deep and rooted

i believe in the life-saving and life-giving power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

and i believe in the immense wild unknown of prayer.

i believe my Father hears me speak and delights to listen.

i believe that Jesus is a mighty healer, that he performed countless miracles while He walked on earth, and that He continues to perform them.

i believe in asking people to be prayer warriors and stand in the gap for everything, because i really do believe everything in life is worth praying about.

but there are things that are weightier and should be treated as such.

so right now, i am asking you to pray for chuck.  pray that his kidneys would miraculously start functioning.  pray that his body would stabilize so the doctors can make their next decisions about what to do for his heart.  pray that they can get a new pacemaker in soon.  pray that he would be filled with hope, peace, and the will to fight.  pray for his story of wonder and redemption. 

ask.  keep asking.  pray without ceasing.

i'll try being delightful

just as a nice change of pace, today i will discuss delightful things.  let's see.  where to start?

1) a delightful memory: in fifth grade, we had classroom auctions.  my favorite thing i ever bought at one of these auctions was a typewriter.  i still own this typewriter, although it is sitting in my parents' basement.  i think typewriters are super cool.  i love the noise they make.  however, when i am writing on my computer, i edit while i type.  so...that would be tedious and awful on a typewriter.  also, typewriters make me think of frank in you've got mail.

2) a delightful movie: you've got mail.  enough said.  but not really...enough good things could never be said about this movie.  i love it, and it tightly binds my heart with mj and jb's. 

3) a delightful near-future event: jb is turning 30 in a few weeks!  this is wonderful, because she has graced the world for three decades.  and because it means i get to go to wisconsin. 

4) a delightful near-past event: i helped pull out one of shorty mcgee's teeth last week.  she was a lot like heather in this whole process...as in, i could have blown on it to make the tooth fall out...that's how loose it was.  ha.

5) a delightful medical update: i used to have nosebleeds alllllllll the time when i was little.  but with the exception of being smashed in the face with a broomball stick and a frisbee, i can't think of any other recent nosebleeds.  heehee...i know you want to see this picture.  classic. 

(for those of you unfamiliar with the situation, i was playing broomball with junior high students and took a stick squarely to the face.  this picture was a few days after it occurred.  the result was a shattered nose, stitches, and two black eyes.  it.was.awesome.  (aside within an aside here: when i say it was awesome, i legitimately mean that.  i love injuries, and this was the first time i had ever gotten stitches.))

6) a delightful heart thing: our small group started last thursday, and i really love them.  i love them so much that i created a spreadsheet that has multiple tabs, and i contemplated how i could incorporate conditional formatting.  community and spreadsheets.  yesss.  which obviously leads me to...

7) a delightful work thing: spreadsheets are sooooo great!  i like that i have a job where i get to use them with regularity.

8) a delightful sports thing: i am delighted by the number of badgers in the super bowl this year.

9) a delightful food thing: aunt sue's tea house in marion certainly qualifies as delightful.  mmm.  tea.  scones.  i am drooling just thinking about it.  must.roadtrip.soon.

i bet you didn't know i had ten delightful things in me today, huh?  here it is:

10) a delightful truth: winter ends.  it always does. 

limbo

oh, the state of limbo.  i'm pretty sure it's one of those small states near new hampshire that everyone confuses. 

my state of limbo has been months long.  and it's annoying.

theoretically, it's about two weeks from being over.  but i doubt that's true.  (how did i wind up as a pessimist with positivity as one of my strengths?  cray to the cray.)

i am a small picture girl.  give me details and a solid framework.  don't ballpark it with me.  don't give me a big picture vision if you can't at least offer me some viable path to get there.  ugh.

...

rant over.  ish.

...

are you feeling like an area (or all) of your life is in limbo right now?  what are your processing strategies?

ice cold

you may have noticed that i was done with people last week.  just.done.

a large part of that stems from the winter.  i don't handle it well, physically or emotionally.  i feel like i have talked about this ad nauseum; sorry, but i'm not sorry.  i am releasing in an effort to maintain some semblance of my sanity during this season.  and it's helped, but this winter just happens to be a beast.

well, the Lord has a sense of humor. 

this girl (the one done with people) got trapped in a house with three other people from saturday night through yesterday morning.

and it was really just what my heart needed. 

as per the usual, it was not what i would have chosen.  i was leaning toward that 'running away and hiding and waiting to slowly evaporate' thing.  but no.  there wasn't a place to run.  i didn't really have much alone time or quiet space.  we were all just kind of on top of each other for days.

the Lord can do some miraculous healing through community, you know that?  i started learning about it on summer project ten years ago, and the lessons just keep coming. 

my heart got a group hug that lasted for days.  and i walked out of there feeling so blessed and thankful that these are my people.  they love me and do life with me.  so that's pretty cool.

i think i'd be really good at

hibernating
any trivia game involving the office
setting a world record for the amount of time spent doing jigsaw puzzles
going extremely long periods of time without talking to anyone
ultimate fighting
being an astronaut
running a cafe that serves one small group of people at a time for about three hours a day
snuggling with babies to keep them warm
living on a deserted island

abundance

just so blessed...

life is not what i expected or hoped for.  but it is rich.  it is rich in love, in hope, in joy.

it's hard to say where this life may take me.  but i am strapped in, eagerly anticipating more.

because that's what he promises: more.  more pain, loss, sorrow, confusion, and being misunderstood--you see, we don't belong here, and this world doesn't get us.  but in every sunrise, he promises more life, more beauty, more delight.  in every rainbow, he promises more faithfulness than we could ask or imagine.  in every star, he promises more generations, more life change, more miracles.

how could i think i was anything but blessed?

something i've learned

emotions are not my master.

this is not an emotions versus reason post.  it's an honest peeling back of some layers around my heart.  i really believe that emotions are good.  and they can be healthy.  except sometimes they aren't.

let me be clear here: it is really important to allow yourself to feel your emotions. 

i have worked hard to do so, because for a long time, i battled depression.  i was at the bottom of a pit and felt everything about a thousand times more than you're really supposed to feel things.  that is why depression is so weighty and why it feels like you can't move.  a pretty natural response, as you are coming up out of that, is to choose to not feel anything at all: it's numb and lonely, but it is lighter.  and easier.

but it's still not very healthy.

so i have actively pursued allowing myself to feel all my feelings, whatever they looked like.  i went from being dead inside to someone who cries nearly every time she prays.  it's weird for me, but it is a direct result of the Lord tenderizing my heart (yes, please do picture pounding the heck out of meat, because that is how it feels sometimes).

and feeling those feelings can be exhausting and downright terrifying.

so sometimes i will feel sad and angry and overwhelmed by the world. and i need to feel them.

but i need to cling tightly to the knowledge that those emotions are not my master.  they do not own me.  they cannot drag me over a cliff.  they.are.temporary.  no matter how heavy they are, they will pass.

this is my hope:
"You have allowed me to suffer much hardship, but you will restore me to life again and lift me up from the depths of the earth. You will restore me to even greater honor and comfort me once again. Then I will praise you with music on the harp, because you are faithful to your promises, O my God. I will sing praises to you with a lyre, O Holy One of Israel. I will shout for joy and sing your praises, for you have ransomed me."  Psalm 71:20-23 NLT