Holding on Loosely

It used to be more common for me to figuratively hold on to things very tightly, even when it hurt. But I think as I've been walking, jogging, and running through college, God has pried open my hands to see things I hadn't seen before, especially the brokenness that sometimes results from holding on so tightly.

I refuse to give them up, saying, "But it's mine, God. It isn't fair that this person gets to keep their pride, or that this person gets to thrive, or that this person can do this...how come I have to be the one who has to change?" And more and more God reminds me that everything I have isn't mine. Everything was given to me, but not for the sole purpose of fulfilling my needs. Instead, everything was given to me so that I would learn how to take care of them and produce fruit in order to serve the needs of others - the same way He was caring for us. And as I was doing so, what I truly needed would be fulfilled.

So He's been teaching me what it means to hold things loosely in my hand, because everything I have is not mine and He gives and takes away and grows things for the good of those who love Him.

But at the same time I feel like I've been holding on to things so loosely that I haven't been caring for them as much as I should be. I feel like to a certain extent I've fallen a little too far the other way that I've neglected quite a few things I've been entrusted with.

And that scares me.

It scares me enough to do something about it. It's just...that's the hard part - figuring out what God actually wants me to do or gaining to courage to actually do it.

Some excerpts from Henri J.M. Nouwen's book, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life:

The movement from loneliness to solitude can make it possible to convert slowly our fearful reactions into a loving response.
As long as we are trying to run away from our loneliness we are constantly looking for distractions with the inexhaustible need to be entertained and kept busy.
But it seems of great importance to know with an experiential knowledge the difference between an action that is triggered by a change in the surrounding scene and an action that has ripened in our hearts through careful listening to the world in which we live.
The movement from loneliness to solitude should lead to a gradual conversion from an anxious reaction to a loving response.
Don't we often look at the many events of our lives as big or small interruptions, interrupting many of our plans, projects and life schemes? And doesn't this unending row of interruptions build in our hearts feelings of anger, frustration and even revenge, so much so that at times we see the real possibility that growing old can become synonymous with growing bitter?
But what if our interruptions are in fact our opportunities, if they are challenges to an inner response by which growth takes place and through which we come to the fullness of being? What if all the unexpected interruptions are in fact the invitations to give up old-fashioned and out-moded styles of living and are opening up new unexplored areas of experience? And finally: What if our history does not prove to be a blind impersonal sequence of events over which we have no control, but rather reveals to us a guiding hand pointing to a personal encounter in which all our hopes and aspirations will reach their fulfillment?
Then our life would indeed be a different life because then fate becomes opportunity, wounds a warning and paralysis an invitation to search for deeper sources of vitality.
Then indeed we can break out of the prison of anonymous series of events and listen to the God of history who speaks to us in the center of our solitude and respond to his ever new call for conversion.
As I'm trying to figure out what it means to hold things loosely without neglect, all I know for sure is that I should cling tightly to is His Word, His truths, and His love.

Home?

I am responsible for what I know.
Hold on to all that God has given me with a loose hand.
Pray big and pray boldly.
Social justice and prayer go hand in hand - they are all about relationships.
Remember. Remember that God has brought you out of the land you once thought you knew. Remember His faithfulness. Remember what He has done.
Home doesn't feel like home, but not in a bad way.
"Change will come as sure as the seasons and twice as quickly."
Always have hope.
Love is waiting.
Submitting can be an expression of love.
Submitting will always be hard.
I am still learning what it means to submit.
Am I holding things too loosely?
What does it mean to be "home"?
Slow down.
I don't want to forget. But I forget things so easily.
I'm comfortable with silence. Are you?
I don't know how you feel. I can't read your face. You can probably read mine. But are you sure you're reading me correctly? Are you sure you know exactly what I'm thinking?
It's hard for me to say something before thinking about it. Too many times I've said things I don't really mean, or in a way I don't really mean to. Too many times I know what I'm thinking but don't know how to say it. Too many times it doesn't come out right.
It's hard keeping track of what I've told someone and what I haven't told someone.
I want to care for my friends and family better. I don't always know how to do that or do that well.
You frustrate me.
I know we can't have all the answers.
We can't always have what we want.
What we want could be good but it may not be best.
More often than not, I don't trust my emotions, but God made us to be emotional people, so I can't just dismiss all of my emotions.
I wonder what people think of me. It's different from high school. In high school I didn't let people see my weaknesses or vulnerability and I blamed it on them. In college, I'm more open to others about where I fall short. I place myself in a more dependent state among the people I serve. I know I can't do everything.
God helps me recognize areas where I am comfortable so that He can stretch me in ways I am not comfortable.
I am not who I was. I thought I knew who I am. But it seems like knowing who I am means I've "arrived." I know I'm not there yet.
It's hard to help you see that.
I am responsible for what I know.
God is crazy. He's pretty ridiculous.
I didn't know I had all of these thoughts swimming around in my head. It's interesting that it's not overwhelming me.
These are only some of the headliners. Can you imagine all the little things I'm thinking about?
I don't know why I'm writing all of this on a blog post. I just felt like I needed to.
I think this Thanksgiving break was more needed than I thought it was going to be.

They have books on the spiritual gift of hospitality!

In Chapter 9 of Bill Hybels' book, Courageous Leadership, Hybels talks about the art of self-leadership where one of the sections is titled, "Am I Developing My Gifts?"

In this section, he asks: What are your top three spiritual gifts? If you can't articulate them as quickly as you can give your name, address, and phone number, I'm tempted to say, "You need your cage rattled!"

He also says, "Leaders must know which gifts they've been given and in what order. That's why I read everything I can that pertains to these gifts and why I hang around as often as possible with people who are better than I am in these areas."

When I read this earlier in the week, I was thinking about how I've never read any books on the gift of hospitality, and wondered if there actually were any good ones on the gift of hospitality. It's not a spiritual gift I hear much about at all. But since I was in bed when I read this, I only wondered about it and didn't actively look anything up.

The next day I met up with Carrie for our weekly meeting, going over Courageous Leadership. Since we didn't have time to go through the whole chapter, we went through the sections that stood out to me. I pointed out the "Am I Developing my Gifts?" section but only said that I knew my top gift was hospitality and that I forgot the order of the other ones. Then she told me she just finished reading these really good books on hospitality and I got so excited!

I went over to her house today and she lent them to me (I actually had forgotten about them). She lent me Reaching Out: the Three Movements of the Spiritual Life by Henri Nouwen, which isn't focused only on hospitality but talks about it as a movement in a bigger picture. And the other book is called, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl. Here's the back cover description:

For most of church history, hospitality was central to Christian identity. Yet our generation knows little about this rich, life-giving practice.

In Making Room, Christine Pohl revists the discipline of welcoming strangers and provides the foundation for renewed commitment to recovering hospitality as a Christian tradition.

Combining biblical and historical research with extensive interviewing of people in contemporary communities of hospitality - the Catholic Worker, L'Abri, L'Arche, Good Works, Jubilee Partners, St. John's Abbey, and others - Pohl explores anew the necessity, difficulty, and blessing of practicing hospitality today.

Carrie said it was a really good book. I'm so excited to read it!!

Also, I decided to take a spiritual gifts test again, since the last one I have saved was from 2008, and it's interesting how some gifts changed slightly and some things changed dramatically.

Excerpts from Scott Bessenecker's "How to Inherit the Earth: Submitting Ourselves to a Servant Savior"

Chapter 3: Submission in Our Leadership-Infatuated Culture

Submission is a quality humans do not readily embrace. True, some cultures value it more highly than others, but generally speaking submission is a posture of defeat, and defeat is not valued in any culture that I'm aware of.

The reason submission is avoided is because it almost always involves some kind of dying. If someone asks you to do something that you have no objection to doing, it's not really submission because it doesn't involve subjugating your will or plans to theirs; you're simply doing what's already agreeable to you.

Submission is submission when doing what is asked of me grates against my will, my plans, or my desires; it offends the almighty "I" and puts me under the rule of someone else.

The most beautiful picture of submission is submission that's offered freely, not submission that's demanded under threat.

Jesus never instructs his disciples to "become the leaders you were meant to be."

Jesus was far and away more concerned about his disciples' ability to follow well than he was about their ability to lead well.

If the kingdom to come will be inherited by the meek, then let us learn to submit...to God and to one another, even if that means sitting at the feet of the homeless and developmentally disabled instead of the welathy and the intellectual. Because until we learn to die to the definitions of success in this world, we cannot know what it really means to live successfully in the kindgom of God.

Leading is easier and more enjoyable for me than following, because following always requires me to die. Harboring a righteous indignation toward someone who has wronged me takes no special effort. But love puts to death revenge. This kind of love is not easy. It is exceedingly hard to die to a posture of judgment when you're in the right. Loving the wrongful or irritating person and submitting to those with whom we disagree is an exercise in dying.

Psalm 33

Shout for joy in the LORD, O you righteous!
Praise befits the upright
Give thanks to the LORD with the lyre;
make melody to him with the harp of ten strings!
Sing to him a new song;
Play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.

For the word of the LORD is upright,
and all his work is done in faithfulness.
He loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of the steadfast love of the LORD.

By the word of the LORD the heavens were made,
and by the breath of his mouth all their host.
He gathers the waters of hte sea as a heap;
he puts the deeps in storehouses.

Let all the earth fear the LORD;
let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him!
For he spoke, and it came to be;
he commanded, and it stood firm.

The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
he frustrates the plans of the people.
The counsel of the LORD stands forever,
the plans of his heart to all genereations.
Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,
the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!

The LORD looks down from heaven;
he sees all the children of man;
from where he sits enthroned he looks out
on all the inhabitants of the earth,
he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.
The king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
and by its great might it cannot rescue.

Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.

Our soul waits for for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.
For our heart is glad in him,
because we trust in his holy name.
Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.

Amen.

His supremacy changes everything.

I find it so frustrating that I care more about people than I do about my schoolwork.
I care more about people than I care about money, getting a job, buying a nice house or even driving.

But at the same time, I know that it's important to be a good steward of the schoolwork God has given me. It's for His glory and a form of worship to Him. All powers, thrones, rulers, and authorities are under His supremacy - and that includes college.

I do like learning new things. But it's so much harder to love my schoolwork when I'd rather give my love, time, and resources directly to people who need it.

Books don't need love and care as much as people do.

I like working with my hands and feet, my voice and my written words to work soil, plant seeds, nuture saplings, and watch little sprouts deepen their roots to grow tall in the One who created them.

Sigh. Fine, I'll stop procrastinating now.

From Halloween.

You know you have a great roommate when she comes home having too much to drink on Halloween and instead of vomiting on your side of the room, leaves you an encouraging post-it note on your door.


Hahaha I love Sara :]