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.

The Right Now

"When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanenty, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity--in freedom, in the sense that dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits--islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continually visited and abandoned by the tides . . . ."
-Anna Morrow Lindbergh

How often in any relationship do we think, "Do you remember that time when we did that one thing, at that one place, at that one time?" Reminiscing is sweet and fun but it does not get us anywhere. And how often do we think, "If only this friendship were like this. Then, everything would be good between us."

That's not how it's supposed to be. God gave us THIS moment. We are supposed to embrace what we have right here, right now. I'm sure you've heard this before but have you lived it?

About a week or so ago, I wrote on my hand "Right now". I had been thinking about the future. Not the big future, like a career, but the little future. My parents were coming for family weekend, I HAD to get my homework done, work was really boring and I wanted to be elsewhere. I was thinking about all these things outside of my control and God yanked my collar, saying, "Jana, stop looking so far ahead. Breathe me in in this moment. Think about the present."

This is such a hard thing to do. We want to plan and organize and arrange because maybe if we do that just enough...everything will work out perfectly. Who are we kidding? God, the perfect master of time an plans, has every single day of your life planned out. Why are you worried?

Love Without Fear

I've been reading Spiritual Classics...actually I've only read one author but that's because it was so great I can't move on until I talk about it.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh writes the follow:
"A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because thy move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's.

But how does one learn this technique of the dance? Why is it so difficult? What makes us hesitate and stumble. It is fear, I think that makes one cling nostalgically or clutch greedily toward the next . . . But how to exorcize it? It can only be exorcized by its opposite, love. When the heart is flooded with lover there is no room in it for fear, for doubt, for hesitation. And it is this lack of fear that makes for the dance. When each partner loves so completely that he has forgotten to ask himself whether or not he is loved in return; when he only knows that he loves and is moving to its music-then, and then only, are two people able to dance perfectly in tune to the same rhythm."

I realized how beautifully true this is. The reason why we aren't completely open and vulnerable with people is because we're afraid. Call it cliche if you like but we cannot move beyond the fear of rejection. But don't you remember this passage: "Perfect love casts out all fear." We are not perfect and neither is our love; but God's love is.

God has been teaching me to be honest with people, to share my story even though it is painful. And it's been amazing. I have the greatest friends ever and I wish there were words to say thank you to them and to my amazing God.

I pray that we go forth and fear nothing. I pray that we remember that Christ in us is invincible. (I took that last line from a friend).