praise the high tower.

so, we graduated from hope for the nations last night, and that is a little weird. it was a lovely time and everyone in my class ate lebanese like piglets (it wsa really good, very similar to some moroccan food, the keftah and chicken were great and the pita and hummus... mm. the howells' house is out on a river in the middle of nowhere and is just full of the spirit. a bride stands on the balcony and welcomes the bridegroom. and *that* is cool. susan teared a little when we gave her her gift, some photos i framed from the trip - the fire from baku (for our god is a consuming fire), the grapevines from shelter now(abide in me and you will bear much fruit), and the broken bread in morocco (this bread that you eat is my body for the life of the world.)

i am so glad that i am here. this was the answer to me asking god for real that i wanted to see his dreams and know if my dreams were his or just silly. and this was the response. my class awarded me with the'unchanging opinion of the unshakable kingdom' award and the theology award. for reporting from the field. :) i love these guys.

my last day teaching summer school. they are so cute. and they really have gotten it latin-wise... now it is just about them learning to grow in discipline and motivation and self-control. i wore my shalwar chemise today to show them and talk about afghanistan a bit. today we send off the morocco team and the england team. so much fun. i wish i was going...

have to decide whether to go to houston this weekend.

look up, not down.

so, i preached. and i did okay. :) honestly, i felt good about it. i was SO long, 45 minutes both times. and for the first time i rocked the casbah note-free. and it was better. for real. lots of my friends came to be my moral support, and that was very nice. mike gave me good counsel and it was SO much tighter the second time. and i decided that i liked it. it was a funny thing, to come back home and preach among these people whom i loved so much and knew so well and who had seen me grow so much... but they loved me and really blessed me. and i ended up with two words from the lord, one about rest and one about planting, and a little money, and so that was an unexpected blessing. i should have watched my mouth a little more... i said some things in the second service with my aunt there which in hindsight i probably should have held my tongue from. but what is done is done, and i will trust the lord. ergh.

am starting to feel new conviction about the way i talk about situations and what is uplifting and what is not. particularly about trey and some of my conversations with him, and about laurie and her decision to marry this guy and what i think about it. because the reality remains that i want to honor god in the way i talk about it and not just be content to have my own opinion, but to trust him and speak in a way that encourages others to.

and it is not that easy.

rachel said to me that the time has come that we not be weapons used against each other. okay. i don't disagree with that in concept... but what does that mean really? i am uncomfortable.

it has been a saturday.

so god gave me a very nice present this morning to run into betsy. we were supposed to have lunch this week and she forgot... so we walked up and down south congress and pushed isaac (and all the guys came and pinched his fat little cheeks) and went to guero's and had juice and talked. she wants to start a christian arts collective and train kids and give them practice in creativity, ways to grow in theater and ways to perceive the good and bad in theater. it was exciting. we are very on the same page about god and life and character and what the school we used to work at is like. she and adoniram want to start a small group in their house. very fun. i am excited to make a new friend who i really think is on the same page with me. and isaac and i played drums on the table and licked the spoons.

so cheers for saturday mornings on south congress and little presents where god reminds me that he has not forgotten.

i also realize that i am not handliing the stress well. getting overwhelmed and a little overstimulated. so holly came up and we drank guinness and polled our friends about eharmony. kristi met a man on it. i am glad for her... but i am opposed to the consumer mindset of posting your picture for approval and the answers to a hundred propositional questions and paying a fee in order to find the love of your life.

ergh.

thanks, bob.

this was a really encouraging read for me today. anyone who has ever suffered from any depression, even a little, or thought that maybe they do or anything, should read it.
click here

and a for-sure thanks to erin, kitty, robin, rachel, and susan, all of whom have helped me more than ever to learn not to be afraid and walked with me as i have tried to press in to the lord in the midst of all this. i love you guys.

playing catch up.

all sorts of crazy things have happened since i last posted. i moved out of my house. i gained two pounds. all my life went into boxes. dixon came to hope in the city. laurie came home from the caribbean and the other laurie got engaged to a man she only met a week ago. all my family came up from florida and trey caught my ice cream at amy's. we spent lots of time at robin and billy's and finished the capstone project. we presented and answered the questions and got told that we were head and shoulders above. billy and i both cried by the end; i felt like i talked like myself. hung out with robin and rachel and fed the birds with zach. mariana learned to write her name. i had a major revelation in st. david's about trust in the lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. spent a day at the office with clark, learned that he is way cooler than i knew, and that i think i will like my job. we found a new home for mr. squigglesworth the fish. watched brett be a rock star and teased him about his cut-off khakis. taught lots of latin to small children and realized that i love this batch of kids but they just don't want to actually work.

how true that is that so often we just don't want to work. and how true it is that i don't want to have to walk this out with god and just have to sit here and feel helpless... i want him to fix it and make me right, here and now. but i am learning to abide, and deep really does call to deep.

i am glad to be here, but i am ready to go home and unload the car and have some quiet and get away. have to work on the sermon. if anyone wants to talk to me about prayer, please call or let me know. it's all about finding out what god wants to do and asking him to do it.

i am not much further than that.

why?

one of my pet peeves for sure is being circumvented.
when someone needs something from me and doesn't bother to ask me... so she goes to my roommate and asks her to get it from me for her.
i hate it. it makes me feel disrespected and not valued. and i want to scream and throw something.
and it's not like i don't usually get her quite cheerfully whatever she needs...

my toes are green.

i feel like a girl who has three dates booked for the same night. i have the capstone to finish, my brother and sister here from florida, and moving tomorrow to do. each which can fully occupy all of your time and attention. today i worked on the project for six hours and tried to encourage the team. mike and i discovered that we have the TOTINOS PIZZA bond, which is serious. then i drove to georgetown and learned to play spit with my stepmother and realized how bad i actually am at doing things under serious timed pressure. and then we went to a cafe and listened to my cousin brett be a rockstar. stringy hair and cut off khakis and mournful lyrics and all. and now i came home to pack...

... and have my last night with two of my roommates. they promise we will hang out next year. and have girl night and all. we'll see. so we are eating ice cream and drinking vino and watching _the insider_. hmm. it is good just to chill out. i had a double espresso listening to brett, but am having a very large glass of chardonnay which is nearly counteracting all that caffeine.

talked to bryan today and was thankful for how much we have worked through to be friends, and the gift it has become to me. prayers for these cool places in pittsburgh, like the old youth hostel and the old fire house, and what could happen in those spaces. i am reminded of how much i still have god's dreams for pittsburgh in my heart, and can't let go of them. i am just waiting to either get to be a part of them or pass them off to someone who is called to do them.

liz brought me some little figures called the fat people, and they are so great. they can go on my desk at church with the sheeps (from our hfn thing about making the peeps into sheeps) and the little babies (who are decker and josiah. at hfn retreat a couple of the girls swallowed these tiny plastic babies like from king cake, because amy was pregnant with the boys and so we thought we would have babies too.) and they can all talk to each other and be friends.

prayed for a righteous man today who suffers as he watches his four year old have leukemia. watched my aunt tonight who no longer has any hair, or eyebrows, or eyelashes, due to chemotherapy. listened to a friend who has suffered so much betrayal. and i was reminded of what is true.

I will extol the LORD at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.
My soul will boast in the LORD; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.

I sought the LORD , and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.
This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles.
The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.

Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
Fear the LORD , you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.
The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.


thank you, god, for so many good gifts. and that you are always with me. i have not been forgotten.
tomorrow will be a new day for sure.

thank you.

my church friends blow my mind. i mean, for real. i am so stressed out, can't deal with much of life, my family is here, i have my major project due on monday, and the house situation is getting really weird. my pastor counsels me that she really thinks that i should try to be out before monday, due to some of the relational situations, and i tell her that i am just not sure that i can deal with the practicality of that. they call tonight at 11 pm to tell me they are all coming over to pack my house and move my stuff on sunday afternoon and i can be here or not be here, up to me, but they have taken care of it.

what a bunch of crazy jesus loving people. they bless me. i am sorry i am so grouchy, god. i for sure do not deserve the freely given, practically demonstrated love that they show me. and my project team tells me to screw the project, it is worth neither my life nor my mental health, and that i should just chill out and be happy.

not sure about that. but i do appreciate feeling cared for and even covered. and that people will step in, no question, you just have to ask. now we'll see if i can deal with all the other emotional stuff connected to this, and not lose my mind. i can't believe how different my life will be in less than a week.

got told today that i was (physically) "wasting away." ha. i ate some amy's ice cream yesterday and schlotskys today. that's enough to keep me from floating off for like 10 years.

i called my dad today to see if he could get bryan the hook up to get a car in pittsburgh. it was funny, i have always known that my dad was glad to use his professional connections for me, but i have never been willing to do it, never willing to talk to him or ask for any favors. i don't know if bryan has any idea. he wasn't a huge help, due to outside circumstances, but he made the calls and called in the favors for my friend just because i asked him to. and there was something in that which was a great gift from the heart of a father.

outwardly wasting away; inwardly renewed day by day.

leadership.

i realize that tonight i feel like i have no idea what it means to be a leader. my inner response is that maybe i am just not one... but what i discover that being a leader is *not* is just to be the one who does it when no one else will. and that is often what i am good at.

ron talks about how a good pastor is the one who helps you to learn to take hold of god for yourself. i think that's part of it. i think reminding people that they *can* do this is part of it. i think believing in the future is part of it, and holding on to it when they don't see it is part of it. i just don't know what to do on nights like tonight, when i really do feel like no one else cares what will happen, and that they think i lack faith or am just paranoid because i want the project to get finished and get finished well. i just don't know how i stir them up to want the result that we are aiming for, to be motivated and committed, without enforcing my own way or structure of doing things on to them.

oh, and i have the father of lies trying to speak to me in coffee shops that maybe i am bipolar.
i was talking to susan about how life has been lately and all my fears and experiences, and this weird guy came up and started quoting what i was saying and that he went to hope chapel and it could all be chemical and maybe i was just bipolar.
great. although i love the way my pastor responded to me and she was like, um, no, that is *not* god. she knew where i went with that from other experiences i have had with bipolar people, and she said, i know how that looks and you are not it.
creepy eyes on that one.

i know it's a lie... but i don't like that he (the one who lies) is even that close to me.

pour the blood of jesus over me.

or at least i should be asleep.

why do you always call me in the middle of the night when you know i am going to be asleep?

i am not interested in playing that game.

snotty? did someone say snotty?

so, my reflection of the night is that 1. it makes my day to meet a man who can make the face of jesus in the foam of a glass of guinness with the nozzle... (at the dog and duck) and 2. i always feel better when i have to pastor someone else through it. not sure if that is a control thing or what, but it makes me calm - and i think i see more rightly - when i sit there and talk someone else through whatever the deal is.

eating is worse than ever on coming back here. i hate it and it feels awful. i can eat a bowl of something in the middle of the day, usually, and can't eat again. which would be fine if i didn't know how abnormal that is. it makes me angry because it was fine overseas... this is so connected to austin and what is true in my life here... and it makes me angry and want to fight. i forced myself tonight, and it wasn't very pretty. the food was good. my body just rejects it.

two compliments today: one was that "you are an older version of stacy cross," which i am so honored by, i mean, because we all know that stacy is the coolest, and then i gave some pastoral counsel to a friend who said, wait, that is exactly what dixon said, and we all know that dixon is the most amazing pastor ever.

so i guess that for a tuesday i am doing okay.

useful things to read on the internet.

here is my reminder to myself when everyone asks me about why i want to go to iraq. no one thinks it's that weird when i, a sometime student of biblical history, want to go to israel and to jerusalem. but iraq is just as intertwined in that time and place and people. there is more history to be made in that nation.

The garden of Eden was in Iraq.
Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq, was the cradle of civilization!
Noah built the ark in Iraq.
The Tower of Babel was in Iraq.
Abraham was from Ur, which is in Southern Iraq
Isaac's wife Rebekah is from Nahor, which is in Iraq.
Jacob met Rachel in Iraq.
Jonah preached in Nineveh - which is in Iraq.
Assyria, which is in Iraq, conquered the ten tribes of Israel.
The Prophet Amos cried out in Iraq.
Babylon, which is in Iraq, destroyed Jerusalem.
Daniel was in the lion's den in Iraq
The three Hebrew children were in the fire in Iraq
(Christian theology also proclaims that the fourth person in the firey furnace was a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus. So he, too, was in Iraq).
Belshazzar, the King of Babylon saw the "writing on the wall" in Iraq.
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, carried the Jews captive into Iraq.
Ezekiel preached in Iraq.
The wise men were from Iraq.
St. Peter preached in Iraq.

there's a spider in the house.

feeling a little better today. the family comes tomorrow, meet with susan on thursday, laurie comes home on saturday, robin on sunday, and on monday the project will be over. there is hope on the horizon. why is it that on the very most stressful week my best friend has to be in the carribbean? i know i was in afghanistan when she was having heart problems, but honestly.

it's funny to me how much more the unfiltered inner voice this blog is. before when i have blogged, it has always been more the writer *in* me or the preacher in me talking... me writing about how i feel or composing or whatever. because of what and how my life is right now, this is just the straight up deal and i use names and everything. and that's how it is. i had to get away from my previous blog, both because i had enough former youth group kids on livejournal and because of the situation i got into with trey. i am *all* about being one unified person and to be willing and able to say the same thing in front of everyone - but there are some things i don't talk about in front of my teenagers.

i need to apologize to melissa for being so stressed about the project. i have been so hurt by the way she has spoken to me and how poorly in some ways all this stuff has been handled, and i haven't been mean but i have let her know how i felt, and not very openly. i was moved to talk to amy about how you see a woman's real character in labor and how she responds in grace and peacefulness... or does she just scream? i don't want to be a screamer. and sometimes it happens, for sure - but i want the situation to bring out my grace, more of it the harder the situation - not to bring out my weakness.

it blessed me to hang with erin this morning. she is having a very similar roommate situation as i am, and it helped me to hear her and to know i am not a reject or a lousy christian or a failure just because i can't handle rachel. she also told me that stacy has panic attacks and was on medication for a while - which also super encouraged me. i need to call her and just hear about someone else's story. if there was one word from god today it was there is not something wrong with you and you are not that weird.

okay. have to work on the project now. there is a people movement waiting to happen in indonesia and a nation yearning to praise the living god.

will someone please buy me the doormat that says GO AWAY?

i am annoyed. for serious. for what people care about, for what they make life about, for how we worry so much over what is trivial and never bother to ask about the things that mean something. we can talk for hours about cartoons and not for ten minutes about substance.

i do admit that today my team was stellar. i have been way worried about the capstone project... ours is due a week from today and we are so not finished... and they came up to the plate today and were ready, whatever it takes. i was so proud of them and blessed by their commitment. mike is going to run with the oral presentation... i am going to organize all the rest. let's say, division of labor.

got fascinated today watching the hot dogs cook on the little heat lamp rotator thing at the gas station. it was weird. what an odd contraption that presents all the different sides of the dog toward the lamp... because the more they are under the lamp the more they plump, and the more they sweat.

this is a strange, strange world that you have made, god, and i do not understand it. and i know full well that i do not belong to us... and i need to remember what that says about me. but i acknowledge you, and your goodness. that you made it, are sovereign over it, and well acquainted with all its ways. and that the destiny it has simply because you are returning is its hope.

come quickly, lord jesus.

please close the door behind you.

i think that my insurance company finally paid my doctor bill, which is a wonderful thing. i have not an extra $500 for them... and that was a terrible doctor experience anyway. try explaining why you fast to someone who doesn't get it and thinks you are probably in a religious cult for it. i am like, my goodness, it is in the bible, and lots of people juice fast or water fast all the time, it was just a few days, and anyway haven't you heard of RAMADAN? money fear is about to infect my house, i know kiva and liz are very worried about it. and rachel sometimes is, her money perspective is all her own. i have a new job that i will start in august that i don't even know how much money i will make at. how weird is that? i know what the current girl makes, so maybe that will be the minimum for it...

haven't talked to bryan in a couple of days and am a little sad for it but not all that worried. honestly, in my current state of unreality, the last thing i could handle is having a fake or inane conversation with him, whom i love very much and care very much about his life. and the second to the last thing i can handle is the propaganda about why rachel is the best thing for me right now. it just breaks my heart to listen to. and there is so much he doesn't know. i wish so much it had not ended up like this. but that's the wrong way to put it, because it is really not like it is the result of certain events... this is just the uncovering, the deepening, and in the end we see the results of the choices that we made...

okay. it is time to get it together and go down to the library and get it going on the project. i know that susan says that my leadership challenge will be to not do the whole thing for them but to challenge them to do it for themselves. thanks, s, a leadership challenge is for sure not what i need at this moment... but we'll see what we can do.

a reminder.

jen lemen writes this week:

sometimes i can get at it with words. sometimes the words help tame the wickedness of memory gone mad, running rampant through my body, making me nauseous, making me wild with beating heart, racing thoughts. sometimes the body can tell secrets my troubled soul cannot access, tales of calm and quiet, deep breath in, deep breath out.
to divide body and mind is to split the soul. to deny the memory of the body is to forget perhaps what is most true, for the body feeds the mind and the mind feeds the body and soon to even speak of them as separate feels silly. we are all one flesh. where else does the spirit move and have breath?

and it reminds me why it is that everyone liked my team emails... why i can write in my journal the things i could never figure out how to say... and why it is that even now i feel like my body betrays me, but in actuality all the panic and anxiety and anorexia and everything else is just reaching down into the secrets that my conscious self cannot yet reach.

mercy, lord.

query.

why exactly is it that follow through seems to be a most difficult skill for my generation?

learning to breathe.

i know that i am scared of being crazy.

this has always been true. i have always been sensitive to the potential in me to be not quite stable and not quite right. and i hate it and rebel against it. i can prove i am in control.

all this week the depression has weighed on me. i think i had my first panic attack. and i woke up last night and could not breathe and i was so scared.

tonight i went to the service at st. david's... and i think god revealed the conflict to me and the purpose in this... am i so rebellious against being broken that it is right for me to bear this, that the glory of god might be revealed in my life? i am afraid of being crazy because it means i am not in control. it means i can't trust what is in my head, that i don't have right judgment or right discernment. non compos mentis: i am not competent.

which is the whole point. and i hate it. why am i so damn worried about being so competent and in control all the time? because it means that i can walk in my own understanding. it means that i can fix it, that i can see what's happening. if i am not competent, if i can't trust my own judgment, then i have no choice but believe that god will speak to me and obey his voice without hesitation. i have to know my place and acknowledge him in all my ways. because for me to have good judgment is not to have to trust in the lord with all of my heart.

forgive me, father, for the depths of my sin. you have burned the book of my rebellion - i know - but i am still so much in need.

if i have to be crazy, or depressed, or panicked, in order to know my weakness,
that you might be strong,
that i might know that my own understanding is not worth leaning on -
then let it be, god.

i love you - and i trust you.

annoyed.

oh god, teach me patience, to not keep record of wrongs. to be slow to anger and quick to love. deepen my heart that i might be very slow to be annoyed. teach me to be humble. it is not about me, and i have to stop reflecting on myself all the time and living in my own world all the time. teach me to love your glory more than my own life.

come in, yeshua. come to me before you come for me. in this hot summer night, all i know is that i need more of you.

the rock.

i think that i am allergic to something. my whole left forearm is turning red and splotchy and itchy. not sure what bit me. (no, teresa, no spiders. we have bees and cockroaches and all sorts of things perhaps - but i don't think we have spiders.)

doing a little reasonable theological research and study. it's time to come back to investing a little more time and effort and thought. will start with the mystics and with the lord's prayer so that i can get the sermon started. i bought a little green book for it all, and everything. which i think i will also take sermon notes in.

the house is quiet tonight, and it is a blessing. i put away all the laundry.. organized some boxes.. am going to paint my nails and do a mud mask and all that kind of thing. go to sleep early. because i can. it makes me sad to be here, because it has been so let go. makes me much more depressed when everything is a mess.... no motivation. there is trash everywhere, one toilet still does not work, and no one does their dishes. cleanliness is next to godliness...

kiva brought me a pair of 6 slim jeans today and they fit very well. it's kind of funny. i sure didn't gain any more weight on the trip - i have no need or desire to lose any more, but i sure don't want to gain any back. any less and i will look kind of sick. i like my weight just like this. i don't want to have to buy any more clothes. the calorie reduction plan worked just fine for me. coffee helps it too.

god is good, whether i am remembering it or not. he is merciful every day. things might feel like they are all falling apart... but this i call to mind and therefore i have hope: because of the lord's great love we are not consumed. i should be consumed and am not. i am preserved, because he loves me.

how easy it is to forget.

Maybe if I continued to remember the decapitated cows in Morocco it would make me a vegetarian. Something in me does not connect that to the fajitas that I eat or the ground beef in a cheeseburger. There was some way-weird tuna at lunch today, too, but Robin and I could not figure out what it was that was wrong with it…

Looking back at this weekend and the things that made me happy... I am a better student than I am practitioner. As I sit here and look at all these passages about how Jesus and Paul responded to Pharisees and how they might respond to Muslims and reading the scripture for the signs of the times in these days… I love it. I love reading the word and seeing the patterns and hearing God speak. But I want that stuff in the schoolroom to come out and change my words in the streets and the way I relate to those who don’t know God. This is a good reminder of why I loved seminary and why I left it to come here. It is easy to love God quietly and in the secret place. It is easy to excel in thinking about God. I want to excel in being transformed to be like God.

And I really want to go and read Phillip Jenkins. I don’t know why I never have.

i-don't-want-to-be-here reflections.

I like Dudley Woodberry because he is a seminary professor for sure. He teaches like one and has slides like one and organizes his thoughts in a lovely professorial way. It makes him much easier for me to listen to and I feel much calmer.

Makes me laugh that I am getting enough better at typing that I can look straight at the speaker and smile and type other things altogether and not make too many errors. When we were overseas and I was using those Arabic keyboards I wondered if I would ever be able to type like a normal person again.

Things are feeling a little bit calmer; I think it has been the choice to talk to friends a little bit and to choose not to go down some of those existential paths that I could go down… but I know there is only yuckiness on the other end. I remember Burke lying under the table and wanting to X himself. Not quite there, thank goodness. Holly and Teresa were good to me. Dixon was his usual pastoral super self. I miss the afternoons of lying on the couch in the youth office and just laying it out with him. We didn’t get much time to talk but mostly ran around after his little boy. Which is fine. And we talked, like we always do, about watching Thomas walk out the plan in Nashville and what it would mean to us church planting a non-Anglican Anglican church.

So, back to processing. What am I thinking now? Trying to be concrete and not vague.
1. God is good, and he is merciful. And he hears us. More than anything on the trip I feel like my love was purified and my heart enlarged. I saw more of his face and heard more of his voice and saw a much larger slice of his life just by walking in the nations. Who God is is good. You can’t walk across North Africa or be in a place where it is harder to be a Christian or see the destruction in Kabul and not understand something new about the glory of God. You can’t walk in the largest mosques in the Muslim world and not see something about the patience and lovingkindness of God. You cannot be willing to go away with him and read lots of Bible and give to his people and not have your knowledge of God be increased.
2. The anointing of God is real and powerful. I felt like there was a mantle of protection that I carried through Kabul simply because God had chosen us to be there. It is not about us but all about him, and when we walk in that place we see so much freedom. The call of God takes all that you are and gives far more than you need. There is no freedom like being given up to God’s purposes. People who are totally regular and certainly not completely healed are walking in power because they said yes to God and were willing to be in with him.
3. It is hard to be in America and be satisfied in normal, suburban, everyday American life. This is my sermon about Ellen Jaspar (Caravans, James Michener) and what is real reality. How I can deal with 18,000 coffee choices and crises over things that don’t matter and spending fortunes on clothing and pointless details and investing whole lives in what never actually impacts a human life toward reality or wholeness. I like Afghanistan because it is real and primitive. Grace is expensive. And we don’t even understand in how many ways we waste our lives.

My personal sort of revelation centers around obedience and sacrifice. I tend so much to sacrifice as my internal protection… and my whole personal mindset is founded around this. I am able to sacrifice and I should do it. It is not usually that I feel like (consciously) that it makes God love me… but just that it is what he deserves from me, and who am I to hold on to whatever it is?

My sacrifice is the work of my own hands that I want to give to God. My obedience is my submission to what God wants to do in me. My sacrifice is motivated by fear; my obedience is motivated by love. And it is not that I have not been obedient; it is more than anything that I need to live because I have heard and not hear along the way. What is a girl to do whose first response is usually to see how much I can sacrifice? But to press into intimacy with the Father and ask him to lead me in the way that is right?

I love Erin. I didn’t know she was part of the episcoposse… why is it that there is a certain understanding among all the kids who grew up Episcopalian? I am not sure what it is that holds us all together or makes us of the same mind.

I miss the symbolic life of the eucharist and the real grace of the sacrament… I have not pressed in to the reality of living sacramentally like I want so much to… pour the blood of Jesus over me.

sometimes you preach yourself out of it.

i need to stop.

if there is anything i am convinced of tonight, it is that i take too much shit all the time. and that the internal level of pressure in my being is way higher than it needs to be. what is this thing in me, god? what is it that i am serving, that i am needing, that i am holding on to? please show me. i need to know. because this has to stop. especially with melissa, because i want to work with her in a healthy and lifegiving way, and this just will never be that way. i attract right now several people with very strong personalities who are very hurtful. what is it in me that needs them to be like that?

i felt a little better today when i hung out with dixon and kristin and holly. they bless me so much - if only that they know me, and they love me without reservation. i forget how lifegiving that is to see. i ate some pizza at hfn and i actually think i will sleep, both of which are steps in the right direction. the guy who taught class is great, a fuller professor of islamic studies, my favorite moment was thinking about folk religion and how you address folk islam and folk christianity and piecing together the gospel to the felt needs of animistic practice. sounds crazy but it really isn't.

what brings us to the gospel? is it love that motivates us? power? righteousness?

i want to be all the way present to this and am not sure how to be. people are so overwhelming right now that i want to throw up and never let them touch me again. it was a little better today, hanging out with part of the team at dinner tonight felt almost normal... angie and i danced around the table while we all talked and it was family again... and then i let vicky pray for me and i went to talk with teresa for a while. so i tried to be intentional. because it is not a good sign when your internal reflexes all scream run at the same time. but i know that is in my flesh and not my spirit. definitely not the spirit voice.

happened to turn back to my jimmy notes tonight and discover that they talked about the 1 samuel 15 passage, about how sacrifice is what i give to god of my own making, and obedience is my submission to his own making. he is way more interested in what he can do through me than what i can do myself. thank goodness.

i feel bad for not having talked to karen yet, but i have not been able to handle it yet. she wants me to take the job and i feel pretty good about saying no. but i have to get strong enough to have the conversation. forgive me, lord. and karen!

prayers for joe still, who is breathing on his own a little... and especially for a respite for ten days while mike and laurie are gone. clarity. and for susan as she returns. that her heart would be protected.

i am so afraid of being sick, of not being right. i am so afraid of going back down that spiral and not being able to control it. kitty would be pleased... here is that theme again. i want to be able myself to guard my mental stability... to be sure that i know what is happening and how and why and no one else is in control.

forgive me, father. because again i know that you love obedience more than sacrifice.

angry tossing and turning.

i am trying to process what it is like to be back here and doing a really awful job at it. i don't understand what is wrong with me... why i can't even come home right. i feel right with the lord, and felt from the trip closer to him and more in touch with his heart and his purposes... and i think some part of me thought that because of that i would come home and things would just be easy to deal with, that i would be so captivated that i wouldn't really care. not so. instead it is more like my heart is changed and stuff that i was previously immune to or unaware of has become intolerable.

bryan complains at me about rachel and always comes back to how i should go to rachel or talk to rachel or give it to rachel, and i end up so frustrated. if he only knew what it was really like here, that she sat here to tell me i didn't know how to love and she didn't want it anyway, and how much contempt i always receive from her, and how she acts like she just wishes i wasn't here and am incompetent when i am. it grieves me. i tried to go to her in grace and still felt so rejected. and so i don't talk to him, because i can't take that from him, and he doesn't understand. i sit in traffic and sob and then in the bookstore and get a panic attack at the thought of people asking me how the trip was. i brush my teeth and start to cry over the water that afghan kids don't have. bryan calls me in heb and i just cry. and i go to teach elementary school kids latin, and feel like i am saved by the distraction. i watch all the things i thought i saw in trey just be wrong, and i question my judgment, and even once my sanity. and then i go home and take another nap, and then i wake up and look at the walls.

i don't want to be depressed again. i know this is irrational. i also am scared that something of this is about calling and the nations or whatever my vocation will be. and something of this is processing afghanistan in a delayed fashion. i realize the down side of my job and the way that i process: i already told all the stories to all of the people when i wrote the updates. so no one wants to hear me talk about them anymore... and i am still left unprocessed.

so how to press in? how not to settle for an immature love? the clear word on the trip was 1 samuel 15:22, it is better to obey than to sacrifice. so i will come back to that. better than what? to obey whom? how do you know? why do we sacrifice? why is loving obedience better? this is what i press into. what did i see? and why did it matter?

the sleeping pills are weighing on me. i keep going to sleep at night thinking tomorrow must be a better day.