something i learned from my friend, sarah

“When John Kavanaugh, the noted and famous ethicist, went to Calcutta, he was seeking Mother Teresa … and more. He went for three months to work at “the house of the dying” to find out how best he could spend the rest of his life.

When he met Mother Teresa, he asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she replied. He then uttered the request he had carried thousands of miles: “Clarity. Pray that I have clarity.”

“No,” Mother Teresa answered, “I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh said that she always seemed to have clarity, the very kind of clarity he was looking for, Mother Teresa laughed and said: “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

child fever

there is a 6 year old boy with two dimples who winks and raises his eyebrows and pretends to hate kisses. who showed up in our extended family with two suitcases; one half-filled with summer clothing two sizes too small, and another one filled with happy meal toys and a superman cape. whose little life was created in a terribly broken world, surrounded by broken people, a boy who i would not blink at the thought of giving everything for.

there is another child who i have the honor of loving on a daily basis. whose little twisted foot and underdeveloped brain make it impossible for him to live an ordinary life. who screams and drools and giggles and only says 3 syllable words. i cannot, for the life of me, shake the desire to take him on the teacup ride at disneyland, imagining his joy and laughter as he spins in circles, as i hold his little body in place.

next door to my classroom, in a class of 3, 4, and 5 year olds with developmental delays, is a darling little boy who has completely captured my heart. he is defiant and angry and complicated and i love him completely. his beautiful soul longs to be valued and cherished and cradled, and it shows in every step he takes. i heard a story once about a teacher who sued for custody of a mistreated child, and won. i get that.

my best friend is pregnant with her first baby. this is a landmark in our lives and in our stories, as she is the first person in my immediate group of best friends to embark on this journey. i always wondered if this is something we would do together, the pregnancy/baby thing. and yet, over the last few months i have come so far from wanting to bear a child. i rarely find myself standing side ways in front of a mirror pushing my stomach out, wondering when there will be life inside of me, like i have far so many years of my life. now, the desire to love a child born outside of my womb has gone from strong, to unquenchable. the holy Spirit has been pounding at the door to my heart, creating in me a sense of urgency to mother a child that isnt mine.


the three little boys in my life have been placed there as a picture of love. to show me how intensely i could love a child that wasnt born mine. when i think of those three boys who were born into hopeless situations and how much i would give up to make their lives whole, i can only imagine what God has in store for the children that are waiting to be in my forever family. waiting and praying and waiting and praying for the things in my life to align as God prepares my heart for what awaits. i can only imagine what he has in store. 

resolve.

when i reflect on my walk with christ, ive seen alot more evidence of his presence in my heart than in my circumstances. i spend alot of time trying to save people and change people and get people to make better choices (by my own obscure standards) for their lives. the thing is, i also pray for these people and ask god to change their circumstances.

i have completely missed the meaning of life. 

there are mountains and valleys and the mountains are amazing and the valleys are supposed to suck. that is the nature of mountains and valleys. in valleys, you cant see beyond what is right in front of you. valleys are hopeless and there is no way out but through. 

when i reflect on my quarter century of life, the moments that have defined me have been equal parts mountain and valley. the mountains have been incredible, but the valleys have shaped the way i see the mountains. on the mountaintop, i see things clearly, i feel exuberant and hopeful and alive and free, there is nothing blocking my view of jesus. these places are often based on the condition of my heart being equal to my circumstances. 

but, oh the valleys! these are the places when my circumstances are often completely out of my control and the only thing i can do is pray for god to change the condition of my heart. and he does! he doesnt often change my circumstances (he can, and he sometimes will) because they are ordained to shape my heart. 

the point is, i have decided that i dont give a damn about circumstances in 2011. last year, i allowed my heart to completely depend on them (ex: we just won a trip on wheel of fortune! life is great!-- or, we just argued for three hours straight! life is horrible!). 

i just want to focus all of my efforts on being the person that God created me to be, and praying (not manipulating) for the people around me to be who He created them to be. 

“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.  I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection.  ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” – Thomas Paine

you know that feeling when you have absolutely no control over anything at all? its kind of freeing. 

figments

i feel really good right now. i mean, i usually feel really happy, but right now i feel really good about life. and not because good things are necessarily happening, quite the opposite actually. its just that bad things dont shake me the way they would have a year ago.
ive been reading about shawn mcdonald. he sings all those catchy worship songs that sound like this "i da wada wada wada waiii need you!" look him up if you want to, hes good stuff. ive always liked his music, mostly because omar is really good at emulating him and i like omar.
but heres the thing, most people (myself absolutely one hundred percent totally included) like to pretend that they are figments. they (we) live imaginary lives and sugarcoat everything and pretend like everything is candy dandy. some people (me) only share the bad when it is happening to someone else, and only share all of the peachy things happening to themselves (myself). this gives everyone else a false sense of what life is like and they start doubting their own lives and thinking that they are the only ones with issues and they start pretending too, and pretty soon weve got a world FULL of figments.
so, back to shawn mcdonald. he is a pretty bomb musician and i wanted to read about his life so i looked him up on wikipedia and saw that he got a divorce in april of this year. i have never, in all of my 7 years of being a christian, ever heard of a divorced worship artist. so, i started investigating and i found his blog and i found his former wife's blog and they laid out the entire event. as it was happening. and still honored eachother and god. it is so refreshing to read. and i was so stoked- not at all because of their crappy situation but because someone finally came out in the christian worship community as a sinner. a broken sinner, (like me) who is in desperate need of grace and knows it and wants other people to know it. so people (like me) who need hope and need to know that im not alone in working through things that are far beyond my realm of understanding can look at a real life, all laid out, a person who messes up- reeeally messes up--- and knows how desperately they need jesus without turning away from him.
i say this all because alot of people think my life is perfect- and its not. when they say that to me, i smile and think "if you only knew." most people i know would say that i have my stuff together and im a good person and i am good at life- and its not fair to think that because then people get false perceptions about their own lives and that sucks. it sucks to think your life sucks when everyone elses life sucks too, but nobody wants anyone to know. its obvious that im not very articulate lately, which is why i dont blog. and also, i want to be real and im not sure how to do that without hurting other people, but i recognize it and thats a start.

here are the blogs i was referring to---GOOD stuff:
Shawn McDonald
Kate McDonald

i wonder what people did before the world needed saving. im assuming that the only instance of this took place in a garden, where a man sat around
naming things
waiting
wandering around
waiting
waiting
doesnt exactly seem like "fullness of life" to me. i wonder if he wondered what he was waiting for.

why sending your 18 year old daughter to europe by herself for 2 months is a great idea

evidently im not very good at commitment. i am not used to blogging. ive "blogged" for 8 years, but theyve always been on my own conditions because the only people who actually read what i wrote were ex-boyfriends and stalkers. no excuses. i really want to write a life update. like, about my 25th birthday indian party. and living my DREAM job. and how being married is so incredibly difficult and omar is still my bff. how i have the most loyal, incredible, supportive friends on earth. or how grad school is the most fun thing on earth.

i think i accidentally wrote an incredibly vague life update just now.

but that is not it. there is more. there is so much more.

once upon a time i went to europe. for two months. alone. with little money. and no plans. it was the best experience of my life. so much of what i know about being a strong, independent woman with a complete and total reliance on my creator comes from that experience. i am constantly drawing back to that time when i need to be brave. when i wonder if i have what it takes to do things. when i wonder if my god will come through. those months were when i got to experience the most pure, raw, version of myself. i am really good at getting off track and venturing far away from myself, and those are the places i draw back to. so, my 18 year old self has been equipping me lately to take on things wayyyyy beyond my scope of understanding and bringing me to a place where i have to just make it happen. make it work. press on. be brave enough to run half naked into the warm ocean water at one in the morning with absolute strangers and splash around and flop down on the sand and not give a damn what my hair looks like or if im saying or doing things that arent ladylike, and hold my pants and my sandals under my arm as i wander barefoot through a city that only days before scared me to death and feel completely at home and safe in the arms of my savior. thats whats up.