Pain

Westley once said, "Life is pain"

And somedays, I think its true

But Westley did not

As I do believe

Say that pain has a purpose too.

Pain is annoying and tiring too

Its vengeance is swift and 

Precise.  But my Savior knows

That pain is a price

That is worthy to pay a price.

Pain will soon fade and grace

Will endure.  So one thing i choose

To believe, is my life is a 

Story of reason and grace

That explains why His grace is

Amazing.

Life is full of pain, sorrow, and ups and downs.  There is no use denying it--and there's often nothing we can do about it.  Unfortunately, people use the excuse of pain in their lives to justify all sorts of stupid and inconsiderate crimes and actions.

I have suffered from chronic tension and migraines for almost ten years.  Having just completed a round of CT scan, MRI, and lumbar puncture (LP) procedures, I am quite frankly fed up with my headaches.  My brain has taken to not consulting me on important issues.  

I am not a fan.

However, I continue to live my life.  Yes, sometimes, I do not get as much done as I would like because I am unable to look at a computer screen without my eyes feeling like they will explode in my head.  But I know that for whatever reason, the God I believe in is allowing me to experience this pain.

Now, for those of you who don't believe in God, this concept is a little bit perplexing.  I believe in the God of the Bible and most people's arguments again Yahweh is this: "How can a good God allow bad things to happen?"

Well, I have had my times of yelling, screaming, crying, and kicking God (metaphorically of course...although my foot sometimes makes contact with couches and bathtubs.).  And I have come to realize this truth:

being angry does not change your situation.  It merely affects how you look at your problems.

Now, imagine your favorite action movie without the pain.  First of all, all the action wouldn't really be so exciting because it hurts when people get punched in the face, shot at, or exploded.  Second, it would be really boring to watch.  Yes, being hurt tends to be a bad thing but one must admit that it makes for a very entertaining show.

And lastly, you know your favorite is good and realistic because it resonates in your soul.  Perhaps you don't relate to exactly what the protagonist or antagonist experiences.  But the human experience is diverse as the number of sand specks on a beach.

I don't think it is fair to ask about an "unfair" God.  I believe in a broken system--sometime in the past, our world was perfect.  Everything worked the way it was supposed to.  And then, man and woman each decided they wanted to be selfish.  They said, "Me.....me.....ME!!!!"

Now, we live in a world full of physical, mental, and emotional pain.  Anyone who has a relative who suffers from a disease, chronic illness, or mental health disorders should agree with me on this statement.

Life is shitty sometimes.

But the thing to remember isn't the shit.  The thing to remember is that I have a choice.  I can wallow in my shithole and complain and complain and whine, whine, whine.  Or, I can pick up a shovel, start digging around me, and try to get myself out of this mess called life.

Chances are I was the one who ended myself up in the pile of crap anyway.

Choice, in my opinion, is the last incorruptible power in the universe.  Yes, people do corrupt the power of choice.  However, you always have the ability to choose.

Once Upon an Age

Once, many years ago, the child felt whole.  Her laughter was full of joy and her smile mad the stars seem like tarnished diamonds. 


Now, she is standing between the cave of loneliness and the current of life.  One foot is covered by the current of life's flow.  The other foot is as far inside the cave as it can be without causing her to fall over.


The current is so very strong.
She feels absolutely powerless in the midst of the wave's mighty force.


Should she stay in the safety of her cave?  Should she be bold and dive head first into the current?


She has no answer to these burning questions and the feelings that are inextricably paired with them.


She is only sure of one thing: "I do not want to fail," she whispers.

The Way Home

The thin veil of dense mist filled the canyon.  The street lights created small, warm glows in the midst of a dreary landscape.

It is so very cold outside.

The cold cuts to the bone and steals the breath from your chest.  No matter how many layers you wear, the cold still finds somewhere to penetrate through, creeping in like an unwanted guest.

But the fog is beautiful.

It is eerie and reminds one of Anne Radcliffe's Gothic landscapes.  However, eerie does not always mean scary.

Eerie can simply mean atmospheric.

The atmosphere and mood created by the fog reminds me of life's complexities.  Sometimes, we are walking blind.  

But we have hope and belief that these warm pockets of light will lead us home...

Continuum

Continuum: Faith Connected is the name of the non-profit organization I am planning on establishing in the future.  Here are some details of the organization so far.   The area of non profit work in the world has exploded exponentially over the past few decades. There are now literally hundreds of thousands-maybe even millions-of organizations working to help the oppressed and save the needy from poverty.

Mission

1. This organization will seek to help those in need regardless of race, heritage, ethnicity, language, or religion. 2. This organization will focus its main efforts on those most desperately in need. It is impossible to categorize "levels" of pain and suffering. 3. As stated in the above point, categorization of pain and suffering is impossible. Therefore, this organization will strive to do its utmost to prioritize every need on a micromanagement basis. 4. This organization will hire the best and brightest in individual's various fields of study and/or interest. In order to do this, the first priority is to establish a team of individuals with a heart for administrative work and networking. 5. This organization will always remember that the end NEVER justifies the means. The means is the journey we take to get end justifiable causes.

Room

A room. Empty…except for a handful of boxes.

It’s dark…but looking closer you find frames

On the walls.

Old memories…smiling faces. Reminders of

A life that was.

She walks in. The pictures seem to light up.

She smiles as she thinks of those times…long ago.

In her hand,

She holds a watch. It’s old…attached to a gold

Chain…but still ticks faithfully.

Her heart is confused. Sorrow…joy…regret…

It’s been many years since she visited this place.

Her face is…

Uncertain. She loves this room…but it’s no longer

…home.

She closes the door and puts a key in the lock.

She doesn’t know if she should lock it…she may want

To come back.

But she’s certain that this room is her past.

It’s time to move forward.

She locks the door.

Home

She walks on the pavement,

A smile on her face.

But her eyes are averted--

She's homeless . . .

She sees on the walkway

A friend hug another.

But her heart is unmoved--

She's lonely . . .

She's sees in the woods

A couple in a moment

But her eyes they role up--

She's longing . . .

She feels in her soul

A longing to live.

But she can't grasp His hand--

She's desperate . . .

She opens her heart

And her soul starts to sing . . .

She opens her mind

And her thoughts start to soar

She opens her will . . .

And His love fills her up . . .

She's home.

Afghanistan

This picture breaks my heart. This woman's name is Aisha. She is the face for the woman who suffer in Afghanistan.

What we cannot see in this picture is that her ears have also been cut off.

You can see in this image, Aisha is beautiful. Her eyes are piercing. You can see into her soul. You see she has been hurt, abused, and treated as less than a beautiful, precious princess of the King.

But the longer I look at this picture, the more upset I become at the men who did this to her. I find myself wanting to beat the crap out of the man who looked at her thinking, "You are not worthy of being treated as human. You belong to me."

What can I, a poor college student far away from Afghanistan, do to help this woman and others like her? How can I show the love of Jesus to a woman I have never met?

One thing I know, I will be praying for Aisha. She is flying to America for reconstructive surgery. I pray someone will show her the love of Jesus. I pray that she will understand she is beautiful. I pray she will find peace, happiness, and redemption.

The following is a link to part of Aisha's story in Time Magazine:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007238,00.html

Life

So I've been in Singapore for over a month now. Things are becoming familiar and falling into place. But not completely.

Here's the thing about life: I don't think we were meant to be comfortable in life. Maybe that was the original plan but we messed that up in the Garden.

I'm not saying that life should be a string of uncomfortable and frustrating events. Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life and have it to the full." But if we're really laying down our cross, our pride, and our hearts to follow Christ, should we be comfortable? I don't think there's anything easy about giving parts of yourself up.

But here's the beautiful thing: we don't do it alone. We've got Christ...and Christ in us is invincible (thank you Travis for such an awesome reminder).

We also have friends. Thank You God for friends! Abby Moore, Kasi Svoboda, Travis Cochrum, Amy Cochrum, Tandiwhe Kongela, Joyce Roth, Dana Gallup, Amy Wery, Jere Witherspoon, Anna Nieboer, Andrea Lawrence, and Megan Borjesson...you guys make my life so much fun! I love you all so much. I thank our God that He is a God of community. No matter where you are and what you're doing, know that I am praying for you.

So...there's a song that says, "Life is beautiful, but it's complicated." Yeah, I think that's true. But...I think life should be simpler. Live like you believe what you say you believe. Love like Jesus has loved.

And enjoy it. Embrace the ups, downs, and everything in between.

Goodbye

Goodbye-oh how I hate you!
Your cruel intentions
Do not care
That my heart is on the ground.

Goodbye-oh how I hate you!
You do not seem
To see this-
We all suffer from grief.

Goodbye how I despise you!

Hoping you do not come around again soon...

What a false hope

Women in the Middle East

I have been reading this beautiful book called Reading Lolita in Tehran. It was written by a women who was a professor at an Iranian college before, during, and after the revolution. She tells the story of herself through the eyes of classic authors using her secret class of girls to paint a beautifully haunting picture of life in Iran.

Sometime my senior year of high school, God put the women of the Middle East on my heart. I wrote about the oppression of women in Afghanistan for my senior thesis and absolutely loved it. I put myself into that paper because I wanted to try and understand-if only in a small way-the way these women suffer.

And now...as I think about my future, I wonder if the Middle East is calling my name. Israel, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are currently on the top of my travel list. I would so love to spend my days loving on women who have spent their whole lives hurting.

Could this be what God wants me to do as well?

Singapore: ICS Graduation and Hanging Out

Sunset

Andrea Lawrence and Jana Tan: Friends for life

ICS Alumni: Class of 2008

Sofia and I. Known each other for...at least 10 years. Love you!

Tim *aka my little brother* and I at graduation

**A few images of the happenings over the past few days**

Oswald Chambers

What man is he that feareth the Lord? Psalm 25:12

What are you haunted by? You will say-By nothing, but we are all haunted by something, generally by ourselves, or, if we are Christians, by our experience. The Psalmist says we are to be haunted by God. The abiding consciousness of the life is to be God, not thinking about Him. The whole of our life inside and out is to be absolutely haunted by the presence of God. A child's consciousness is so mother-haunted that although the child is not consciously thinking of its mother, yet when calamity arises, the relationship that abides is that of the mother. So we are to live and move and have our being in God, to look at everything in relation to God, because the abiding consciousness of God pushes itself to the front all the time.

If we are haunted by God, nothing else can get in, no cares, no tribulation, no anxieties. We see now why Our Lord so emphasized the sin of worry. How can we dare be so utterly unbelieving when God is round about us? To be haunted by God is to have an effective barricade against all the onslaughts of the enemy.

"His soul shall dwell at ease." In tribulation, misunderstanding, slander, in the midst of all these things, if our life is hid with Christ in God, He will keep us at ease. We rob ourselves of marvelous revelation of this abiding companionship of God. "God is our Refuge"-nothing can come through that shelter.
------------------
I love and hate Oswald Chambers. Love him because he's so good and so straight with important issues of our faith. Hate him because he is so matter of fact with his statements he makes me feel like a bad Christian sometimes.

The thing that I get from this is peace. Our God is I AM. My worries about...homework, love, packing, or anything should not trouble me. It's not bad that we have these thoughts...what is bad is to let them consume you.

I pray that I will understand this more. I pray that My refuge will continue to pour His grace into my broken heart.

Ask me no secrets

Ask me no secrets;
I’ll tell you no lies.
Ask me my history . . .
I’ll tell you a story

You’ll say “Is it long?”
I’ll say, “Well…a little…”
You’ll say, “Ohhhh…”
Then…silence ensues

I ask you a question --
You reply very quickly . . .
You ask me a question --
I reply very quickly . . .

And then we go on
Right along with our days;
And then I realize that
You never asked my name.

Be

You know those days where you think, "Wow I wish I was doing more with my life right now"? I think everyone has those days...but I think those moments are more common.

I am here at George Fox University...preparing to God what wants me to do. My desire is to counsel missionary kids and I pray that God will use me to do that one day. But right now, God is preparing me. God has me at Fox, today, on February 19th, 2010 because there is something He wants me to do right here and right now.

I have a hard time. Today I was looking at a friend's pictures who just returned from Haiti. Heartbreaking and inspiring. Devastating and divine. I looked at Elliot's pictures and thought, "I want to be there. I want to DO something."

I am horrible at waiting...horrible at being patient. Ask my roommates, oldest friends, and family and they will tell you: Jana is not a patient person. I am in a season of waiting...a time where God wants me to be still and wait for HIM to move. God is saying, "Jana...I know you want to get out there and conquer the world. I know you want to impact souls for Christ. But right now...you HAVE to embrace where I have you. Because yeah other things will happen in your life that will be AMAZING...

But don't forget that holy moments are around you every day."

So...I am going to do my best to embrace each and every moment. I want my prayer to be this: "God, what can I learn, hear, see, feel in this holy moment?"

Because if you think about it, every moment we have is holy. Every breath we take is a miraculously beautiful moment. Every time we smile about a memory, laugh because the wind is playing with our clothes, smile because our hearts are bursting with joy-every time we realize that we are alive-we are embracing a holy moment.

God, give me ears to hear, a heart to love, and eyes to see far beyond the visible.

Waiting...Waiting...Oh and More Waiting

"In the beginning you may see clearly what God's will is - the severance of a friendship, the breaking off of a business relationship, something you feel distinctly before God is His will for you to do, never do it on the impulse of that feeling. If you do, you will end in making difficulties that will take years of time to put right. Wait for God's time to bring it round and He will do it without any heartbreak or disappointment. When it is a question of the providential will of God, wait for God to move."
-Oswald Chambers

Waiting...oh how I hate it.

I often wonder what it was like to be Abraham. Abraham waited...something like 50 or 60 years before he had Issac. God told Abraham, "You're gonna be awesome. I'm gonna establish my people through you. If people don't like you, they're gonna be in big trouble. If they do like you, My blessings will be upon them." If I were Abraham I'd be like, "Wow....okay....if you say so..."

Because as exciting as it is when God says, "I'm gonna do something awesome in your life," I think we are often skeptical. We say, "Really God? I mean I know you love me and have a wonderful plan for my life and that would be the coolest thing ever...but why would you do that in my life?"

And here's the crazy thing. God says, "Because I love you. I love you enough to do something that is so cool and so awesome. I love you enough to show you my power in your life...not just my power in the world. I love you and want you to know that so I'm gonna do amazing things."

The other thing about Abraham's story that amazes me is that he waited...and waited...and waited...and waited some more. I am not a patient person (ask my roommate Tandiwhe). And yet....God does not think less of me because of it. God doesn't say, "Jana, really...buck up. Just wait for a little while longer." God says, "Jana...I know this sucks. I know you don't like it. But the waiting is part of the process. You will not be blown away unless you have waited on me. So I'm gonna do what's best for you and make you wait a little longer."

I pray for patience with myself, patience with the process, and patience to wait for God's plan.

Love

Love-maybe if we could create some tangible, concrete definition, we would understand it. But I think its mystery is what defines it.

Love is many things but really its just crazy. If some robotic or alien species discovered us, I think they would be confused. They would watch our romantic comedies and thinkg, "That human just ran all over the country for something you can't see or touch...all in hopes of having that feeling returned...you guys are nuts!!!!"

If you think about God's love...your brain continues to explode! God doesn't need us but he desires us. I'm pretty sure Jesus, Father, and Spirit did alright without us. But God WANTED us. He said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

I think if we fully understood love it wouldn't be love. The irrationality and randomness is what makes it love. A man can say of his wife, "I love this, this, and this about you," but what love is can be difficult to define...

...unless you look at what God says.

I Corinthians 13-only one of the most famous passages of Scripture for Christians and non Christians alike. In 13 verses, Paul captures the essence of love.

Patient.

Kind.

Not insistent.

But I think my favorite part is this: "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."

Being loved means being known. We love someone in spite of their crap, skeletons, and shadows that follow them-in fact, we embrace these things.

I've been reading C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves and I've realized how complex love is. I don't love my roommates in the same way I love my brother. I don't love Kasi Svoboda the same way I love Andrea Lawrence. Love is meant to be felt, expressed, experienced in a multitude of ways.

And true love is God. True loves is that moment of worship, silence, or meditation when we feel His love for us. True love is known when we are fully known. True love is found when two people, a group of friends, or a family don't have to say, "You're messed up...but I accept and embrace that."

True love is found in moments of truth-those tiny glimpses of God's awesomeness...

Yes

Air-a basic necessity for human survival. But when the air becomes the whirling wind, its feel changes.

Power. Unparalleled power. The only thing that battles its might is the white water that crashes against the rocks. The gulls try to cut through the wind but end up hovering in torrents of turbulent air.

And here I stand. I stand in the smallness of my humanity and breathe in the vastness of my God. I stand, walk, and sit, praying, "O Great God, can you be small enough to know the deepest desires of my heart? Can you take my small humanity and work like the mightiest of the crashing waves?"

"Yes."

Sunset

A brilliant sunset. The sun a glow and white. Touches of orange, pink, gray. Streaks of gray shoot out from the sun like trails of missile residue.

Slowly, the sun descends inching closer and closer to the crest of the hill. The colors seems to intensify as if the sinking sun is warming their hues. The moon shows its sliver of a face.

The water is still . . . except where our lures splash its surface. Small birds chirp their songs on the waters edge, seeming to say, "What are those silly humans doing with their sticks?"

And then, the sun dips down. The colors fade and we are left with pallid shades of gray and blue.

Goodnight, Lake McSwain.

Happy Holidays?

I've been thinking a lot about Christmas and what it's really supposed to be about.

Living in America has made me realize how materialistic the world is becoming. Stores have been advertising Christmas sales since the end of October. Black Friday is a monstrosity of a money making day. Instead of opening super early, stores just open their doors at midnight. Do we really need things so badly that we will loose sleep to get them?

We have turned the holiday season into an advertising and profit making scheme. Yeah, family is important and seeing old friends is exciting, but Christmas has really become about presents and stuff. I heard a statistic that the average American will spend something like $600 this Christmas. I'm thinking, "Either these people have TONS of friends, or buying things just makes them happy."

I do not want to part of this consumeristic culture. I want to buy only what I need and use the rest of money to help those who need it. I pray that this is the desire of the church. I hope that we are brave enough to move beyond the popular culture around us.

I hope that we are bold enough to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

So I Was Thinking

The great thing about college is that they make you think...I know quite the novel concept.

I am super excited at the amount of deep thought that my classes have made me do in recent weeks. I recently wrote a Christian beliefs where I had to think through the basic theological doctrines of my faith. It was the most useful paper for my life that I have ever written.

Actually, the more I think about what I believe...the more I realize I am not entirely certain what I believe. I have opinions and particular stands on issues. But if you asked me for a sound logical reason the believe one way or the other, I am not sure I would have an answer.

I guess what I have really been thinking about is why I believe everything that I do. I'm pretty sure I'll never get it completely figured out...if God wanted me to know everything He would have found some way to tell me.

I'm used to trying to end with some deep spiritual or philosophical idea...but I don't really have anything else to say.