Sorrow

"As Christians we will sooner of later discover that it is in the valleys of our lives that we find refreshment from God Himself. It is not until we have walked with Him through some very deep troubles that we discover He can lead us to find our refreshment in Him right there in the midst of our difficulty. We are thrilled beyond words when there comes restoration to our souls and spirits from His own gracious Spirit." - W. Phillip Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23

We love to cover up pain and ugliness, to hide them under make up and frosting and do our best to pretend they don't exist, because we have allowed life to become about the pursuit of happiness. We want them do die and go away, but we cannot escape them. They are constant, they are everywhere. Looking through world news the other day, I was surprised at the hundreds of deaths that happen every year that I know nothing about. The exponential amount of grieving that happens. It is a devastating thought. Brokenness is a constant state of being.

I am walking in grief right now and I don't know what to do with it. It is very sad and exhausting and persistent and disturbing and it's given me a long lasting headache. My heart hurts an awful lot, as do the hearts of all the people in my family. All this over our beautiful little dog who died on Thursday.

I have a question. Grief is constant. It is a persistent, recurring rhythm of life. It is not something that happens once and never happens again. It is not the chicken pox. I will feel grief many more times, often with much more intensity and sorrow and pain. If sorrow is a constant rhythm, why is it something we try to ignore? It is awful and painful and so so difficult, but trying to deny it or defer it puts us in a place of fear and bewilderment when it happens to us.

I propose that somehow, we must learn to embrace it. We must learn to walk in the heavy pain of this life, and in so doing to drink deeply of the eternally refreshing Spring of Life offered in the valley to the sheep. I do not have the practical application for this proposition, but I believe it is true. It is in brokenness that I find I am selfless, humble, and dependent on Love in ways I am not so during times of joy. The vision I am being taught to see is that somehow in these times we know Love, Peace, Grace, Faith, Hope, Joy and more and more in ways that we cannot know them during happiness. They become real, they are more than just Bible lessons. We come to know them intimately, in their most true, tested forms, and they come to live in us as we are broken. They cannot do so when we do not need them so desperately. We become dependent in broken, real, intense ways. Dependency characterizes us, and we find freedom as the Son of Man carries our sorrows and provides for Life to pour into us.

Go ye forth and walk in the darkness of your grief, that you may find the truth of Light and perfect Peace.

Of Ducks and Papyrus Plants

Anyone who knows me will be able to tell you I am remarkably disorganized. I truly live up to my "INFP" personality type - it seems no matter what, I will always be missing meetings, forgetting assignments, failing to make my bed, locking my room key in my dorm room, and getting to events late. It's an area in which I'm trying to learn to be responsible, but one where the learning process is much slower and more difficult than I hoped it would be.

This morning was a priceless example of this quirk in my personality. First (somewhat uncharacteristically), I woke up on time for church. However, due to my past tendency to wake up with less than 5 minutes to spare, when I saw that my roommate's clock said 9:03am instead of the 8:03 I expected, I resigned myself to another morning of speedy church preparation. It wasn't until Megan woke up a few minutes later and reminded me daylight savings was last night that I realized I actually had about 45 minutes on my hands. After I had gotten ready, I was waiting in front of our neighboring dorm for my other friend to pick me up and take me to church. Since she is always on time, I knew something was wrong when I found myself waiting for more than ten minutes. I didn't have my phone since I lost it yesterday (no worries - Campus Safety found it and is holding it in the field office - I'll be able to retrieve it as soon as they open back up today or tomorrow), so I walked back to my room to double check the Facebook conversation we had yesterday. It was then I discovered I had somehow misread her very clear message saying she would be going to church early, and I realized I had missed that chance of getting there. So I left my room and tried to find another friend who usually leaves from another spot on campus for the same church, but she had already left. I began to resign myself to the idea of having missed church. However, upon the small hope the first friend had gotten my frantic Facebook message of a few minutes ago, I walked back toward my room to check for a response on my computer. I started fishing through my purse for my ID card (the only way to unlock the gates) and realized I had left it tucked into Plato, which I left on my bed not five minutes before.

After a crazy week with last minute paper submissions, multiple other INFP moments, a fair amount of emotional chaos, and the stress caused every time I remember how much homework I have left to finish before tomorrow morning, I was poised to be extremely frustrated at how my morning was going.  However, as I walked in front of Stewart Residence Hall and found a spot to sit down on a wall, I realized this didn't have to be stress, and it occurred to me that God wanted me to sit on that wall and just sit. I couldn't get into my room, and I didn't have anything with me other than my Bible and the notebook I take sermon notes in. In that moment, I was free from the distractions of technology, homework, and friends because I literally could not access any of them. And I was suddenly able to breathe and be still, something I haven't done for a long time. God works in funny ways sometimes, and I could see His hand in this. He was sitting me down rather abruptly and saying, "Alea. Stop. Breathe. You've been moving too fast for too long - take an hour and a half and remember how to be still. I want to give you the goodness of stillness. Just stop, rest, and breathe of Me."

It is in these moments when it is easiest to remember how good and how gentle my God is. In that moment he touched my frantic spirit so gently and made it quiet. As I sat, my heart felt free. My lungs felt free. I felt air entering and leaving them. I could relax and rest into Him. I knew since He wanted me to pause, He would provide the time for everything else to be taken care of later, so I could just take that moment and be still. And He is so lovely. Every time I stop like that, the softest breezes touch my face. Trees rustle and whisper so delicately, their leaves moving and dancing in the most intricate, gentle patterns. I suddenly realize how funny the ducks in the wash across the way are as they splash and preen and dive for reeds in the murky water. I notice the plants next to the wash and see that some of them are papyrus plants, and remember thousands of years ago Egyptians used them to make paper. Light glints off water in the loveliest moving sparkling patterns. Some of it is reflected onto trees in languid flowing lines of light. Trees watch impressionist reflections of themselves in the rippling water. In these moments, I see the quietness of His heart. I feel Him touching my soul and romancing me in the most delicate, gentle ways and I am able to remember how personal and close He is. My chest relaxes and I am surprised by how free it feels to breathe. I had expected to spend my morning first at church and then frantically running to various voice events and trying to read Plato, but instead I spent it watching trees and ducks, and then writing a blog post in my school's empty echoing concert hall.

My conclusion? God is good. God is gentle. God is restful. And He desires to impart His rest upon His children. Next time you find yourself on the verge of intense stress and panic, take a moment. Breathe. And ask God to quiet your soul and give you rest.

Happy Sunday everyone! <3

      And he said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.       

"Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your trasure is, there will your heart be also."  

 Luke 12:22-34

A Treatise on Love

I wrote this about a week ago. It's about relationships, which could potentially be seen as ironic because I am currently single and have always been single, but God's been molding how I think about this area and I want to share it. It might go against the grain for some people, so let me know what you think. I am still learning a lot in this area, and not everything I say will be perfect. Love ya!

I should start this off by saying I am still searching and struggling in this area like crazy. Every day, my heart asks more questions and finds more frustrations and wants romantic love to enter my life. But God is writing me into a story, and in the process He has begun to show me things that point my heart back to Him.

           

I just started college, and I am attending Biola University, a small private Christian college in Southern California. An interesting place for a small, private, conservative Christian college, one of the major results of which (I think) is “ring by spring.” We joke about it, but people take it seriously. I don’t think we ever quite realize just how seriously. As soon as you walk onto campus, you get the sense that everyone is “shopping for a spouse." Any time I get dolled up for an event and it seems like a guy notices me, I get the distinct impression he is considering whether or not I could be his future wife.

For the vast majority of students, this seems to work out pretty well. In most cases, it is likely the Lord truly desires the relationships that form to happen. All of us are practically swimming in a sea of people our age who love Jesus, so what better place to look for and find a spouse? I, however, am already getting tired of it. Most of the time, the matches don’t seem like they were made in Heaven, they just seem really young, like the engaged couple in one of who can’t be much older than sophomores. Do they really know what marriage is, and what it entails? And I am tired of feeling like I have to measure up to someone’s expectations or get to know someone simply because he is interested in me and we are at Bible college together. I find it sad that, in a place where it is made so easy to focus on and learn so much about Jesus, all of us are so focused on finding “the one.” It clouds our judgment and prevents us from realizing how deep, passionate, and tender the Lord’s love is for His people. The opposite gender distracts us from surrendering our stories to the Lord and allowing Him to take us as far as we can go with Him in this life. We don’t see it, but it is such a tragedy! So many fail to see and pursue the richness of a truly intimate, radical relationship with Christ and Christ alone.

            

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been really struggling with all these thoughts and desires. There’s a boy I see all over the place (unfortunately, I have yet to have a real conversation with him, but we’ll get there) who is really cute and for some reason my emotions decided to tell me repeatedly that seeing him everywhere meant we were somehow destined to be together. Can we say “emotional roller coaster?” It’s been bad, possibly the most driven distracted I’ve ever been by attraction to someone, and much of it was not pure. But by God’s grace, somewhere along the line I decided I wanted Jesus more, and I was able to seek Christ in the midst of the turmoil of my feelings. I started asking how I could trust Him and love Him more and asking how I am to honor Him as I wait for Him to bring someone into my life, because it does get lonely and frustrating and exhausting, and the desires are so strong.

            

A friend of mine and I were talking it over, and she said something that struck me: “I don’t think it’s about loving Jesus most, it’s about loving Him alone.” I had never thought of things that way before, and it’s such a revolutionary distinction! Loving Jesus alone instead of most. That suggests absolute contentment, trust, and rest in the richness and intensity of His love. It means my heart is to be complete in Jesus and know He is enough. It means I will not be constantly searching or waiting for a mortal beloved, because I am so enthralled by my Heavenly Love that I can trust Him implicitly with my earthly love story, and perhaps even stop having so much desire for an earthly love as everything pales in comparison to Him.

            

Within the same conversation, my friend brought me to another realization: if loving Jesus is enough, if He is satisfying and beautiful and tender and intimate enough for my heart, any earthly romance is truly just added joy. When the Lord chooses to weave a relationship into my story, it will be because He has seen fit to love me through the man He brings into my life. That takes my future husband and I entirely out of the picture! We will be a means of imparting Christ to each other, not satisfying and pleasing each other. What a beautiful, humbling, hope-inspiring picture.

So I encourage you to fight the good fight, to see and seek Jesus as enough for your heart. Be willing to sacrifice desire for an earthly love story so He who is Divine can enthrall and romance your heart, interlacing your soul with His, and proving Himself to be beautiful and absolutely sufficient. On the lonely days or the times when you are struggling with intense desire and attraction (because those days come all too often), be honest with Christ about where your heart is, and continually lay these desires on the altar before Him. Think of it as a fragrant offering. All He wants is to be enough for you. All He wants is to satisfy you, romance your heart, and bring you the depth of Heavenly joy. Sacrifice yourself! Allow Him to bring you to the place where He is all you see, and your relationship with Him is as rich and deep and beautiful as it can possibly be in this life.

            

As for me, I’m done with waiting. I’m done with anticipating, hoping, longing. I’m done with longing my heart sick. I’m frustrated with myself because I know it’s wrong, and yet all of it enters my heart so often. And for some reason I don’t want to let go of it and rest in the Lord. What is it that keeps me glancing up and wondering about every guy who walks by, or that makes that little hope jump into my heart every time the boy with his lesson after mine knocks on my teacher's door? Why can I not just let go? I know it’s going to be a long wait, and I’m afraid of the hopes making that wait painful and exhausting where it could be rich and exhilarating. I want someone to think I’m amazing – to love that I love John Mayer and have a weird fascination with light, water, and Mason jars. And yet there’s the rub, because Jesus already does! He is already passionately in love with me. He is ravished by my beauty, fascinated by my quirks, and delights so deeply in every intricacy of who He made me to be. What a richly beautiful, intensely intimate, painfully sweet God. A God who is enough.

            

May He reveal this ever more deeply to all of our hearts, and may we always be open to the movements of His Spirit in us.

Beholding your beauty is all that I long forTo worship you Jesus is my sole desireFor this very heart you have made for your pleasurePurposed to lift your name higher Here in surrender
In pure adorationI enter your courts with an offering of praiseI am your servant come to bring you gloryAs is fit for the work of your hands Now unto the Lamb who sits on the throne
Be glory and honor and praiseAll of creation resounds with the song –
Worship and praise Him, the Lord of lords. Spirit now living and dwelling within meKeep my eyes fixed ever on Jesus’ faceLet not the things of this world ever sway meI’ll run till I finish the race.
 Now unto the Lamb, who sits on the throneBe glory and honor and praiseAll of eternity echoes the songWorship and praise him, the Lord of lords Holy Lord, you are holyJesus Christ is the Lord
Holy Lord, you are holyJesus Christ is the Lord Now unto the Lamb, who sits on the throneBe glory and honor and praiseCall all the sinners to join in the songWorship and praise him, the Lord of lords He’s Lord of lordsLord of lords
- "Lord of Lords" Hillsong United

Beauty

Beauty is a funny thing. Our culture is obsessed with it. We are constantly inundated with media telling us we need to be beautiful and sexually appealing to be valuable, that there's always something more we can and should do to be considered more lovely. And for some reason we buy into the lies and believe beauty is everything, that we aren't worth anything if we aren't lovely, and that we are never enough. 

I bought into the lies. For the longest time I didn't feel like I was enough. I wasn't skinny enough, my face wasn't finely shaped enough, my skin wasn't clear enough, I was too awkward or nerdy or lonely. In no way did I conform to the conventional concept of beauty - in face, form, social ability, or the way I interacted with boys. Nor did I have hope of ever doing so. It's just not the way I'm made. These insecurities got really bad last year - I couldn't look at myself in the mirror or go a single day without feeling like I wasn't skinny enough or stylish enough to be really valuable or to ever really, truly be loved or thought beautiful. I never made any drastic lifestyle changes, but I began trying harder and harder to dress better and be a better person so people would like me more. I was so miserably, desperately insecure, and did not think I was worth much at all. I also hated to admit to myself that these emotions were raging through me. I wanted so badly to be the confident and (of course) beautiful senior my peers would look up to.

Then something happened. I graduated and spent my summer working at Campus by the Sea (located in a little cove on Catalina Island), and by the third or fourth day I had virtually given up attempting to match my thrift store shorts to my camp T-shirts. Due to the dusty, sandy, salty, sweaty earthiness of my environment and the severely limited nature of the wardrobe I brought with me, it was virtually impossible to make beauty the idol it had previously been. As a result, I was unable to be anyone but myself. What a beautiful gift from God! I learned I didn't have to be a certain person or look a certain way to be loved - I just had to be myself. Somehow, I am enough - just me, myself, and I.

Since getting back to the mainland I have been doing some more thinking on this topic, and I've come to the conclusion that the tendency of our culture to typecast and create standards of beauty is absolutely ridiculous and futile. Just look around you! Part of the incredible beauty of God's artistry is that every human is designed to be physically different from every other human. Each and every one of us is an intentional, exquisitely designed, unique work of art. As His works of art, we are each intended to reveal a given aspect of His character - spiritually and physically. My body is an integral part of the artwork that is me, and therefore reveals specific aspects of its Artist. And because God is a beautiful God, each of us is beautiful. He would not make something He did not delight in or find beautiful.

Choose to see the world that way. Choose to see people that way. Ask God to open your heart so you can see beauty as He does. When you look at something that is beautiful, ask yourself how it reveals God's character. You will begin to see Him as so much closer, more loving, and more personal than before when you realize that everything He created (light, wind, water, roses, the sky) is meant to be a physical reminder to us of His beauty and His love for us. When you look at someone or something that initially seems ugly, remember God created him/her/it, and, for that very reason, whoever or whatever you are looking at is ravishingly beautiful. It's a beautiful way to see the world. ;)

Also, don't try to or let yourself find your value in your beauty or how others perceive you. Instead, know you are intrinsically valuable simply because you are a child of the One True King. In no other source of identity will you be able to find lasting value.

So remember: you are ravishingly beautiful simply because you are a work of art created by the most incredible Artist in the universe, and you are inherently valuable simply because He delights in you. There is nothing you can do to earn your own value - it just is because God loves you and delights in you.

I love you all! Remember tonight just how loving and beautiful God is.

The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.
Psalm 50:1-2

For you formed my inward parts;
     you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.Wonderful are your works;     my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
     intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
     the days that were formed for me,
     when as yet there were none of them.
Psalm 139:13-16

Hi!

Just a quickie post tonight. A little bit more about what I will be posting. I want this blog to be a place where people feel loved and at home, but I also want to really challenge my readers to "deny themselves" and take up their crosses for Christ, which means not everything posted on here will be within your comfort zones. A lot of it will probably be outside my comfort zone too - especially anything I share about areas where I am being challenged and grown. If you find anything I say to be really unsettling, I encourage you not to forget it quickly. Allow yourself to be uncomfortable and unsettled, and test whether what I am saying is true or not. I would love to get into discussions with you about difficult ideas in the comments. In general, if it has potential to draw you away from yourself and closer to Christ, there's a good chance it is true. However, I am human, so I will not always be right. Forgive me for the times I am wrong or offensive, and let me know (in love) that I have deviated from truth and/or hurt you.

Secondly, I really love stories, and I want to hear yours. If God's been teaching you something and you'd like me to share it or you just need someone to hear your story, shoot me an email or message me on Facebook. If we know each other in person, send me a text and meet me for a meal or coffee. I love hearing stories of God's goodness, exciting, quirky stories from peoples' lives, and also stories of brokenness and pain. At the moment, I can say I am in a season of blessing, but I have been through a lot of difficulty in the past and at least to some degree I know what it is like to be hurting. In most cases, I won't be able to say I can completely relate or that I know things are going to get better, but I do know it often helps just to be heard and prayed for.

Whoever you are and wherever you are right now, know that God is good. Go in peace!

- Alea

"I try to avoid looking forward or backward and try to keep looking upward." Charlotte Bronte

In Opening...

I've never had a blog before! But I am really excited about this one. :) Lately I've been learning a lot from Jesus about Himself and how He desires me to draw close to Him, and felt moved to share some of it with others. This is the best way I could think to do so.

What will the focus of this blog be? To be honest, I can't really define it. It will be about Jesus and the truth He shows me. Along the way, I will most definitely be throwing in some poetry, art, music, photographs, and many other little tidbits of my life. But mostly, I want to point my lovely readers to the Heart of their Creator, because He is the most beautiful, most gentle, most loving Person we can know in this life.

The title:
"to walk in Love." If Jesus is Love, and we are called to walk with Him, I seek to "walk in Love." It's sort of a reference to Ephesians 5:1, but not quite.

A little more about me....
I am an English major, which means I love books. My favorite author is C.S. Lewis (he seems to be the only one who can truly make me cry), at the moment my favorite poet is e.e. cummings, and I am in the middle of about eight books which I never seem to have time to finish. I also love Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen, and I keep about four journals at a time. At the moment, I think I want to be an English professor, and I have a pet dream of becoming an amazing poet. I am also a vocal music minor, so I love classical vocal (which definitely includes opera) and choral music. I'm blessed with a beautiful family and beautiful friends.

Jesus is beautiful - He loves me so much. I constantly fall short of His goodness, but in his mercy He always opens and envelops me in His arms, no matter how far I've run from Him. He keeps proving the intense richness of his incredible love in beautiful defiance of the fact that I don't deserve it. He is so very good! Keep loving Him! Go forth and seek the little tender displays of love He offers in every part of life, and be blessed and at peace.

I love you all! I cannot wait to share more with you!

Love, Alea