlying certainty that God paid too high a price for me to let me stay where i am forever and slowly sink into the ground. because underneath are the everlasting arms, yes? most certainly.

does an apple tree stare in jealous longing at the winter berries? i bet so. if it had eyes. but we all know that spring will come and with it bring leaves and then fruit to the apple tree. i just need the same faith for me.

for now my perpetual cry is, "i believe! help my unbelief."

and there's a bit of staring at the sky.
and a bit of staring at the ground.

God is good. God is faithful. God is just.

take that satan.

mi casa

here are a few photos of my new lovely home, mostly for tessa meakins...i wish they were cuter pictures, but i was in a hurry. enjoy! 

*real thoughts on life coming soon*

we have a fireplace. that clock is not in its permanent location...

but those little things above the mantel are lights! cute...

 the cutest piano known to man. i should have done a close-up on the bench, 

it's floral print in yellow, white, orange, and green.
i don't love that lamp (and it's matching partner) but for $5 you can't say no.

our couch, $50 at goodwill! i'm making new pillows for it to go with the piano bench colour scheme i think, borrowed these from my mum in the meantime

one of the closets. that green thing? that's my amazing vacuum.

cutest ever.

our cabinets are legit. they have little knobs that you turn to unlock.

and our landlord put in black granite bench tops the week before we moved in!

aaand that's an espresso machine at the end

the delightful kitchen sink and its sideboards: white enamel. love.

not a fan of those kitchen chairs, but they were free. table cloth: $5 at goodwill

fire extinguisher: apparently a legal requirement, haha

mixing bowl and a sifter. and a flipping adorable bunt pan in the back there! 

 cookie jar :) filled homemade spelt cranberry scones.

 the only part of my bedroom that i love thus far: the liner i just made for my laundry bin

it was an old (very clean) sheet, and it's gathered around the lip with some twine. 

this is not my house, obviously, but it is my northwest home, and it's lovely. 

there's snow on them hills....pretty sure that line is from a movie. 

nope, haha, i think it's, "there's gold in them thar hills," which is much more lucrative, 

but much less applicable.

when my room looks cute, tessa meakins, i will send you photos.

and the door knobs! i have to show you photos of the doorknobs.