Fresh Air!!!

Ok, so I was reading entries recently from my old blog, and I realized I need to switch up the theme of this blog a little bit and be more light-hearted. Obviously I don't blog much at all these days anymore, but I think it would be more fun if when I did I didn't make everything so serious! I guess that's kind of how my life has become as I've gotten older and I am just afraid if I don't loosen up now it's JUST GOING TO GET WORSE!!

I think some things I could do this week to bring back the old days are as follows:
-TP someone's house
-Play a game of spoons
-Ask my mom to do my laundry (joking)
-Get some Graeter's ice cream
-make a "movie" with Chelsea
-Read a Nancy Drew book
-Play pranks on my roommates

Ok so I actually it hasn't been that long since I've stopped doing all of these things and pretty much I still do some of them, but perhaps the long winter numbed my brain and I've forgotten how to be spontaneous, immature, and random. It does the body good!!





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Wait

It's been nearly a year since I last posted.

This past year has been full of activity: I have been blessed with countless ways to learn, serve, and build community. What a blessing to be able to do the things that I am passionate about, and I have been loving every minute of it.

But these last several months I have entered into a season of "waiting." When Christ spoke softly to me and said "wait" I didn't know what to do with myself. How does one wait?? And what exactly am I even waiting for? I wonder if it's harder for my generation to understand this concept. Everything is so available and it doesn't make sense anymore to wait.

I am learning how to depend on the Lord moment by moment. My thoughts can take me thousands of different directions each day. Waiting is a time when we can either run away to the Lord or to him. Waiting can be considered suffering, depending on the kind of waiting. Waiting for pain to go away is something nobody wants. But through suffering we can know Christ in a way that we've never known him. Recently I heard about a woman who, in her last months of her battle with cancer, cried out to Jesus and in fact she felt that He "plastered Himself" to her. She couldn't get away from Him. She couldn't stop feeling Him, couldn't stop talking about Him to everyone she knew.

Forty

"Honestly, we don't really need your food, we just want your company."

-A friend who lives on the streets

I saw her reflection

She is Yours
as am I
two worlds collide
one from a world of beauty and freedom
the other from a world of want

how did You plan for us to meet?
how did You set it upon my heart?
when did it begin?
You planted a seed in me
not realizing it's growth, until that day
when I saw her reflection with mine

privileged, I know
to be with one of Your precious ones
I felt it we smiled at each other
once a burden on my heart, now a friend
she is Yours
as am I

Denver

Once again I am at another transition in my post-college life!

I have been living in Denver, Colorado for the summer, doing an internship at The Denver Rescue Mission. I, along with the other interns, are living among those coming out of homelessness in a transitional housing program.

I am seeing people with different eyes...."T" is a man that I might have seen on the streets a year ago. Even though I have made friends with the homeless in Columbus, I am realizing that I still put them in a different category than myself. But now that I eat dinner with "T" and sit and chat with him about sports or how my day was, I treat him differently than "the homeless." My heart breaks with the realization that my whole life I have looked at people through such human eyes and not through the eyes of Christ. "T" has taught me more than he realizes. In fact, I am realizing that these people I am living among have a stronger love for Christ than I perhaps ever will. And I am seeing them succeed and move towards new life. Such a visible, tangible, expression of the life that Christ offers all of us.

There are difficult things about my internship, like the realization that sitting at a desk all day maybe isn't my thing. And the frustrations in hearing stories of phone calls from those struggling and needing our assistance that for whatever reason we simply can't help. My heart hurts for them. Yet it's just another strong reminder that we are not in control, rather He is. The other day I went out with a co-worker to talk to those living in motels. We came to tell them of the Denver Rescue Mission and ways that we could help them. And when we offered prayer, not one turned it down. There is nothing like praying for a person. Lifting up one who is suffering to the Lord is far more of a gift than any material thing. I am thankful for that realization. I will never be able to do enough physically for someone, but if I fail to lift them up to the Lord, I have neglected to give them something far more precious.

Romania

Dispatch Article

I came across a link to this article tonight. Christ's love is a beautiful thing.

Humbling

A couple of years ago, when I was living in Romania, I attended a cultural awareness seminar put on by a Romanian non-profit that was geared towards foreigners living/working/volunteering in Romania. I was cleaning out my room the other night and found some of my notes from the classes there. One thing that really impacted me was a session that was taught by Allan Taylor, a missionary from Austraila. He had conducted a survey and collected all the data and come up with some interesting results. Allan asked several Evangelical Romanians this question: "What have been some of the mistakes missionaries have made in the past 12 years, in your opinion?" The results were some very honest answers that really made me think. The list is long, but there are a few I wanted to share that really stuck out to me.

*"Coming with personal agendas rather than spiritual goals"
*"Not learning the language"
*"Either intentionally or unintentionally missionaries left us with the impression that Foreigners are superior to Romanians."
*"Exaggerating reports to back home leaving people with a wrong impression of the work here in Romania."
*"Coming with outside pressure to perform on the mission field, leading some missionaries to push things in the ministry and even become controlling. This just causes resentment and resistance."
*"Passing on materialistic values through the example of the missionary's own life."
*"Sensationalizing the ministry. Throwing bibles and other materials out to people in church while taking pictures of people scrambling to catch something."

Those were just a few. He also asked "What do you think the role of the missionary is in this country?"
*"To serve people like they keep saying they came to do." (I believe Robin and Josh are doing that)

I was really humbled by what I heard that day. And it really made me re-think a lot of my ideas about missions, especially short term missions. The term "missionary" shouldn't be a negative thing in Romania, or in any country, but the truth is that in some places there has been a lot of hurt and negativity associated with that label. I hope that as Christians we can take a hard look at the way we view and treat the rest of the world, and that a "missionary" can be defined as someone who seeks to love and give the hope of Christ....