A brief acknowledgement and gesture of gratitude.

I've been thinking a lot about the church.

The church is one of my favorite things.

And I don't mean going to church. I'm not talking about a place. Or something you do. I mean people. The body of Christ. All of us, everywhere around the world. It's truly remarkable.

Why? Because Jesus is remarkable. And that's what the body of Christ is supposed to be, Jesus. We are Jesus to each other, to the world.

That's how Jesus is present physically in the world today. Through people who go out and live their lives for him.

Quite often, we people who align ourselves with Christ don't do a very good job of representing who he is. So for many people, a lot of baggage comes with the word "church." That's one of the saddest realities I know. I understand how easy it can be to become bitter and cynical. But I thank God that I have met genuine people who have shown and continue to show Christ in the way they live their lives.

When the church is what it's supposed to be, it's one of the coolest, most beautiful things you will ever see. Because Jesus is evident, and he's what it's all about.

Without the church, my life would not be what it is today. I would not be who I am today. I feel blessed and humbled to know and be a part of it.

#yesIamthatpathetic

Something monumental happened in my world today.

No, nobody died. I didn't fall in love and pick a day for a wedding in the spring. No money fell in my lap. I didn't get 100% on a music theory test.

What did happen?

I used a hashtag on Twitter.

I'm probably the only one shocked by this. Allow me to provide some background information, then maybe you too will be, if not shocked, at least appreciative of the enormity of this occasion.

In many circumstances, I have an inner drive to be different simply for difference's sake. No other motivation is required. Everyone's drinking out of a blue cup? I'll go out of my way to find a red one. And in that moment, my feelings will even go so far as to almost despise all blue cups. They're not good enough for me, because they're not different. If everyone were drinking out of red cups, then those would be the object of my disapproval, and blue ones would suddenly be the most aesthetically appealing, the only ones worthy to hold my beverage.

As you can probably guess, I don't readily take to trends. Everybody's doing it? Well, that's all the more reason for me to run the other way.

Thus we come to hashtags. On Twitter, everybody and their brother (which is my preferred exaggerated way to say a lot of people) started using hashtags. I inwardly swore I wouldn't. Even when people started coming up with really clever ones that made me laugh out loud, and I started to find myself absentmindedly forming hashtag gems in my brain. I fought it. I would mentally reprimand myself for even thinking them.

At this point, I'm sure you can see what I seem to have such a hard time comprehending. This is all ridiculous. And it has proud roots. There is a context in which to be different. There's even biblical exhortation to be different. But the biblical context is never that of being different for the sake of being different. It's more of a call to not be afraid to be different when the situation warrants it. Romans 12:2, for example: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will." Nowhere does that imply, be different for the heck of it. It's, don't let yourself fall into being like the world: be like God. That's the kind of difference that matters.

But here I am holding on to some inconsequential trifle, and feeling proud about myself and my ability to fight the tide. When I'm sure no one even notices or cares. Oy.

So today, I finally got over myself (just the slightest bit, I still have a long way to go) and when I felt inclined to use a hashtag, I did. What was it? #nowreading. Yep. That was it. Something incredibly simple, but something which took a rather lot of deliberation prior to posting.

And have you picked up on the great irony in all of this? This whole pitiful situation revolves around Twitter. What can be more conformist and trendy than that?

Ah, to be human.

Ultra-late night baking.

I don't know what possesses me sometimes.

It's 1:26 AM. I'm in the kitchen.

I just had to bake. Really. It was essential.

So at 10:00 PM, I started blending my first concoction, pumpkin muffins.

That wasn't so bad. Whip those up, put them in the muffin tin. Took me about an hour.

11:00 PM. That's still a decent time to go to bed. For me, early even.

But I wanted cookies. What kind of cookies to make?

Chocolate. But I don't only want chocolate. A friend mentioned sugar. Ooh, I haven't had sugar cookies in a long time.

Two separate recipes were found, and I set to mixing.

This whole process is complicated by several things. One issue that I always run into while baking is my humble equipment. We don't have much in the way of dishes and utensils and pans and bowls and whatnot in this house. And that's not a problem so much. But it sure would be faster if I could have several things going at once, instead of completing one, washing my dishes, and starting over again. Oh, and we only have one oven rack. Which means on pan of cookies at a time.....cookies!!! Oh, crud, I got distracted and the cookies are getting too dark!

Where was I? Yes, baking is slow-going in this kitchen. Also, it's a mess in here right now. So not only do I not have enough bowls, I have limited counter space.

But I wanted chocolate cookies. And sugar cookies.

So here I am. The chocolate ones are all done. And I'm nearing the end of the sugar cookie dough. Hey, I may be done with this before 2:00! That's four hours from start to finish. Not bad for over a dozen muffins and who knows how many dozens of cookies.

All this the night before I'm supposed to drive approximately six hours to Champaign, IL.

I have a chronic habit of staying up later the night before I have something different and important to do. Most often when that something different and important is a trip. Who needs to see the road?

And I still haven't packed.

Here's hoping my friends I'll be seeing this weekend are okay with a delirious me.

The keyboard is mightier than the WMD.

Last week, my classmates and I were chatting before our Bible as literature class, in which we were scheduled to have a test. I was conversing with two of my classmates and we all expressed a similar inability to study. One of my classmates then postulated that that, our poor study habits, is why we're English majors.

That got the gears in my brain to turning. She has a point. As English students, we don't pride ourselves on our knowledge of facts. We don't sit in classrooms learning long lists of details to then regurgitate on a 100 question multiple choice test. What do we do? We write. We're writers, not fact fountains.

How does that translate into abysmal study skills? You can write well and not have any clue what you're talking about. Writing isn't about accuracy of information.

This carries interesting implications. If we can write well, then that means we can approach tests, or any other kind of writing assignment, and not know our subject as well as we should. But our impressive words and sophisticated sentence structure will make what little we do know sound really good. We can even make things up if we choose, and it'll sound good too. We'll seem like brilliant individuals, when really we don't know much more than the average person on the street. Only the closest readers will realize that everything we're saying is a bunch of nonsense and fluff.

I've long been aware of this, and it's been something I'm conscious of. Misleading people is not something I want to do. When I write, I try to be honest. And I try to represent myself and what I know accurately. But there are times when I have an essay due, and I'm grasping at a few weak straws, trying to tease out every little thing I can say in order to not fail completely. I get to the end of my knowledge and my essay and I think, surely no one is going to be impressed by this. My professor, who has a PhD and has been doing this for a long time, is going to see straight through my feeble efforts and realize that two and a half pages of this three-page assignment is meaninglessness.

But then I get my essay back and what do I have? Positive comments! Many 'good point' remarks. And a big B written on top? Maybe even an A? How did this happen?

Whenever I'm less than confident in what I have to say and people readily swallow it, I feel bad. I feel like I'm false. I feel like I've betrayed them, like I've fooled them. They should be criticizing me for trying to be so high and mighty, instead of praising my intelligence.

Words are powerful. I realize that. And as a user of them, I take that very seriously. I can easily convince people of just about anything. That's a frightening thought.

"I could sing unending songs of how you've saved my soul."

Before I get to my point, I need to set this up.

9 times out of 10 (or some other approximate ratio because I don't really know the true statistics, but it just happens a lot and that phrase has become a conventional way to say "a lot") I'm inspired to blog when I have interacted with people, whether it be in person, or online, on the phone, etc. My friend Kaitlyn gets credit for inspiring this blog. We just talked for three hours, and there was something I said to her that I thought would be appropriate to share here. Seeing that Kaitlyn is one of my only consistent readers (I think she reads most of what I write?), I'm risking being redundant. But so be it.

As you may have gathered if you've been reading my posts over the last several months, or if you pay any attention to my updates on various social networking sites, my life for the past five months has been a dream. I have been so happy, and I feel a peace and contentment that hasn't often been present before. Every time I try to describe it, even to myself just so I can better understand it, I can't find the right words.

Like with most things, though, there's another side to all of this. As much as I appreciate this joy that I have been living in, and as much as I hate to say this, I'm skeptical. The world that you and I have been living in our whole lives has conditioned me. It's been my experience that as soon as one challenging, discouraging, disheartening thing ends, another one begins. And that's if you're lucky enough to not have a myriad of challening, discouraging, disheartening things occurring simultaneously. And sure, God is there and will bring you through, but it's going to be a hard fight and constant weariness is an inevitability.

So as soon as my face starts to hurt from smiling, a small voice so very quietly, yet so very clearly, says, "Okay, something's gotta give. At any moment now. Don't get used to this, because something is surely going to come out of nowhere and this short reign of delight is going to end. Brace yourself."

I don't think I'm alone in this. I know I'm not alone in this. Nobody, anywhere, has a completely carefree life. But I think Christians, a group which includes me, might often be especially prone to this because we have Scripture proclaiming our doom. There's a well-known sentence in John 16:33 that says, "In this world you will have trouble." There's no ambiguity in that statement. It's clear what's coming, and the fact it is coming is just as clear.

And I think we get hung up on that. Firstly, because it's guaranteed. Secondly, because we seem to have developed an idea that we're supposed to take all the junk of the world and deal with it. I think the intentions behind that are, or can be, sincerely motivated, because we're followers of Christ, who can have and has had anything thrown at him is not shaken by it. But we have somehow translated that into meaning that we are supposed to take the nightmares of the world and content ourselves to "rejoice that [we] participate in the sufferings of Christ" (1 Peter 4:13). (<----Sorry, I just realized that I unconsciously formatted that in MLA.......continuing on.) As if being in trouble for the sake of trouble makes us holy. Therefore, if we're not happy and we're heaped in problems, we must be doing something right. But that's overlooking the rest of John 16:33. The preceding sentence is, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace." Then after the assertion of "trouble," Jesus says, "But take heart! I have overcome the world." And in that passage from 1 Peter, it's important to note that it's "the sufferings of Christ." Not just suffering for the sake of suffering, but because you choose to associate yourself with him. It's like being friends with a person that many others detest, and choosing to stick with them and endure any kind of ill treatment you may receive as a result.

But like Jesus said, he overcame everything. So it's okay to be happy, I tell myself just as fervently as I will tell anyone else. When blessings and joy abound, cherish them. Enjoy them fully as long as they are present. There is a time for this, just as there is a time for everything else under heaven.

Let's not be a perpetually depressed people. We're supposed to be Christ to others, and I don't think there are many out there who are drawn to depression.

"Show me again what I was made for, help me to see you're still leading me."

My life has been such that it has consistently inspired one question: why? A question that is simply phrased, but whose answers are more often than not complicated.

One of the most recent and significant situations that inspired the asking of this question was the changing of my major from music industry to English.

I felt like God let me know that this was what I needed to do. I couldn't begin to understand why, though. Sure, I had an interest in English. I've been an avid reader for almost as far back as my memory extends, but if I were to tell you my chief passion, it was music. Even though I didn't have a clear idea of what I would do in the future, I couldn't really imagine myself doing anything that didn't include music, so why change my major? Immersing myself in literature was certainly appealing, but I didn't see it leading to a career, which is supposed to be the purpose of higher education, right?

But I did it. I moved to the fringes of the music department and turned my attention to the English department, while clinging to my faith that "all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose," and "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord...'plans to give you hope and a future.'" And for the past two years, I have done my best to learn and excel, trusting that it will all come to something, but not knowing what that something is.

It can be hard to be faithful sometimes. Or like my friend Jason Gray puts it, "sometimes it's hard to tell if I'm faithful or a fool to believe you're still leading me." Almost every day the thought "what if I'm being foolish?" has been forefront. It's hard to do things with conviction and certainty with that looming over you.

But, praise the Lord, God is faithful. And it's not hard for him to be so.

Today, out of the blue, while I wasn't even thinking about my future and what am I doing and why am I doing it, I had a revelation. Using that terminology makes it seem really grand, like the skies divided, or I fell into a holy trance and was granted a mystic vision, but it was really much simpler than that. Which, according to my experience, has been the way God usually works. And what I learned doesn't seem like much, but for me, spending every day pushing through my questions, it was monumental enough to affect my breathing. There I was walking in between Kirksey Old Main and Jones Hall on the MTSU campus, and I audibly gasped, then my face screwed up and I was on the verge of tears just seconds after I had been smiling about the wonderful class I just had.

Some glimmer of purpose in all that I'm doing hit me, and it was startling. I was thinking about my passion for story. I could spend the next hour talking about it and I would only scratch the surface of its importance. As I thought of that, I realized that my passion for this has been greatly cultivated in the last couple of years. It was there before, otherwise I don't know why I would have pored over so many stories in my childhood, but it has taken a more defined shape in the last two years. The years I've spent studying literature.

I consider this to be a huge part of me now, and that might not be the case had I not studied literature.

That's not all. Music is still important to me. Just as much as story. In minoring in music, I found that I could learn all the basics about music and much about how it relates to culture, without having to go through all of the classical training involved in studying it as a major. I have felt no calling to be a professional opera singer, but understanding music and being able to create it has been important.

But the greatest thing to me is the marriage of story and song.

In that moment where I gasped I realized that I have been learning all of the tools to wed story and song. Wow.

Some people learn this without stepping foot in a university, but I think this is what it took for me. I don't think my passion for story would have been fully realized outside of this context. Additionally, my writing has improved by miles in a short period of time.

Finally, a small bit of confirmation. God reached out to me and said, "See. I do know what's going on." My weary heart was touched and I didn't care who might walk by me and see my emotion-contorted face.

Having the perspective I do now, I don't know why I didn't connect the dots before. It seems so obviously simple. But maybe that was because I was ready to understand it today. Just like multiplying seemed simple to me at the age of eight, but it would have thrown me for a loop just two years before as I was trying to learn how to borrow from the tens column to subtract 49 from 81. God's timing is perfect.

9-16-10

A recent prayer I penned:

I feel like Paul a lot, in Romans 7. Never exactly doing what I want to do. Consistently doing what I don't want to do. Help me. Save me from myself. What I want to do is love people. What I want to do is live a story. What I want to do is be honest. What I want to do is be vulnerable. What I want to do is bring you glory. What I want to do is have people look at me and see you. Which requires you. Than you for being so faithful. This characteristic of yours astounds me. Thank you for never letting me down, but continually holding me up. Your grace is something I can't comprehend. Let my life be a witness to that. Let my life be such that other people look at me and are astounded because my story, the story they see, is really your story. Enchant them just as I have been enchanted. All in your name, Jesus. Amen.