choosing joy

Choose joy. Choose joy. Choose joy.

I think it when Carter gets up to pray and the tears well up as I prepare to break bread with my church family the last time as a youth group member. Eventually my pride crumbles along with my make up and I let the tears fall. This isn't the kind of looks like your eyes are watering cry but rather the type where you hope no one hears you gasp for air and you could really use a nap afterwards type of cry. The two other senior girls and my best friend are both crying as well. I look up after Carter says amen, and I manage a smile. "We are such pansies," I mumble. They grin.

I try to focus on what is hindering me from being bold for the Lord this week, but today my attention span is thin and I can't help but take notice of the family that I have grown to love here.

A year ago I entered this church building that was unfamiliar that held no value to me and now I leave it with a heavy heart because now this place is home. Not many people have this. I am thankful to be one that does.

These people have loved me and they have pushed me and they have laughed with me and they have cried with me and they have prayed with me. They have sought the Lord with me in our pursuit of His reward, and they have listened to my doubts and my problems and my fears.

Choose joy. Choose joy. Choose joy.

I think it again when I drive away after saying goodbye to almost everyone tonight. I gave long hugs and tried to joke around to cover tears and I waved as I walked out the door. I exhale.

Choose joy.

This time I say it out loud.

Life has a peculiar feel when you look back on it that it doesn't have when you're actually living it. It's as though the whole thing were designed to be understood in hindsight, as though you'll never know the meaning of your experiences until you've had enough of them to provide reference.

It makes sense looking back.

The summer before my freshman year, I went to Camp Tahkodah (which I can't say enough good things about by the way) with a lot of my friends that had been going since they were little. We rode horses and made a trash can milkshake and dug into what it meant to reach our peak in our faith. We even went on a hayride where the trailer came loose and we wrecked into a bunch of barbed wire which wasn't exactly the greatest situation, but it made for an interesting story later. Jen, my youth minister's wife now, was my cabin counselor, and Blake, my youth minister, was a counselor there as well.

I remember praying the night before my first night at University that God would give me some sense of belonging in Conway because it was a brand new place to me at the time. Annnnd boom. The next morning I walked into church and not only do I find out that my old counselor is the youth minister there but that the normal preacher is on a break and Blake is preaching. I sat on the back row teary eyed because God had answered my prayer so quickly, and for the first time in a long time I knew I was exactly where I needed to be.

Getting there wasn't exactly a joy ride.  You see Jesus wrecked my life, shattered it to pieces, and put it back together more beautifully.

Jen and I were in contact a few days after my first Sunday there, and it wasn't long before UCC felt like home. My family's original plan was to look around to see where we fit best, but my mom knew that I wasn't going to love it as much anywhere else.

God saw my need of a church family and He did something about it. He didn't just say He was for me or with me. He was actually present with me. And it was then that I realized that I needed there to be something bigger than me. I needed someone to put awe inside of me; I needed to come second to someone that has everything figured out.

If you know me well, you know that I like to have an agenda, a plan. I like to know what's next. And so when God doesn't make things clear immediately I get a little restless, a little irritated. Someone told me once when talking about this that the most mysterious qualities of God are often the most glorious qualities of God. In Proverbs 25:2 I read that it's to the glory of God to conceal a matter. His majesty rests in the unknown. I am simply called to follow him day by day.

To be blunt, college kind of terrifies me. I don't know where my life is headed. I have a general idea, but I also thought that too when I was in second grade and told my mom I wanted to work at the bowling alley. There's so many parts of my life I want to hold onto desperately.

I'm going to miss driving all over the world with Kirsten while jamming out to her "ghetto jams" and making fools of ourselves car dancing. I'm going to miss Blake telling each one of us that he loves us every Sunday during communion. I'm going to miss the mission trips and the retreats and the nights where we would just hang out together and do nothing. I'll miss bantering with Camdyn about theories behind what the Wizard of Oz really means and putting up with his terrible music choices. I'll miss taking pictures and growing together and bringing up inside jokes. I'll miss going to Ava and Carter's house to watch Netflix and just to chill out and have fun. I'll miss fangirling over Ben Rector with Jen. I'll miss looking forward to seeing everyone at church. I'll miss everyone. I'll miss it all.

But today, I will choose joy. I choose to be thankful for the time I have had here to grow and to learn and to experience what it is to be one. I choose to dwell on the fact that God has given me a group of irreplaceable friends here that have blessed me abundantly in multiple ways. I choose to acknowledge the fact that God is good and that His timing is perfect. I choose to reminisce on the times I have had here in Conway.

I won't hide the fact that today it also hurts, but I will love these memories. I already do.

trek 2015

Last week I had the opportunity to travel fourteen hours to Salida, Colorado to make a summit attempt on Casco Peak,which is nearly 14,000 feet tall.

And it was hard.

Perhaps a better way to phrase that is it was physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually demanding the entire time. Although this was to be expected considering the fact that we were carrying 40 lb packs for hours primarily uphill with breaks that were few and far between, my allergic reaction was not so, well, expected. My legs were covered in hives that caused an intense burning sensation for the majority of the hike up to high camp, which is the typically the most difficult day as far as hiking goes.

A couple of days later, a friend said he believed that God works more quickly and powerfully than usual in the circumstances that we were in. Fortunately, I was able to witness this when our guides, Caleb & Keleigh, prayed over my legs and the hives were gone by the time we arrived at high camp. Hallelujah.

It was fun.

Between dozens of games of mafia and singing songs such as Don't Stop Believin' and Livin' on a Prayer on the way down the mountain, the group we were paired with from Nashville and the group I was a part of became close knit quickly. We laughed around the fire at night at our feeble attempt to make a cookie and we laughed some more when we were woken up by Caleb's singing. By the end of the week, an outsider would never know who was in what group.

It was humbling.

You would think everyone would just carry their own pack, right? Eh, wrong. There was stuff being passed around in shifts periodically, and at first, it was surprisingly hard for people to admit that they needed help. In reality, during this trip, vulnerability was almost forced because we needed each other in order to go on. Someone needed encouragement. Someone needed help with their pack. Someone needed to be pushed.

I think this is a powerful example of the church being one body because where some struggled, the others would help them in order to move along, and then vice versa. Where some were weak, some were strong, and where some were strong, some were weak. Ultimately, it takes all of us in order to reach our peak.

It was rewarding.

People, let me tell you, there are NO words as sweet as "This is high camp!" It took us eight hours to get to high camp, and it was painful and hard and painful and long and painful. But there was no better feeling than relaxing around the fire that night, knowing that we had made it that far together and knowing that we were that much closer to our summit attempt. Also, the farther up we hiked, the more beautiful it was. We could see for forever - mountains, trees, rocks, snow in some parts. It was postcard pretty. That view of His creation made everything so beyond worth the hours it took to get there. I feel as if all of this beauty exists so you and I can see His glory, His artwork. It's like an invitation to worship Him, to know Him.

Most of all, it was spiritually uplifting.

Before it was actually spiritually uplifting, it was difficult because we were challenged to tell of our struggles and hardships and fears and the like. At the end of every day, we would all sit around the fire together and sing a few songs and then we would each tell something that was challenging or encouraging during the day or the ways in which we saw God that day. During the first night of devo, we were told to not say the first thing that came to our mind but rather to dig deeper into the second and third thoughts that would creep in. At one point, we were told to say what we felt like we shouldn't say. After some awkwardness the first night, these conversations were full of people being totally open and honest, and that was an incredible thing to see.

There was talk of divorce, low self-esteem, trust issues, abuse, doubt, fear of the future, and on and on. What was so encouraging about it all, is that every time someone confessed their doubt or their fear or their struggle, someone else spoke up and said me too.

Me too. I heard David Skidmore say at Impact this year that perhaps these two words are the most powerful words in the English language because they give us the ability to relate to someone else.

These two words make us able to not feel so alone because it makes us realize there is in fact a way to come out stronger than before.

And so each time we talked about our failures or struggles, the more we realized that the penalty of our wrongdoing is not determined by the measure of it. We could overcome in many different ways, and it was a simple truth that came to life for some that we could overcome at all. We talked and we prayed and we prayed some more. We laid it all out for everyone to see. 

Wounds have the potential to turn into infections unless we allow them to turn into scars.

Paul writes to the Philippians while he's in prison: 

"Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear." 

We all have our chains in a sense. We all have something that could have the potential to hold us back, to hinder us in our faith if we let it. 

The beauty of trial is that it gives us the ability to relate to one another and through that we are able to spread his love. And when we show the extravagant love of God, we have a sense of belonging.

I understand that every struggle is unique, and I believe that God gives each of us what we need for our unique walks. I also know that there are similarities in trials that allow us to help people.

I left trek wondering how different life would be if we were open about our struggles in life to people as much as we were there. I think that honesty is something people would be drawn to.

After all, we are called to be light. People are looking for light. It cancels fear. It comforts. It illuminates. It sustains life. It makes things possible. 

All in all, this experience taught me that I think to be in a relationship with God is to be loved purely and furiously. And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can't accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people. Maybe that's why God tells us to love each other so frequently. 

What we really need is somebody who loves us so much we don’t worry about death, or about anything for that matter. We need this; we need this so we can love other people purely and not for selfish gain, we need this so we can see everybody as equals, we need this so our relationships can be sincere, we need this so we can stop kicking ourselves around, we need this so we can lose all self-awareness and find ourselves for the first time, not by realizing some dream, but by being told who we are by the only Being who has the authority to know, by that I mean the Creator.

And so every day we have a choice. We can stay nestled in our safe comfortable places. We can let the fear of something really small compared to the greatness of God cripple us. Or we can take a risk, do something to help someone else, make a person smile, change someone's world. Life to to fullest exists. It's available. All we have to do is decide to get up and embrace it. 

I don't always want to help other people. Generally speaking, I do. But there are certain days, when I, like everyone else in the world, simply want to do what I want to do. It's part of being human. But so often, when we stop to be kind when we don't really want to, that's when the sacrifice becomes most rewarding.

And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.

Paul goes on to write: 

"...for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."

What good will come from your chains?

Remember that there is nothing in our stories that He cannot make beautiful. There's nothing lacking in our Father. He never comes up empty or short.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. 2 Corinthians 4:7-12