Monthly Archives: July 2006

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How Can This Be??

Our intern, a graphic design major at a UT school, just told me she’s never heard of the EU and doesn’t know anything about it.

Huh???

How is that possible?? How does a 25 year-old graduate from high school and make it all the way through to her senior year of college — including a couple of years for just working and hanging out — and not learn about the fastest growing, most loudly self-promoting, and somewhat influential political body in the world today?? Just what are they teaching in schools today???

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A Possible New Name

My partner and friend in production for our Sunday morning chapel service suggested a new name for me, and my blog, yesterday.

Sound Goddess.

Wha’cha think? Cool huh.

I like it. —- Just not sure I’m ready to change all the links and crap that goes along with a title change…

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Only God Can Do This

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Wade Burleson has a wonderful blog that, if you haven’t checked it out yet, you need to read. Today he had a very thought-provoking post about the tension between mission and military success.

"It bothers me that I am not bothered by the death of by the Islamic fantatics [sic]. I wonder if we in the Christian West are in danger of becoming just like the Muslims in the East."

That statement resonated deep within me. I think sometimes people think I’m either a rabid military fanatic because of my support for them and what they are trying to do in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, or they think I’m a weepy wimp for my grieving over the lives lost in the wars and conflicts going on right now. I sometimes confuse myself for all the emotions running around inside me. There is definitely a tension between the side of me that cries out for justice (and perhaps revenge?) for what the terrorists do and the side of me that just cries out for the lives taken in any military action, including those of the terrorists.

I wasn’t always this conflicted, this emotionally wacky, when it comes to the people of the Arab world. There was a time when it evoked only one emotion. But to explain, I need to start in the middle.

God asked me to go to NAME the spring before 9/11. It was a bit of a shock to me, as I’d spent most of my time in China or Japan and was actually on a 4-month assignment in India when He asked — I mean, if God’s going to send me overseas, I just assumed it would be one of the countries and peoples He’d already planted in my heart. But God’s ways are just a little different than mine….

Anyway, I thought little of His place of choice, other than the oddness of where it was not, until the weekend after the towers fell in 2001.

I remember that as I watched the twin towers fall and the fires in the Pentagon rage something deep within my soul cried out, "Father forgive them! They don’t know what they are doing." I kept repeating that all day long. And my heart grieved not only for the people in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and all their families, but also for the pilots of the planes. They had started the morning thinking they were going to enter Paradise, and be celebrated as heroes. They ended it stepping before Almighty God and being found guilty of grievous sins and not allowed into Paradise for all eternity.

I grieved for what they had done unknowingly yet purposefully.

That weekend however, a great rage grew in my heart. And that Sunday night I sat at Urban listening to Erwin talk about the week’s events and reading from Isaiah 6, and hearing God whisper to me, "will you go? I want you to go to them," and my heart burned with rage and my face burned with tears. An absolute rage and built inside me early in the weekend and came bursting forth like a roaring wildfire in the dry hills of Malibu in October, just consuming everything in its sight. And the tears flowed as I realized just how much hatred had grown in my heart for a people I’d never even met. In my teen years I watched "America Held Hostage" (it later became "Nightline") night after night. I watched Iranians burn American flags and effigies of my President(s) and scream about the infidel Americans and how awful we were and how we must be wiped off the face of the earth. Since that time I’d harbored a deep, deep anger, even hatred, for Arabs in general and Muslims in specific, and I didn’t even know it. Until that Sunday in September 2001.

And on that same night, I heart God whisper to me, "will you go? I want you to go."

Why in the world was God calling me to NAME?? Why was He calling me to be His advocate, His ambassador, His intercessor, for these hateful, hateful people? My mind was consumed with pictures of them as ugly, mean and… hateful… people. And I hated them. I’d never known that about myself till the weekend after 9/11. But it was true down to the core of my being. I hated them, with a passion, and did not want to share Jesus with them at all. And yet here is God asking me to go to them and share the Gospel with them??? Did He not realize what was in my heart? —- Though I didn’t think of the similarities at the time, as I type this now it conjures up images of Jonah, and the shock and confusion he must felt when God asked Him to go to Nineveh.

I struggled and struggled with my anger and hatred — I couldn’t believe I had such a ugly feelings for people I’d never met. I’d never felt that way before. Never realized I was even capable of such deep hatred.

And I fought with God over His "wisdom" in asking me to go. One day He finally grabbed my face in His hands and quietly said, "who better to go than you? Than someone who for so long has hated but will someday love them as I do."

Yeah, I thought that was pretty wacked too. But it turns out… perhaps He was right…

In the following months, as I prepared to go, and the year I spent in the region, God did something I never thought possible. He turned my hate into crazy love, my anger into sorrow and tears, and my questioning of His wisdom into begging Him to rain down and drench NAME with blessing upon blessing. It didn’t come all at once. It came in slow increments. But it came. I learned about the cultures. I learned about Islam. I learned about God’s love for the people. And one day I realized, I loved these people. I cared about them and I wept over them.

All I did was ask God to give me His love for them, since I had none of my own. And I said, "yes. If You want me to go, I’ll go. I think You’re crazy, but I’ll go."

I remember spending many nights in my flat in Cyprus on my knees crying out to God to "let it rain on NAME," on all its peoples; to open the floodgates of heaven and drench them with His love and grace and mercy; to wrap them in His arms and whisper His love and His Truth to them; the Truth of who they really are, the people He sees them as, not the people the enemy has tricked them into believing they are. My heart ached and burned with passion, with love, for the people I once hated.

Only God can do that.

Even though I no longer serve that region as a paid advocate (missionary), I still serve them through my prayers, and through my conversations with people about the region and its people; the beauty not only of the land, but of all its peoples with all their diversity of cultures and religions. I guess you could kind of say I left part of my heart in Northern Africa and the Middle East, and God planted NAME deep within the rest of my heart still in me.

I used to not have any problem with killing terrorists. Now, even though I realize that sometimes their deaths are necessary for the safety of thousands, my heart grieves every time one dies.

Isn’t that weird? And yet kinda cool at the same time.

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Night Sounds

Rain showers rolled through today. Much need rain danced and drenched everything around here. I couldn’t resist taking a few pictures of the flowers on my trees dripping in beauty. I’ll post them whenever I get my film developed.

The rain and clouds cooled the earth and brought temperatures down to a welcome comfortable level. Finally I am able to turn off the a/c and leave my window open to bring in fresh night air.

I love the sounds of Tennessee summer nights. Crickets and bull frogs and other critters create an amazing symphony that soothes my soul more than I can explain.

Is it possible to be born for a particular place? If so, I was born for Tennessee.

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Still

Digging deep is exhausting. Ransacking one’s own heart to get to the core of the pain is not something for the faint of heart.

If I listen to the voices in my head, I am the faint of heart. Yet tonight, and for many many nights over the last two years, I dug deep. I found the pain. And I found it’s source. An elephant sat on my chest and I couldn’t breathe.

I came home and sat in the silence of the night, alternately writing and crying, sometimes both. My journal is filled with tear-stained pages.

Larry seems to be having a similar night as me.

"It’s interesting that God didn’t get angry, as my repeated implications
of nefarious activity in my life might have produced in another. He
knows that what’s really going on is the desperate hope of a very
scared child who has always had to fight for room in which to breathe.
I’ll even fight God for that. Too scared to hope that anything good
could be real, too badly hurt to want to be hurt again, so kill off the
hope and drive God away so that His offers of hope don’t tempt me away
from safety."

Tonight I heard a description of myself that sounded so beautiful; resilient, courageous, gentle, compassionate… I just wish I believed it were true. The mirror I look in shows me a far uglier picture.

So I sat in the stillness, writing on the wet pages of my journal. God sat down beside me and we cried together. I’d forgotten how good that feels. So much time running from myself. So little time sitting in the stillness, letting God drench me.

I know I have come a long way on this journey of healing, health and wholeness. But days like today remind me just how far I have yet to go. Could it be possible that the most painful and difficult of this path lies just ahead, in this very realm of learning to love myself?

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Correction & Apology

I just got a very kind voicemail message left by Michelle at WKRN saying that ABC made the last minute decision to replace "Lost" last night with "George Lopez". My bad for blaming WKRN. It wasn’t their fault and I apologize to them for my tantrum.  Excuse me now while I kick ABC’s butt for not feeding my addiction. I’ll be back soon.

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AAAAUUUGHHHHH!!

ImagesI’m really hating WKRN right now.
This will probably not endear me to Brittney, and it will probably kill my chances of ever being on Nashville it Talking ever again — and there goes any hope of ever getting back on it’s aggregator; I’ve been off it since I moved my blog over to Typepad –but I’m so frustrated with the station right now I don’t care. WHAT are they DOING to me????

ABC’s website says that there is a Lost episode scheduled to air tonight. However, WKRN has for some stupid reason or another decided NOT to show it, but to show some episode of "George Lopez" instead.

Hello?! "George Lopez"??? Come on. You preempt one of the highest rated (if not THE highest rated) shows on your network to show some low-rated, half-wit sitcom? One that I don’t even like?? (because it is all about me, you know) How rude is that.

Don’t they know I’m desperately trying to get up to speed on this incredible show before the OctoberEtc1_c09_f2_1 start of the 3rd season? Don’t they know that now I have to spend $3 to download it from iTunes? Don’t they know how frustrating it is to have to watch this incredible show on my laptop??

I mean, I watch "Lost" faithfully each week. Well, at least I have since I "discovered" its greatness over Memorial day weekend. Not only that, I watch it in real time
— okay, that’s because I don’t have TiVo — but still, I’m watching WKRN through the commercials and everything. And I stay on WKRN for the news. Okay, I’m really waiting for "Sex and The City" to come on, but I choose to keep it on WKRN. And I do think they have the best newscast in Nashville. And I always turn to them when there’s a "storm" on the way….

Is it too much to ask of them to at least keep to the ABC schedule when it comes to "Lost" for such a faithful supporter of the station as me? I mean, come on, guys. It’s been two weeks without "Lost" on the tee-vee. I’m going into withdrawals here. Give a girl a break. Feed my addiction. Please. I’m. Dying. Here.

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New Design & Content

I got bored today and thought I’d change the look of my blog. How do you like the two columns and the color scheme? It’s hard at times because Typepad’s color palette isn’t as wide as I’d prefer. I know I could move on up to something like Word Press, but I just don’t think I’m ready to do that much designing. Perhaps someday, though.

What ultimately necessitated the changes, though, were all the new fun widgets Typepad recently made so simple to add to one’s blog. Take a look around at the sidebars and you’ll see lots of new fun stuff. On the left side there’s things like my "43 Things/Places" lists and over to the right you’ll see a fun little "blog tattoo" with Kanji characters, as well as a OpinMind which feeds a steady list of quotes from this very blog for your enlightenment. Or amusement, which ever comes most.

My list of categories has also changed to a cool "cloud" that highlights the ones I use most.

And while I was at it, I changed a few other small things here and there. Take a look around and let me know what you think.

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How Then Shall We Live?

I spent the weekend glued to the news channels watching events unfold in the Middle East. It was like a bad accident on the freeway and I just couldn’t stop myself from rubber-necking.  It all continues to break my heart; people dying without Jesus; people suffering and grieving, losing everything they own, going hungry and living in fear; terrorists refusing to give up their ways; bombing innocent people, spewing forth hate and encouraging more hate.

I know it all must break God’s heart.

Becky asked a question about my previous post on this war. She asked,

"So how do we live focused on Him…..so those that don’t know…aren’t completely undone??"

Such a good question! But I think you answered it, at least in part, within your question: Keep our focus on God. This is how I believe we keep ourselves from coming completely undone. Keeping others from coming undone is another matter…

After spending many days writing and re-writing this post, all I can truly offer you is the reason I still have hope, the way I still live focused on Jesus, and pray that somehow my post will make sense to you.

My relationship with Jesus is very, very intimate. He has burrowed his way into the depths of my heart and soul and set up camp there. He speaks to me every moment of the day; and yeah, I really do hear His voice. Call me crazy if you like. But God speaks to me, personally. Not just "through His Word", as in through the Bible, but truly in words and images He puts in my head and through strong gut feelings and "knowings" (the only way I know how to express the strong convictions I get at times) in my soul. But more than speaking and revealing, He moves me. Deep within, He excites me and inspires me.

We are connected at a level I have never known before. He satisfies me in a way nothing ever has before. And it just grows deeper every day.

From the time I was little I knew God talked to me. Around 11 or 12 my relationship with God really started developing, as I "discovered" the Bible as something written just for me, like love letters and how-tos and explanations on how things work written with me in mind and in a way I could understand. I had never understood the Bible so clearly before, it had never actually made sense before that time, now suddenly it did; and within weeks I was walking the fields behind my home every morning at dawn and talking to God about everything from the beauty of the sunrise to the speed of the jackrabbits running across the path in front of us to the deeper meanings of Galatians or Ephesians.

Since that time I very often sense the presence of God, literally feel Him sitting beside me, and hear His voice as He speaks to me, jokes with me, points things out to me; I’ve even had visions from Him and dreams too, mostly about current things but a couple of times it was a warning of future danger.

I used to think I was weird; that this kind of thing wasn’t normal for the average Christian. I thought I just inherited it from my mom, who from a very young age used to talk with God in her family’s apple orchards after school, even though she didn’t become a follower if Jesus until she was in her early 20s. Throughout her life she was a very strong prayer warrior. But most people I talked to didn’t have the kind of intimate conversations with God that my mom did and I do. I thought it was sad because I want everyone to know the God of crazy jokes and wild love that I do, but I learned to keep my mouth shut because of the ridicule the church can dole out to weirdos like me.

It wasn’t until I went to Mosaic LA and heard Erwin talk about hearing from God, talking with God, the same way I do that I finally realized, "hey wait. This is the way it’s supposed to be for followers of Jesus! I’m not so weird after all!"

Thirteen years later I am fully convinced beyond doubt that the only way to keep your focus on God, to live focused on Him, is to live in deep intimacy with Him. Deeper than I have even — which is hard for me to imagine, but I know it must exist.

I think this is what is missing in the life of the Church today. We talk about being "on mission" and loving each other and loving those who don’t know Jesus; of being relevant to the culture we live in, of submitting all our dreams to God and of dreaming big with and for God. And we strive and strive and strive to do these things, all on our own. And we feel somehow sinful when we finally fail and cry out to God, "I just can’t do it." When all the while He’s thinking, "of course you can’t! I never made you do to that alone. When are you going to ask me to help you, to do it for you and with you? When are you going to include me in your prayers, and listen to what I have to say, because I am talking you know, or at least I want to and would if I could get a word in edge-wise in your prayer time. Listen to Me! Fight with Me. Include Me!"

When I talk to most Christians outside of Mosaic I still get the sideways looks when I talk about what God said to me recently. Or I get looks of envy, where people tell me how they wish God spoke to them that way, but that He just doesn’t. I’ve always wished I had the courage say what I really think, which is, "bullshit. Yes He does. Or at least He wants to. He wants to talk with you that way. He wants you to hear His whispers and His jokes and teasing. He wants you to fight with Him, to wrestle with Him until dawn as Jacob did. He wants to have the same kind of relationship with you. He wants it. The only one holding Him back is you."

But I think I would get punched, hard, if I actually said that, don’t you?

But I have to tell ya, I sincerely believe, with all my heart, that lack intimacy with God is at the core of what ails most followers of Jesus. Just hearing God’s voice and conversing with Him isn’t enough. I speak from experience.

Even though I have heard His voice since I was very young, and conversed with Him ever since then, it wasn’t until the ache in my soul became unbearable eight years ago that I finally heard God’s whispering promise that intimacy with Him would breathe Life into every dry bone and dead fiber of my being. Many things led up to that moment, too many to talk of here, but I have never been the same since. I have been on a constant thrill-ride journey that continually strips away all my pretenses and all my vices so that I am free to wrap my arms fully around God, around my Bridegroom, and press into Him completely, and be more intimate with Him today than I was the day before.

‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel.  Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.’ " Ezek 37:12-14

Do you really talk to God, like you talk to your friends? Not the holy-church kind of talk — God bless the Middle East and bring peace to the world… — but really talk. "Man, this stinks! This is scary. I don’t know what to do with this. I’m afraid…. I love this! This is so beautiful. What do you think?"

Do you really listen to God, or rather, listen for God’s voice. Not the one that comes from the black ink on the pages of the Bible, though that one is just just as relevant and powerful and meaningful. But do you listen for that still small voice of Holy Spirit, quietly whispering, "I am with you. I love you. No one can snatch you out of My hand. You are Mine. My purposes will stand. I am He. I make known the beginning from the end. I call you friend…."

That is where intimacy begins. In the quiet still whispers of God. In His gentle loving responses to your expressions to Him of agony and fear and, yes, anger. In His call to argue your case with Him; in His willingness to wrestle with you until dawn and in your willingness to open the most fragile places of our hearts and lay them bare before Him.

The question is, will you enter into intimacy with Him? Will you step into that life?

I am convinced that only through this path of intimacy can true peace and hope be found. Only down this path do we learn how to really keep our focus on Him. And only through this intimacy do we really Live.

Does that make sense? Have I lost you along the way? Did I answer your question, Becky? Or just confuse you more…?