Addendum to “grace & small revelations"

(Slightly related elaborations from this post.)

Something else God pointed out to me:

I was upset because I had nightmares lat night.  I’ve been upset on many, many nights because insomnia was robbing me of much-needed sleep.

But you know what?

God made night and day.  And He called them both good.

I hear that from time to time:  people talking about how God made everything and called it good.  But I usually hear it referring to people‚ or to nature—living things.  All true and excellent, of course.  Yet, God said everything was good.  He took the time to call out every individual thing He created and tell it how good it was.

So I have “good” nights and “bad” nights. There’s grace in that, too.  There is grace because God always shows up.

So I bless the night.  I bless it even when I don’t meet the new morning feeling phenomenal.  I bless it even when it made me miserable.  I bless it, because God did it first.

SoM: Father-Heart Week

Okay, the last six days have been intense. I’m not going to be able to sum up everything in the teachings, plus all the extraneous stuff that happened in my heart…

Father-Heart Week.  The week that every intern and second-year student says messed them up the most, the week where almost everyone cries their eyes out at least twice.  We basically spend five days seeking revelation of the love of God as a Father.  Because this pretty heavily involves Him filling in the gaps in areas where our own parents might have failed us, it tends to hit some pretty deep wounds.  I heard a lot of crazy stories.  I kind of was a crazy story.  For obvious reasons, I’m not going to go into many of those details on this blog.  Coming into the school, I already knew I had some serious issues with both my parents that I’ve been working through. So God acknowledged those.

And then He was like, “Look at these other hang-ups you didn’t even know you had!”  And subverted all my expectation for the week.

I had one really good cry, on Monday.   I actually spent a lot more time laughing.  Joy was a definite theme of the week for me—I think God’s trying to get it through to me that He isn’t passive about me.  He delights in me.  There was one fantastic activation we did yesterday (normally I dread activations, because they usually involve uncomfortable prophetic encounters with people you don’t know well):  the speaker told us we were going to invite childlikeness.  So we did it really literally—we blew up balloons, and blew party horns, and had a dance party to songs that were popular in the ‘90s.  It was crazy awesome, definitely one of my highlights of the week.

It wasn’t all fun and games, though.  There was one message, on Thursday, that was really hard to hear:  it was about having a spirit of sonship (or daughterhood, as it were)—especially towards your natural parents.  Part of me was listening to the message going, “Oh!  This is really relevant!  Hurray!” and another (bigger) part of me was going “WHOA, I’m not ready to hear this; I can’t do this.”  I think the events of my family life in the last two years have so changed the way I relate to both of my parents that I don’t even have a frame of reference right now for how to apply this message.  Intentionally being God’s daughter?  Okay, that sounds awesome.  Intentionally being a daughter to my parents?  That idea really threw me for a loop, and I wasn’t expecting it.  I didn’t even know it was an issue.  So that’s going to take some time to unravel.

We also had ministry team training—basically, practical instructions on how to (and especially how not to) pray over people.  Now, I’ve actually had similar training for my young adult group’s prayer team back home (which I never really served on), but it’s still incredibly intimidating.  For me, coming to the SoM was largely about overcoming fear and being equipped to do just this sort of thing without freaking out, so I’m trying to just say “yes” and listen to the Holy Spirit.  Whew.

A nutshell version of what God’s been telling me this week:

• He is my defender and deliverer.  
• He just loves it when I try; He doesn’t push me to do better than my best, even if my “best” seems to me to be not very good.  
• He wants to protect my heart so I don’t have to do it all myself.
• He’ll keep His word, and/therefore I can/should take Him really seriously.
• Spending time with me is tons of fun for Him.  His investment in me is always 100%.
• I can be as fanciful in my imaginations of heaven as I want, and I won’t be wrong or disappointed.  (I had a crazy hour-long vision about this one, guys.  It involved part of Revelation 19 and took me seven pages to journal about.  It was amazing.)
• This time at the school isn’t about whether I have what it takes, it’s whether He does…and yes, He does.

It’s a lot, right?  It’s a lot.  And next week is about “Healing Life’s Hurts.”  Ooh boy.

I’d be happy to talk to anybody about anything more in-depth, by the way! Or just to catch up with Kalamazoo! Totally feel free to message me on Facebook (or Skype me! I have Skype now!) sometime.  My schedule’s not super full until the end of September, so sometime in the next week and a half would be an especially good time.  

* A note to my fabulous commenters:  If you do leave a comment and are not signed into your Google account, please sign your name in the comment so I know it’s you—I had three anonymous comments on my last post that were very lovely, but one was unsigned and I couldn't tell who it was from!  :)  Thanks so much for keeping up with me!

The blowing of my mind.

So, earlier tonight I determined to spend some face time with God before bed (something I've been neglecting lately):  a little worship and prayer and Bible reading.  Historically I've been really bad at sticking to a reading plan, so I was mainly flipping idly around in the Old Testament.  I have no idea why I landed in the middle of Joshua 22, but I started reading from the middle of the chapter and almost immediately saw this verse:

"If the land you possess is defiled, come over to the LORD's land, where the LORD's tabernacle stands, and share the land with us."  (Joshua 22:19) 

Even without the context (Most of the tribes of Israel are speaking to a couple fo the other tribes, who were allotted land on the other side of the Jordan River outside Canaan and built an altar where they weren't supposed to), this verse really struck me.  This very thing that the people of Israel are doing is what we as believers and Christ-followers are supposed to do.  We're supposed to call people out of the "defiled land" where they live, and invite them to share int he Kingdom of God and His glory and His presence.  SO CRAZY.  As in, so incredible, and fantastic, and a bit frightening (I mean, shoot, that's a pretty prestigious responsibility).  We're supposed to tell people how good we've got it as citizens of the Kingdom, and invite them to share in that.  It makes me want to pray my face off.

This was encouraging to me for the reason that, basically, I generally don't care a whole lot for Bible reading.  I don't hate it, but it's awfully rare for me to get excited about it, either.  I've read everything in the Bible before, some of it dozens and dozens of times.  And it's hard not to go into it with that mindset.  I so often can read it and praise God for who He is, but I virtually never feel like I get anything new out of it or feel like I've learned something.  I don't have fresh eyes for the Bible.  This encounter was interesting because, for one, I honestly don't really recall this story, so it was sort of new in that way, but mainly because if I had read that chapter straight through and read that verse in all its context, I would probably never have taken particular note of it.  I would never have taken ten minutes to be totally floored by God and what it means to be a Christian.  I feel like God was sort of saying, "Even though your heart is only half in this, since you're deliberately seeking Me and even sacrificing some sleep to do it, I am going to give you a totally new experience and have fun watching you have fun getting your mind blown."

God is so good, and holy, and brain-boggling.

And that's one verse out of context!  How much more could you find in this whole passage by reading it normally? My mind's now doubly blown, because even though i've been told countless times that God;s word is multilayered, I never really give that much thought or ask or seek to experience that.  i wish I always felt as excited and curious about the Bible as I do now.  (Don't think I haven't prayed about that.)  It would be so much harder to get disillusioned so quickly.  The Bible is amazing—why don't I experience it like it is more often?

Oh my gosh.  I have been thinking/writing in Sentences In Which Every ("Important") Word Begins With a Capital Letter all day (well, all day Saturday, which was 19 minutes ago).  And trying to generalize everything into a Category With a Catchy Name.  This is bad.  I've only been on it three times, but TvTropes is going to ruin my life.

Just like this guy.  And he's two-dimensional; he hasn't even got an actual brain to fry on the Internet.

Century-old postcards, and fractal doodles

Today has been lengthy and blurry because I have felt rather sleepy for the last eight or so hours.  I got coffee with Leah and Rachel D., and we hung out in a Catholic bookshop and an antique store, where I bought (or rather, Rachel purchased for me) a 100-year-old postcard addressed to somebody named Ralph from his aunt Vira, who has uber cool handwriting of which I'm jealous:

People used to write the oddest things on postcards.  We spent probably more than half an hour reading them in the antique shop, and people wrote things like  
"Aunt Julia is dead, at 4 a.m. today. They are coming to move her body this afternoon." 
"This church looks wonderfully majestic on the outside, but it's as gloomy as a dungeon on the inside."  (That was the entire content of the card.)
and  "Why haven't you written?  Are you all dead?  We're having very pleasant weather, and the wind is howling something fierce.  Went to visit Fred today.  He asked why you haven't written."  I even found an old dental reminder from the '40s that said, "It's time for your dental appointment!  You need to brush up on your smile!"  


Almost all of the ones with writing one them were at least 90 years old.  They were really funny and sometimes very sad—and bizarre, because nowadays nobody would send news of a death in the family and/or tragic illness by postcard…

With Mom on the way home, I traversed Target, where I got some balloons and a journal, and ambled through Aldi, where I got some Kleenex and chamomile tea (I heard it's supposed to help you sleep/destress) and a berry-flavored Bolthouse, because it was on sale.

Also,

Vlogbrothers + Vi Hart + me + four hours of sleep + doodle mania  = a fractal made out of a giraffe shaped like a llama.  (Of which this is a rather poor photo.)

If I wrote a song about this, it could be turned into a 1940s-era reenactment of Barbara Manatee.

I hate it when you grow up and you start realizing that everything doesn't come in black and white.  Morals, people, opinions, relationships, politics...everything deals in ambiguity.  Maybe that's one reason I hate drama (as in, melodrama)—why I like "sword-and-sorcery" fantasy books where there's a valiant hero and a dastardly villain and you always know who's going to come out on top, and what's right and what's wrong.  Maybe that's why so many people write those books.  Because, no matter how much we wish it did, life doesn't operate like that.  Things I thought were secure might not be.  People I thought I understood metaphorically up-and-move to another planet.  People have stories buried in dark alleys in another world.  Except—none of this is as dramatic as that made it sound.  Nothing is really fantastically drastic.  

I'm just finding out that the world isn't as idealistic as I am.  I'm feeling hopelessly, incurably naïve.  And it's bundling more confusion onto me than I think is my fair share, what with being a brand-new adult and trying to get the rest of my life sorted out and all.  Can't I just live it moment by moment, and let it all work out for itself?  But, see, that's not black-and-white, either.  Apparently you need forethought, vision, necessities like that.  Since when have those been my forte?  Since when was I a good candidate to sort out my own life?  Who thought it would be a good idea to drag me out from the cupboard under the stairs? (Yes, book reference, sorry.)  People don't work like I spent eighteen years thinking they did.  And that sort of explains a lot, like why I spend so much time wanting to beat people I've never met over the head with something large and heavy and perfect for knocking sense into human brains.  I'm starting to understand why I don't understand so many things about why the world is the way it is, even if that's all I'm understanding.  I really miss being naïve without understanding what naïveté was.  But I can't afford to live like that, can I?  Ostensibly...no. I cannot.  

Good golly, I'm a moody lil' woman.

Politics According To the Kierstenverse.

This is something I’ve been deliberating lately, and today (well, by the time I get around to posting this it will have been last night) I felt compelled to sit down and write about it.  And I am now blogging about it because I know it's a topic that at least some of you who know me well might be interested to read about.

Where do I stand, politically?  I’ve been confused about it ever since I started giving a hoot about politics (somewhere around when I was fifteen-sixteenish).  So I did a little bit of research and a fair amount of thinking (and a lot of talking to myself) over the last couple of days.  

For the purposes of this small explanation, I am going to explore politics in the contemporary, generalized right/left conservative/liberal “Republican/Democrat” terms.

I think I’m somewhere around conservative-to-moderate.  The way I have come to understand it, I tend to be very conservative on anything I view as a moral issue (obviously, as it’s usually the right-wingers that see those issues as moral issues at all); regarding things that I do not see as an matter of morality, I tend more towards the liberal end of the political spectrum.  

For example, I believe that abortion is morally wrong (conservative), but I think the government should make an active effort to erase class distinctions based on gender or race (a liberal position).  Of course, sometimes my views on both sides clash—I definitely believe every human being should have equal rights and opportunities, but I don’t think the government should minimize one person’s efforts and achievements by elevating someone who didn’t put as much effort into bettering themselves to the same status in society.)

(And then there’s the issue of “sexual minorities”...I firmly believe homosexuality is wrong, but I believe just as strongly that people should be loved for who they are even if I cannot approve of their behavior.  So where do I believe the government should treat those people?  How can the legal system treat them as equal citizens without thus necessarily condoning their behavior?  Generally, I take the politically conservative side here, but I always feel a little bit bad about it.)

I’ll take a moment to explain what I mean by “what I see as moral issues”.  As someone who is pro-life, I hear the term abortion and instantly think, “Oh, that’s morally wrong.”  However, someone who is pro-choice doesn’t necessarily hear abortion and go, “Yes, that’s morally right.”  To my understanding, they view it as more of a civic issue than a moral one.  They view abortion as the law’s treatment of women’s rights, where a political conservative views it as the woman’s treatment of another human being.  Pro-life proclaims a baby's right to life; pro-choice heralds a woman's right to autonomy.

In people’s heads, it’s two completely different problems.

The same is true of gay marriage—a politically conservative person probably views it as inherently, basically wrong; where a politically liberal person views it as a basic human right.  

Left and right can agree on a vague, absolute truth—”murder is wrong”—but then cannot agree on what actually constitutes murder.

And then there’s the debates I could care less about—take gun laws, for instance.  Republicans are all for gun rights, Democrats all for beating them down.  I think it’s a pointless argument to waste energy on...but that’s probably because it has basically no bearing on my life, and as long as people aren’t shooting each other with those guns, it isn’t a moral absolute that I think needs to be addressed one way or another.  I really don’t care.

Overall, I would say I am probably fairly moderate, but I would tend to vote for conservative candidates because I am much more ethically and emotionally tied up in the issues on which i take a conservative view.

I could go on for a while outlining my feelings on specific issues.  But I won’t bother, here.  I mainly wanted to get out a basic outline of what I believe, what goes on in my head, the very small parts that I have actually ironed out.  I don’t keep up with enough contemporary politics to have a really good understanding of everything.  I’m only just stepping into the world where this really matters to me, where it all begins to have a much more personal effect on me.  

I think we should reinstitute a theocracy and let God straighten politics out (and thus, I suppose, eliminate politics altogether?).

(That was a hastily made statement that, while generally true, probably isn’t true in the sense of half the implications that just popped into your heads.)

I was thinking today...

• that I really miss riding horses.
• That Jesus does a freaking amazing job of proving Himself even when we don't deserve it.
• That coffee tastes just that much better with a smidgen of English toffee syrup.
• That crying is a good thing to do.
• That inspiration is one of the best gifts.
• That China must house a third of the world's population or somethin', from the way they attract news stories.
• That human hands are pretty darn versatile.
• That chocolate is fun to stash away for a rain check.
• That joggers who live in Richland need to have their brains checked.
• That American rules of punctuation suck.
• That my friends give the best hugs ever.
• That Carmen Sandiego was way more fun to hunt down than Waldo ever was.
• That my teapot needs a name.
• That my laptop needs a name.
• That the mouse running all over our family room is adorable, even if my mother thinks the opposite.
• That Facebook should just buck up and work.
• That time management skills are way more elusive than they ought to be, considering their necessity.
• That I would do just about anything to be telekinetic.
• That society has gotten very boringly modern.
• That I should move to Scandinavia, if only to find people who know how to pronounce my name on the first try.