All together.

I know you feel like you need to have it all together.

Before you can do ministry.  Before you can write the book you want to write.  Before you can pursue design school.  Before you can do whatever it is you truly desire.  I know you feel like everyone else is further along than you, and you just need to get a little bit better before you attempt to reach your full potential, or any potential.

Can I tell you something?  Nobody has it all together.  That's a myth.

No one has the perfect job.
No one has the perfect marriage.
No one has perfect parenting skills.
No one has a perfect walk of faith.

Stop bathing in the muddy water of "all together".  It will only keep leaving you thirsty.  You don't have to have to have life all figured out before you can start living. You don't have to be perfect to pursue grace.

Grace.  

That's the stuff the good life is made of, anyways.  Grace in a broken, beautiful life.  It infiltrates the myth of perfection.  The myth that says you have to clean yourself up first.

It's crystal clear water.

Here we go....again.

I never changed majors in college.

I think statistically, someone changes their major seven or so times before they stick with something they really like.  That, or they've taken so many credits in one concentration area and graduation is quickly approaching so their decision is pretty much made for them.  I knew I wanted to go into Youth Ministry, and there was no stopping me. No minor.  No double major. I may as well have scribbled with a sharpie on a piece of torn cardboard the words  'youth ministry or bust' and taped it to my dorm room door.

As a graduate student, I have changed my Masters degree three times.  Looks like I did things a little backwards.

Social work seemed like the perfect option to make ministry practical.  How could I be qualified in the world's eyes to serve and be in an actual profession where you help people all day and get paid for it?  Getting a Master of Social Work would leave me with abundant career options.  I could work with kids or never work with kids again.  I could work in a hospital or non-profit.  Seemed like the perfect choice.

And I hated it.

I took one semester and was bored.  I didn't feel challenged.  My field supervisor had his M.Div and his MSW.  I had been interning with attorneys and social work advocates on behalf of the community of people with disabilities for almost 6 months.  When he came for his semester "check up", I told him I didn't know if I could handle another semester of disability advocacy.  It wasn't for me.

He told me I needed to decide if this whole profession was for me.  I wouldn't be the first to take a semester and walk away from the program.  And I wouldn't be the last.  He winked.

So I did.

I stepped out of vocational ministry to pursue my MSW, and then I found my hands empty of both.  I went back to retail and was reminded I was pretty good at sales.  I later became a sales representative for a school.  It was a love/hate relationship.  I loved promoting academics and working with students, but I hated constantly fearing for my job in a poisonous work environment where motivation was offered from supervisors in the form of threats, competition, and belittling.  One time, my direct supervisor told a co-worker I was useless, despite the fact I was in the top 3 representatives at our school and it was only my first term.  He also said another co-worker was stupid, but at least she had looks going for her.

Nauseated yet?

I decided I would pursue my MBA to prove ethics could be brought into business.  That whoever said business wasn't personal was a liar.  And to prove I was smarter than those who said I was useless.  I came to North Greenville University by accident.  (Or an act of God.  Whatever you want to call it.)  My theology adviser from undergrad sent me an email one day that read,

"Aren't we facebook friends?"

I messaged him on facebook and he asked if I was currently working in vocational ministry.

Was this some kind of graduation survey?  I sure hope not.  I ran ministries all through college.  What a disappointment I would look like.

He said his friend from graduate school was the Vice President of a graduate school in a town near where I was living.

"You guys should network."

The phone conversation with the guy was completely awkward.  I knew more about him than I should, and all we had in common was a mutual bald friend.

"So, Jeff tells me you're looking for work?"

Well, not exactly.

While my environment at work was poisonous, I made more money than I ever had.  Two weeks paid vacation up front, sick time, a retirement fund, opportunities to advance.  What more do you want in life?

Well, I wanted a whole lot more that to the world, probably looks like a whole lot less.

I am currently sitting at my desk as the Assistant to the Dean of Graduate Enrollment, making less money than I have in my entire life,  and I have completed my first week in my new Masters degree.  In what, you ask?

Christian Ministry.  Yikes.

I'm not sure if anyone can be a "master" of something like this, but we can sure try. We can search and question.  We can experience.  And oh, we can hope.  And we can bring hope to a hurting world.

And you don't need a Masters degree to do that.

I guess I'm trying to tell myself what I've been telling you all along - follow your passion.  Pursue what keeps you breathing, because if you haven't experience anything to knock the breath out of you yet, you will.  You can't fix everything.  You can't revolutionize the whole world.  You can't stay up until 2am watching Netflix and expect to be at the gym by 6am.  You aren't in college anymore.

But you can have child-like faith.  You can choose to pursue what you know deep beneath your rib cage you were created for.  And if you're not sure what you were created for, I'll tell you it's not a vocation.

It's much bigger than that.

Could today be different?

I always think God is angry with me.

Surely, my sin as of recent is no greater or less than my sin of before.  And yet, I constantly feel as though He is disappointed in His daughter.  I even see an image of him in my head with a shiny silver watch on His wrist and tapping his foot on days when I'm 15 minutes late to work, as though He's saying, "I blessed you with this opportunity - why would you disrespect Me in not valuing it enough to be here on time every day?"

Some days, it plagues me.  I ask forgiveness from God and forgiveness from those I've sinned against, and still don't feel any better.  Other days, I ask for grace and move on with the rest of the day.  But lately, I'll admit, I'm lucky if I can keep the negative thoughts in my brain quieter than the worship music on Pandora trying to out-scream it.

As I sit here at my desk at work listening to Kari Jobe cry out, "Hosanna! Hosanna!  Hosanna in the highest!", I feel completely unworthy of singing those words.  How could a perfect Savior love such a great sinner?  How could He want me in His family?  Would he really offer me a seat at the banquet?  How do I believe these things when I worry He wouldn't give me a second glance if I said His name in public?

And then I started thinking, what if instead, today I decided to believe the Lord has forgiven me and cleansed me of all my great sin?  What if I believed when He looks at me, He sees the blood of the lamb, and He sees me as perfect and blameless?  What if I believed He sees beauty and glory and righteousness, in that though I am a great sinner, He is greater still to cover me?

How different would your day look if you believed the same?  How different would today be if you stopped focusing on the shame and guilt that suffocate like thick black smoke, and decided to breathe the clean air of Truth?  The Truth that says,

"You are Mine and I will hold you close today, because my love for you is deeper than the oceans.  I don't care where you've fallen.  No one can charge you.  You're Mine."

I believe God made beauty in this day, and He wants you to enjoy it.  Breathe in His grace and the Truth that says God has deep affections for His people, and stop believing the lie Satan feeds you that somehow you could possibly out-sin the cross.

His love has not grown cold for you.

Man vs. Himself

I'm pretty forgetful in real life.  (My keys are always running away.)

Some days, I feel like I could seriously lose my mind.  It seems like I live at one end or the other of two extremes.  Either so much going on I can't think, or not enough going on and I have too much time to do nothing but think.  I have a feeling I'm not alone in this.

Sometimes I have to remind myself of stuff.  Like this sort of stuff.  Maybe you need to be reminded of some stuff, too.

You're allowed to be weak, even when you think it's silly.  Especially when you're at work and you're frustrated because you're folding the same table of dress pants for the fourth time...in the past hour.  Go in the bathroom and let the tears escape.  Then put on some fresh lip gloss and get back on your feet.  Your shift will be over soon enough.

You are resilient.  Remember the time in your life when you were in another country, and your host mother didn't like you?  Remember when that lady in church tried to ruin your reputation?  Remember how you moved 10 hours away from your family to place where you didn't know anyone?  Remember, you survived those things.  You will survive this, too.

Show yourself some grace.  The only person pressuring you to have all the answers right now is you.  Silence the voices in your head long enough to make peace with the fact that you're human.  You don't have to have it all together.  Not every decision you make is life or death.  If you want to make a big move in life, do it.  If it doesn't work out, then move on.  You hear me, Annie?  The sun will come out tomorrow.

God is faithful.  You will fall down in life.  You will also get back up.  He is the one who started the good work in you, and He promises to see it through infinity.  God's faithfulness is not dependent on your performance.

You have worth.  It's hard to imagine that a God who speaks oceans into being created you in His image, but He did.  Joy.  Grace.  Peace.  Victory.  This is your inheritance.  Sometimes you just have to proclaim things like this until you believe them.

Alone is not an option, even if you wanted it to be.

Genie in a Bread Pan

I’m lucky that my mind is barely in tact.  

Resistance, persistence, repeat.  

My mind has a mind of its own.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever breathe easy again.  Call me drama but call me human.  Maybe I’m not the crazy one – maybe the world has us so numb we wouldn’t know righteousness if it threw itself at us in an empty bar.  Don’t look at me like you know something I don’t, as though your life experience should be teaching me something.  Appease, release, repeat.    No thanks.

All I want to do is get through the day in tact. 

Color me human.

This Little Light - Part 2

A gentlemen came into Express the other day and spent a lot of money.  Like $350.  For us girls, that's nothing.  But I've never seen a guy drop $350 on so much clothing.  It was like he was filling up a newly built closet.

"About time for that new spring wardrobe?" I asked him.

"Well, not really."  He smiled and looked down.  "I kind of don't have anything to wear right now."   He bent down and sifted through the twenty rows argyle socks.  He picked the black and grey ones.

"You look well dressed to me!"  He looked really nice in fact.  I wondered if he needed a job.  We could use another guy with some fashion sense.  He was probably in his late twenties, blonde hair, clean shaven, wearing dress shoes.  What did we do with those job applications?

"It's complicated I guess.  She made me leave.  And I didn't have time to pack anything.  So....yeah.  I need some clothes."  Oh.

"Are you married?"  It was only after asking that and wishing I hadn't did I notice his thick gold wedding band.

"For right now I guess."  He offered a nervous laugh, still not looking me in the eye.  I stayed behind the cash wrap as he picked more socks.  Purple and grey.  Teal and navy.

"I'm sure it's not all lost.  How long have you been married?"  Why am I asking these questions?

"Seven years."  Wow.  He stood after choosing his fourth pair of socks to get the four for $25 promotional deal.  He set down the socks and looked at me.

"I guess the hard part is that we have a kid.  He's one and a half.  That's what makes it really hard, you know?  We have a son.  Yeah, sorry to get all serious on you.  But yeah."  He offered another nervous laugh and ran his hand through his hair.  "That's why I need some clothes."

"Marriage is definitely hard.  Trust me, I understand.  Did you get married young?"

"Oh, yeah.  I was 23," he said as he examined the same sweater in blue and in cream.

"Me too.  I was 21."  Now I was the one looking down.  "And I like the cream one."

"You got married young, too?  Yeah, so I'm sure you know."  He set the blue sweater aside and added the cream one to the top of his pile.

"You have no idea,"  I said.   Now who's getting weird and personal?  "Well, you must.  But you're certainly not alone.  Marriage is hard, I'm with you."

I took his socks and set them on the other side of the desk next to his large pile.  T-shirts, sweaters, a cardigan, a flannel shirt, colored dress pants, and socks.  Four pairs of them.  Oh, and the cream sweater.

He followed around to the other side and pulled out his wallet.  "Do you have good friends in Greenville?" I asked as I started ringing and taking the censors off his new wardrobe.  I wondered how long he'd have to wear these clothes.  How long would it take before she let him move back in?  I bet she was hurting too.  I started to pray in my head.

"Oh yeah.  The best.  I have really good friends.  Good friends from church.  I think that's the best part about the whole thing.  I found Jesus, or He found me rather.  I always knew about God growing up, but never about a relationship with Him.  Like I grew up in a Christian home and stuff.  Went to church.  I never really understood it though.  But now I do.  God had to break me in order for me to see Him clearly.  And it definitely worked.  I don't think He does that with everyone, but with me.  It's probably the only way He could've gotten my attention.  I have a lot of pride."

Wow.  Tell me how you really feel.

"That's really great.  It's good you see Him more clearly now.  That's the most important thing.  Jesus, you know."

At the sound of His name, he looked up at me for only the second time.

"I really wouldn't change my situation for the world right now, because I wouldn't have seen Him there.  I used to be wild, and now I'm paying for it.  She was done with it.  And it sucks, but it's okay, because there's grace.  God is forgiving me.  There's grace with Jesus.  I wouldn't change anything right now."

"Wow.   That's really brave of you to say.  You definitely can't out-sin the grace of God."

"I'm experiencing that for sure.  Thanks for your help.  And for, uh, listening?  Anyways.  See you later."

I handed him his bags and he was gone.

And it got me thinking, maybe there's a place for us, you know?  And there's a place for the parts of ourselves we'd rather leave on shelves to collect dust.  God is in the redemption business.  All the stuff that happens to us and all the stuff we bring upon ourselves.  He is redeeming it.  God said he was making ALL things new.  Not just the stuff we decide is appropriate to be redeemed or worthy of His efforts.

Do you know that you're worth His time?  He thought enough of you to step out of heaven.  He thought enough of His creation to breathe life into it despite it.  He formed you from ash and dust.  And He's redeeming you in this moment.

Do you know redemption is a process?  Sanctification doesn't happen overnight.

It's an uphill, gravel road.  And we're all barefoot.

Remember what I said about letting no place be left unlit?  (If not, you can read about it here.)  Even in a retail store, God cared enough to remind a guy whose marriage was falling apart and the girl ringing him up at the counter of the truth we all so often forget and so often need to be reminded of:

you are not alone.  You are never alone.

This Little Light - Part 1

I drank a Sprite at the movies today.  I never drink Sprite.

I should've known something in me was about to surface.

I've been feeling really conflicted lately.  Like, really conflicted.  About graduate school, about what vocational direction to take, if there is any redemptive quality in the stirrings of my soul that don't include vocational ministry.

I no longer feel conflicted.  I feel torn in half.  I'm trying to zip myself up like a black hooded sweatshirt with a silver zipper that fits together perfectly - every other little notch fitting just right.  When it's apart, it doesn't seem like it will fit together, no matter how hard I try.  And if you take both sides and just try to push them together without the zipper, it won't fit.  There's no way you could make those fit.  They need something to guide them together.  To weave them.  To direct them.  I guess what I'm trying to say, is that God is the zipper.  He's the zipper.  Only with Him at the center does it make any sense that these two ridiculously shaped pieces of metal would not only somehow fit together, but serve a function.  And it's simple, but it makes sense, so I'm holding tightly to it.  Nothing has made sense to me in a while.

You see, I got this ministry degree and was full of ambition and passion for the Gospel and carrying that out in vocational ministry.  Since then, I feel like there's no place for me.  Of course this world isn't our home so we shouldn't feel too comfortable, but I mean no place in ministry as my paid, full-time job.  Most recently, I decided to give vocational ministry a rest.  Stick it in a trunk at the foot of my bed and let it just rest for a while.  What prompted this?  (Are you sitting down?)

A lady at a church where I was working spread a multitude of lies about me to the degree where it would not only tear apart my professional reputation, but tear at my heart a little.  Okay, a lot.  I remember getting the phone call.  It was a Sunday night.

"I just think you should know what's being said about you."

I was shocked.  And horrified.  And humiliated.  And slightly amused at the ridiculousness of the whole accusation.

Stealing money?!  Like, from the church??  Are you kidding me?  That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!  Clearly she can't prove that.  All of my receipts for the church credit card are accounted for.  How could I steal from a credit card?  ...wait, she told parents this?  Did you just say she has told students this???

It just continued to get worse.  After the anger subsided, I cried a lot.  A LOT.  How could people be so mean?  This was worse than the time in middle school when girls on the bus made up a TV show where the whole plot was different ways they killed me.  (I later learned they totally copied this idea off South Park.  How unoriginal.)  These accusations were investigated of course, and proven untrue.  But despite that, I left the job I moved to South Carolina to take.

A graduate school professor told me recently that when it comes to your vocation, you have two things - your skills, and your reputation, and you must maintain both.  Your skills are all on you.  The tricky part is your reputation, because others can try and mess with that one.  It is within your rights to preserve your reputation.  This is your life.  You have a right to preserve those things.  You are worthy of self-respect.  And I must have agreed with her.

Can I tell you something?  I just wanted to love those kids.  Tell those sweet and fragile teenage girls they have a chance at something more than pregnancy at 15 years old and being kicked out of school.  That there's this Jesus who not only loves them, but created them and knit them together so beautifully.  What more could I want to do, you know?  I just want them to know there's something else out there for them.  That there is a place for them in this world.  And that God will hold them the whole way.   That God is rooting for them.  He's in their corner.  I just wanted them to know that.  And I guess I want you to know that too or I wouldn't be typing this right now.

There's a place for you.  There's a place for all of us.  God is in your corner.  Take a break from all of this theological "God is in God's corner" stuff.  God loves and embraces you just as you are right now, in this moment, as you read these words.  Do you know that?  Regardless of whether you're confused or torn doing what you thought you'd be doing three years after graduating college.  God can awaken new passions in you.  He blesses us with desires and talents beyond what we were capable of when we were eighteen years old.  And we should embrace those, you know?  Because our God is big, and He made this world awfully big, and He uses a lot of people to do a lot of different things.

If we went to a restaurant where there were no lights, it'd be incredibly difficult to see the menu and order or eat anything.  If it were dark in a store, you wouldn't be able to tell if the things you picked out were the things in your list.  I guess what I'm saying is as God's children, we don't want to leave any corner of this place unlit.  Whether it's retail stores or restaurants or golf courses or power plants.  Do you know how dangerous it is when places are left in pure darkness?    God is here, and He put you here to be a light.

A light unto the world.