Forever Faithful...

I recently read an article written by Alex Kirk entitled "Tent Duty."  The article talks about Exodus 33:11 - "The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.  Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aid Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent."  Guarding the tent wasn't exactly a glamorous job, but he argues that tent duty for Joshua was a time of being formed by the Lord, being prepared for his future position of leadership to the nation of Israel.  We all have times of being on "tent duty," and we often don't understand what those times have to do with the work of God in our lives.  There was one part in particular that really stood out to me.  It hit me like a ton of bricks, actually:

In any case, we are seldom given a clear explanation while we’re in the midst of tent duty itself. In that respect it is always a faith-stretching exercise. And the string of questions will lead us to the place we nearly always end up if we have the courage or foolishness to follow the trail long enough: do we trust God to be good? Do we believe that he puts us exactly where he wants us? Have we genuinely given all our days to the Lord to have him order them as he sees fit? Do we trust that it’s all for our good and his glory? Embracing tent duty means looking at odd, discouraging or dry seasons of our lives and leaning into the grace of God. It is a reckless abandonment to the goodness and sovereignty of God. He is forever faithful or he does not exist at all; there are no other choices.

those are all sobering questions.  And they basically sum up the questions that have been swirling around in my head since I got back from Vietnam.  I thought Vietnam was going to be a talking with God "face-to-face, as a man speaks to his friend" kind of experience, but it turned out to be more of a tent duty experience.  It was definitely an odd, discouraging, and dry season in my life, and I'm still asking God what it was all for.  

"He is forever faithful or he does not exist at all."  That's a hard phrase for me to believe, but one that I want to believe with all my heart.  It's still difficult for me to believe that God was completely faithful to me in Vietnam.  Somehow, it's hard for me to believe that it was all for His glory and my good.  But I want to believe.  I want to have faith in the promises of God. 

Maybe more on this later... 

Fridge-Based Communication

I've come to realize recently that I am really, really bad at dealing with conflict.  I don't know if I can even say that I'm bad at it, because if I'm honest, I don't really deal with conflict at all.  

But I've also come to realize that I am not alone in being conflict-challenged.  Actually, I'm in good company.  

For the first month and a half of this summer, I lived in a house that operated mostly out of what my friend Ashleigh called "fridge-based communication."  From the very start there seemed to be a lot of conflicts arising, over using each other's stuff, cleaning (or not cleaning) our dishes, over unexpected guests, and yes, even toilet paper.  But I personally only witnessed one face-to-face conversation about any of these issues, and that happened way before any of it became a huge problem.  From then on, our conflict "resolution" consisted of a series of notes left on the refrigerator, each with carefully chosen words that hid the extent of our frustration, but always had a hint of testiness.  By last week, our communication had deteriorated to the point of there being a different note on the refrigerator everyday, responding to the one left the day before.  The house was split into two groups of people who had known each other prior to moving in, venting our frustrations to those within our group, but never did the two groups meet.

Seriously?  This is NOT the way to deal with conflict and frustration.  Fridge-based communication is a TERRIBLE way to communicate, if it can even be called communication at all.  

Now, I am speaking about this from a position of fault.  I have been a part of the problem.  And all of this has really opened my eyes to how horrible I am at engaging conflict.  This certainly isn't the first time that I've experienced conflict, and it's also not the first time that I have avoided dealing with it like the plague.  But I heard a statistic a couple of years ago that scares me a little, and tells me that I need to learn how to deal with conflict in a healthy and productive way:  The number one reason why missionaries leave the field is... conflict.  Not spiritual burnout, not family problems, not culture shock or even health reasons.  Conflict.  We need to learn how to engage conflict, friends.  If we don't, it will destroy us.  

And I have experienced that destruction first-hand.  I can't even count the ways that failing to deal with conflict has caused pain and hurt in my family.  The words "I'm sorry" aren't heard too often in our house, and I think that has a lot to do with why I don't deal with conflict well.  You do what you see, and I never saw people engaging with conflict in a constructive way.  The hurt and frustration has been building up in all of us and has caused unbelievable damage in each of our hearts.  I don't know if we will ever see the full extent of that damage.  I'm just beginning to dig into myself.  

About a year ago, I was hurt very deeply by a good friend of mine.  We had dealt with conflict before, and apologies had been given on both sides.  But nothing seemed to change, and they continued to hurt me in profound ways.  I haven't shared with them just how much they hurt me, and our friendship is basically non-existent at this point.  And here I am, a year later, and the hurt and anger is rapidly getting worse rather than better.  Whether we can ever salvage the friendship or not, leaving it unresolved is slowly eating away at me and turning my heart black.  Forgiveness becomes more and more difficult with each day that passes, and I don't like the person that I am becoming.  One conversation, or even several, is all it would take to turn this situation into something that could benefit both me and this friend of mine.  Just one conversation.  

I have only recently come to realize how much my aversion to conflict-resolution has affected my experience in Vietnam.  I never told the Vietnamese-Americans on my program how much it hurt me when they constantly left me out of what they were doing, or how isolating it was for me when they talked about Vietnam as "their" country and "their" culture and never tried to include me in that.  I and the other Americans never talked to our Vietnamese roommates about the things that they did that were frustrating and hurtful to us.  We just talked about it with each other, letting the frustration build, never even attempting to resolve the issues with them.  One of my biggest problems in Vietnam was a lack of community and feeling very isolated from the people around me.  I'll never know what might have been had I been willing to lean into these hard situations and work through these conflicts.

But I'm not completely without hope.  Over the past year, I've also been able to meet conflict head-on with a couple of people in my life.  Although I didn't approach them at the onset of the conflict, I wasn't willing to leave my frustrations unsaid and kiss our friendship goodbye.  So I shared with them how I was feeling, and they did the same for me.  And we were able to get past those conflicts and move on.  Now, I will say that both of these resolutions happened over the phone and email, and I really think that face-to-face communication would have been ideal.  But dealing with it over the phone and email is better than not dealing with it at all.  And now I'm starting to see the fruits of resolving those conflicts, and it gives me hope.  Hope that I'm not a completely lost cause when it comes to dealing with conflict.  

Most people that I know would say that they avoid conflict at all costs.  And most of us would probably say that it is just part of our personality.  But I am slowly coming of the opinion that this aversion to conflict is a part of our collective personality that we need to weed out.  At our core we are relational beings, and that has its benefits and its setbacks.  We can gain so much from being in relationship with each other, but we also have the potential to hurt each other in very deep ways.  We need to learn to communicate with each other about those wounds.  We need to have the humility to call each other out in the spirit of reconciliation instead of condemnation, and also the humility to admit when we are in the wrong.  

This is the way of life, friends.  

Thinking about the future

There was a girl who came into Wilson Library yesterday who got me thinking about life after college. She's a rising senior, and is thinking about going into the Peace Corps. And get this: she's already filling out the application. Ahhhhh!

Que freaking out.

This encounter made me realize that I really need to start thinking about what I'm going to do when May comes around. I started looking up some stuff at work (because I have nothing else to do), and it is making me really nervous. I feel anxious, excited, restless, etc. And I hate feeling that way.

Here are the things that I'm thinking about:

1) IV staff - there are many different possibilities within this option

• Regular Campus Staff - a recent idea/interest, not sure what I think about it yet.
• International Student Ministry Staff - I started thinking about this last summer, and I was really excited about it at the time, but it's starting to lose some of it's pull with me. I'm not really sure why, I'm just not as excited about this option as I have been in the past. And that's hard because there are several people who think that I should do ISM staff. But it's still a possibility, bouncing around in my head.
• IV Link Staff - This has been in the back of my mind for a couple of years now, but I'm just now thinking about it seriously. It's kind of at the top of my list right now. It is the option that makes me the most excited, and just looking into it makes me want to go NOW! The only thing about this is that I'll be right out of college, and I'm not sure how I will handle that kind of job right after I graduate, with no real ministry experience, save the leadership positions I've held in IV. But right now, if I was given the opportunity to join Link, I'd leave today.

2) Seminary

• I'm definitely sick of school, so I'm not sure if going straight to seminary would be my best option. And, I'm in debt enough as it is, thanks to my undergraduate loans. I'd rather not jump right into another source of serious debt without having my previous debt taken care of.
• But I definitely want to go to seminary at some point, and I definitely think it can help with ministry. It could also give me a few more years to decide exactly what it is I want to/am called to do.

3) Regular 9-5 job

• Getting a job, any kind of job, that I will work at for a few years to pay off my student loans before going overseas.
• There's also the option of getting a job for a few years with a missions agency, so that I will at least be part of cross-cultural ministry, even if I'm not the one who is going.

4) TIMO from AIM

• This is a 2-year program with African Inland Mission that involves going to a rural area in Africa with a small, multi-cultural team. You spend time learning the language and the culture before beginning ministry that will bless the community. Cultural immersion is emphasized, and the teams do everything exactly the way that the people in the community do it (housing, cooking, cleaning, etc).

5) Peace Corps

• I've been thinking about this for a little while, but not really seriously. I've heard lots of good things about the Peace Corps, and there are a lot of benefits to doing it. But the only downside for me is that most of their programs require specialized degrees and experience, most of which I don't have. So I don't even know how this would work out for me.

One of the main things that I have to consider with all of these is how they will affect me being able to pay off my student loans. I know that IV, at least to some degree, will work with you to raise support to pay off your loans. But I don't know if that also goes for Link Staff, and I have no idea what the situation is with TIMO and the Peace Corps. So that is something that I need to consider.

Not the most exciting post, but I just wanted to get some of these thoughts out there.

Revisiting Jericho

So, a few posts ago, I wrote about the fall of Jericho and how that story parallels our lives, that each of us has a "Jericho" moment.  And I'd really like to expand on that metaphor, and add in a little more personal info.  

Basically, the generation of Israelites that saw Jericho fall had to spend their whole lives in the desert because of the sins and lack of faith of their parents.  They grew up hearing the stories of how God delivered their people from Egypt and all the ways that He provided for them in the desert.  They grew up hearing about the land flowing with milk and honey that they had been promised, that their parents feared to take.  They probably saw the disappointment and shame in their parents faces as they recounted the stories and the promises, the regrets they felt on a daily basis for not trusting God to give the land to them.  I'm sure there was a sense of regret and hopelessness in the lives of their parents as they toiled through their life in the desert, knowing that they had passed up the rich , abundant land that God had offered them.  And eventually, this new generation's time came.  Moses passed away and Joshua was called to lead the nation.  God told Joshua that it was now time to take the land that was promised to their forefathers.  Here was their chance to leave the desert behind.  And not just the desert, but also the shame, the regret, the disappointment, and the hopelessness.  Now was their chance to take God at His word and claim the land that He had promised, and the life that He had for them.  

They took the first step by crossing over the Jordan and setting up their tents between the river and the formidable walls of Jericho.  There they committed themselves to the Lord through the right of circumcision, a practice which had been denied them in the desert.  

So here they were, camped outside of Jericho, so close to the Promised Land they could taste it.  They had plenty of reasons to turn and run, to cross back over the Jordan and continue in the desert-life that they inherited from their parents.  But they also had plenty of reasons to trust the Lord and claim the blessings that He was waiting to give them.  They had a choice to make.  They could run or they could trust.  They could settle for the status quo or demand something more.  

They chose the higher, but more difficult, road.  They chose trust.  And God rewarded them.  He was faithful.  They marched around the city for 7 days, blowing their horns, something that seemed insane and a little bit ridiculous.  But it is what God asked them to do, and the way that He chose to give the city into their hands.  And because they were faithful, the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.  The victory was theirs.

But that wasn't the end of their journey.  Jericho was only a small part of God's promise for them.  There were many more battles to be fought and enemies to be overcome.  And the Israelites weren't always as faithful as they were in this first step.  They made a lot of mistakes, and the scriptures are full of stories of their falling away and coming back to the Lord.  But in the midst of their unfaithfulness, the Lord remained faithful.  He punished them for their sin, but always loved them and never let His anger linger for long.  And one day, from among their own, He brought the Savior.  The One who would reconcile all of mankind to the Father.  Despite the imperfections of His people, God continued to fulfill the promise He had made to Abraham to bless all the nations through Him.  And we are now seeing the fruits of that promise and blessing, in the faces of people from nations all over the earth now praising the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  And one day, the promise will be fulfilled, utterly and completely, and people from every tribe, nation, and tongue will be found before the beauty of the Lord, praising Him forever.  

It is amazing how clearly this story reflects my experience.  In a way, I grew up in the "desert," daily reminded of the sins, regrets, shame, disappointments, and hopelessness of my parents.  And most of that is due to their choices and experiences from long before I was born, or even thought of.  And the ways that those choices and experiences shaped them were passed down to me.  But because I grew up in a church, and had people of deep faith in my life, I grew up hearing about hope, and grace, and love, and the abundant life that God has promised His people.  I knew that I was a part of that, but I was trapped in the desert that I had been born into, trapped by the shame and regret and hopelessness.

But as I got older, God began to call me out of that.  As I became more and more independent from my parents, the message of hope and the promise of abundant life became louder and began to drown out the message of death I had heard from birth.  God called me to "cross the Jordan" to begin the journey of claiming the life He has for me.  The last 2 years of college have been that process for me.  Recognizing the lies about who I am and who God is, and how they have kept me in chains that God wants to free me from.  But also recognizing the truth that needed to replace those lies, and coming to fully understand the life that I was created for.  

Crossing the Jordan was only the beginning.  I finally had to come to a breaking point, a point of decision to truly leave the desert behind and claim the land God has promised.  I committed myself to Him, giving Him my brokenness and asking Him to somehow make me whole again.

And now He is asking me to do my part in that process.  He is asking me to march around Jericho, to follow Him in ways that seem insane and ridiculous to many.  But these walls of Jericho are in between me and a life of love and grace.  And this very city is what kept my parents from claiming that life.  And now I have to make a choice: to run like they did, and camp in shame and despair, or to swallow my fear, trust God, and take the hard road to deliverance.  He is calling me to trust Him and be a part of bringing down that wall, piece by piece.

But even if this process takes 1 year, 2 years, or even 10 years, that will only be the beginning of the journey.  There will be many more battles to fight to fully claim the life of freedom.  Like the Israelites, I will have moments of faithfulness and moments of falling away.  But just as He was with them, God will be faithful in spite of my unfaithfulness.  And somehow, some way, He will call the nations to Himself through me.  And one day, I will be there with them, before the beauty of the Lord, praising Him forever.  

This is my story.  

More thoughts on Being White

I think the side of my genetic make-up that is the most puzzling to me is the 1/32 part that is Native American (what does it mean to be 1/32 something anyways?).  But sometimes I think, what exactly is the story of my Great-Great-Great Grandmother?  No one in my family has ever really talked about her.  Heck, I don't even know what tribe she was from.  But I just wonder how she became part of my family.  How did she meet my Great-Great-Great Grandfather?  Was the family okay with them being married?  Did they make her completely leave her culture behind?  Or did she choose to leave it behind?  Or did she actually leave it behind, or did her kids just not own that identity?  

And that's something else that has been puzzling me recently - choosing your own cultural identity.  I didn't even realize until college that choosing your cultural identity was even an option.  And I've been thinking about it a lot more recently after reading Barack Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, where he talks about consciously deciding to self-identify as black.  And I started to wonder what makes people do that?  He could have just as easily identified as white, or even as mixed.  But he chose black.  And that is what he is.  He is black.  No one has to tell him that he is black.  He made the decision, and now there is no question about it.  

As I think about this idea of self-identification, I wonder what happened with the children of my Native American ancestor.  What happened in the lives of her children, mixed Native American and white.  Did they make the conscious decision to identify as white?  Were they forced into identifying as white?  Or did they actually identify as Native American, and it was the next generation that dropped the cultural identity of their grandmother?  Whoever first decided to identify as white, did they do it just because they looked more white than Native American?  Or did they identify as white because they would benefit more from being white than being Native American?  None of these questions really have any answers, but all I know is that somewhere along the way, our "Native Americanness" was lost.  

And I wonder, did I even have to opportunity to identify as Native American?  I mean, there's so much mixed up in my blood, but in some tribes, even the smallest amount of native blood qualifies you for membership.  Could I have identified as the tribe of my Great-Great-Great Grandmother?  Could I still now, even though my whole life has been built around my identity as a white American.  

All of these percentages are kind of confusing to me anyways.  "I'm 1/32 Native American."  What?!  What the crap does that mean?  And I believe that I've heard somewhere that you have to be 1/8 to claim minority status for applying to colleges, etc.  Why does a person who is 1/8 have more right to claim minority status than someone who is 1/16?  Or even 1/32?  Why do we always have to speak in numbers?  How do you reduce a racial or cultural identity to a simple fraction?  

And what does all of this mean for me... the Scotch-Irish-British-Native American?

So now you're gone, and I'm haunted.

And I bet you are just fine.

Did I make it that easy to walk right in and out of my life?

-- A Fine Frenzy

Being White (or Scotch-Irish-British-Native American)

I'm currently reading the book, "Being White," by Paula Harris and Doug Schaupp. It's a really interesting book, about how as white people, we need to recognize that we have a culture and a history that shapes the way that we interact with people of other races, and the need to learn how to interact with them in a way that celebrates our differences and redeems our relationships with each other. The first three sections are about cross-cultural encounters, cross-cultural relationships (of all kinds), and cross-cultural displacement. But I recently started reading the fourth section, which is on the subject of White Identity.

I've always been of the opinion that white people don't really have a culture. In America, we're made up of so many different things, coming from so many different backgrounds, how could we ever have one, collective White culture? How could all of white history be considered my history? But Paula Harris suggests that we come to a face-to-face acknowledgement of our past. That whether or not we as individuals are personally responsible for the atrocities that white people throughout history have committed, we have indeed benefited from their mistakes. Whether or not we personally, or someone in our family, owned slaves, we are now operating in a system that gives us privilege simply because we are white, and denies certain things to others simply because they are people of color. She asks the question, "Will I have the humility to admit that I may benefit from other white people's racial sin? Will I take spiritual responsibility for my community, even if I don't see how I bear personal responsibility?" (123). Whether or not I see myself as a part of the larger white community, or as personally responsible for the history of white racial blunders, I am white. Other people see me as white. In our society, I benefit from being white. And I see the need to acknowledge that.

But even that acknowledgement is complicated. What does being white mean, anyways, for a person who is a mix of Scottish, Irish, British, and even Native American blood. How do I come to terms with the past of "my community" when that community includes the Scottish; the Irish, who banned the immoral practice of enslaving British prisoners of war in the 12th century, but who played a role in keeping slavery alive when they came to America as immigrants; the British, who played a huge roll in demeaning the darker races through both the slave trade and colonization; and Native Americans, who were oppressed and killed in unspeakable ways by first, the British, and then every other group of white Americans? Where is my identity in that? Which history do I relate to? Which community do I call my own?

More thoughts to come...

Jericho

The story of the fall of Jericho as been in my thoughts a lot recently (hence the new name of my blog).  And I was thinking that all of us come to a Jericho moment in our lives, and sometimes more than once.  

After the Israelites had been rescued from Egypt, they wandered around in the desert for a bit, and then found themselves on the brink of the land that God had promised their forefather, Abraham.  They sent in a few spies to check out the land and to help plan their next course of action.  They saw that the land was good, but feared that they couldn't defeat the peoples that were already living in it.  And so, the Israelites decided not to take the land that God had promised them, and they wandered in the desert for 40 years, until all in that generation had passed away.  

So here they were, the next generation, on the banks of the Jordan with the massive walls of Jericho in the distance.  They knew that the Promised Land was just beyond those walls, but it seemed impossible that they could ever get past them.  The Israelites would have to make a choice.  Would they turn back in fear as they fathers had done?  Or would they trust in the promise of God and claim the land that He had for them?

So here's the deal.  God has a promised land for all of us.  He created us to be in relationship with Him, to live in the freedom of His love and His grace.  But all of us seem to have something that keeps us from this life that God has for us.  Each of us has this huge wall of Jericho that needs to come down in order for us to live in the freedom and grace that God offers us, a wall made up of lies about ourselves, about God, about the world.  Eventually we find ourselves at a crossroads.  We find ourselves, like the Israelites, on the banks of the Jordan with the walls of Jericho looming in the distance.  And we have to make a decision:  Are we going to turn back in fear, and let these lies keep us from the life that we were created to have?  Or, will we make the harder choice, to trust God to bring down the wall of lies and to usher us into a life of freedom? (Thanks Alex).

Under the leadership of Joshua, the next generation of Israelites decided to claim this land that God had promised.  They sent in spies and saw that the land was good, and then decided to trust God to give it to them.   The Israelites chose the way of trust.  And through the power of God, the walls of Jericho were reduced to rubble.  

Are we willing to follow in their footsteps?  

It's time for the walls to come tumbling down.  

Songs that express my thoughts better than I do

Stop and Stare

OneRepublic

This town is colder now, I think it's sick of us 
It's time to make our move, I'm shakin off the rust 
I've got my heart set on anywhere but here 
I'm staring down myself, counting up the years 
Steady hands, just take the wheel... 
And every glance is killing me 
Time to make one last appeal... for the life I lead 

Stop and stare 
I think I'm moving but I go nowhere 
Yeah I know that everyone gets scared 
But I've become what I can't be, oh 
Stop and stare 
You start to wonder why you're 'here' not there 
And you'd give anything to get what's fair 
But fair ain't what you really need 
Oh, can u see what I see 

They're tryin to come back, all my senses push 
Un-tie the weight bags, I never thought I could... 
Steady feet, don't fail me now 
Gonna run till you can't walk 
But something pulls my focus out 
And I'm standing down... 

Stop and stare 
I think I'm moving but I go nowhere 
Yeah I know that everyone gets scared 
But I've become what I can't be, oh 
Stop and stare 
You start to wonder why you're here not there 
And you'd give anything to get what's fair 
But fair ain't what you really need 
Oh, you don't need 

What u need, what u need... 

Stop and stare 
I think I'm moving but I go nowhere 
Yeah I know that everyone gets scared 
But I've become what I can't be 
Oh, do u see what I see...

The Reason

Hoobastank

I'm not a perfect person
There's many things I wish I didn't do
But I continue learning

And so I have to say before I go
That I just want you to know

I've found a reason for me
To change who I used to be
A reason to start over new
and the reason is You

Whisper

A Fine Frenzy

running the race like a mouse in a cage

getting nowhere, but I'm trying

forging ahead but I'm stuck in the bed that I made,

so I'm lying

but if you keep real close, yeah, you stay real close I will reach you.

I'm down to a whisper in a daydream on a hill

shut down to a whisper can you hear me still

eager to please, trying to be what they need

but I'm so very tired

I've stopped trying to find any peace in my mind

'cause it tangles the wires

but if you keep real close, yeah, you stay real close

I will reach you.

I'm down to a whisper in a daydream on a hill

shut down to a whisper, can you hear me

can you hear me

still the sound,

it dies on my lips

to fade away

and to forget

I'm down to a whisper

in a daydream on a hill

shut down to a whisper

can you hear me, can you hear me (repeats) still