Holiday Residue

I've been acknowledging the amount of losses this Christmas has had. The amount of losses are not a bad thing, too, even though they might feel draining and holiday-spirit-sucking. Christmas has been a mellow low - that's the only way I know how to describe it. And there's this holiday residue sort of hanging around not really knowing what to do with itself. I remember a couple weeks ago telling myself that I didn't want to eat my weight in cookies or bury myself in the commercialism or materialism this season, which is so easy to do. We subconsciously do this to maybe feel something, or maybe to pretend like things are better than they actually are, or fill a void that is ever-present but we're too easily deceived and susceptible and we'll cling to the easy way out. I told myself I wanted didn't want to fill that void with cookies and gift cards, that I wanted to fill that empty hole of loss with the omnipotent, infinite presence of Jesus. And not just Jesus who I see nailed to the cross, but the Jesus in the manger in the quiet stable surrounded by the stars. The Jesus who was a baby just like me, yet who would save humanity. The Jesus who was given. I think about all the losses again and realize that it is so much easier to not enter in to the mess that it feels. Trying to make the holiday season appear better than it actually is or feel better than it actually is is like avoiding a grieving, angry feeling that should be felt. That is the very spot where Jesus wants to intercede and heal and put right. In that spot.                                                                                

                              

I think I have a hard time receiving. There are two sides to gift-giving. A gift is given by a person, but the person who the gift is for has to receive it, too. Otherwise that person never gets the gift, or enjoys it, or enjoys that person who gave it to them, or continues to treasure the relationship they have with the person who gave the gift to them. God chose to give Jesus, but we won't ever enjoy Jesus, who He is, the beautiful relationship there is with Him, without receiving Him here on earth in us. Since Jesus is all in all, through all things, and in Him all things hold together, we get to receive Jesus over and over again, a continual gift in our day-in, day-out, the ultimate gift dying on the cross, conquering our sin and death for eternity. The continual gift of grace. C.S. Lewis puts it well in relation to the choice to receive:

relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.   

In the end, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

May the New Year bring the love and knowledge of Jesus closer, fuller, and only deeper from where we are currently in our sea.

love, cait   

Ephesians 4:29

I've been reaching the homestretch of the school semester complete with a full blown flu-like virus. And anyone who knows me also knows that I become miserable when I'm sick, that I think the world is ending and I become consumed in my illness thinking I won't recover and that I just hate being sick. School is overwhelming, too, with finals approaching like the "Jaws" theme, and what am I doing? Watching episodes of The Walking Dead pretending like school doesn't exist.

I'm in my bed, and thought I would go right to sleep (like I should) but I pulled out my quote books on my bedroom desk shelf and started looking through them. I had just been listening to music in E major, and naturally E major makes me cry, so here I am getting emotional reading quotes and listening to more music now like a sappy typical teenage girl. Gosh, females. 

I've been thinking a lot about Ephesians 4:29, which talks so much about not letting our words tear down others, but instead build others up. It's kind of crazy how much damage our mouths and minds can do to a person. I'm just as guilty as the next guy, it's a hard habit to break, but I've just been totally slapped upside the head about it in a different way than I've seen it before. What if what comes out of our mouths isn't just a "habit"? What if it's actually engrained in who we are as a person, part of our identity? That's the scariest part. I came across a quote in my book, "keep company with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best." The honest truth is, I just truly want to be someone who uplifts others, and I want to be around those who uplift me. 

Taming our tongues requires so much work. Just like training our minds to not think certain ways, or train our bodies to eat healthy or train ourselves to exercise or train our hearts to not judge. We can only want what's on the other side badly enough that we'll do whatever it takes to get there. What scares me most is that maybe we're comfortable where we're at, we don't really care to or want to get there. Maybe we're comfortable judging others from the sidelines, thinking negatively of ourselves or others, excessively eating or saying discouraging things that we just stay there. I want to believe that the work we are willing to do is worth it. We just have to be willing to work. 

"There is a God who is ready to move in power if you are ready to move in obedience." -Gary 

Haugen

God! I need grace bigger than my mouth. I need mercy that resounds ten thousand times as loud. I need redemption that rings clearer than my distortion. I need You.

We Can Do Hard Things

It's reaching the end of September, almost 3 weeks into being a sophomore college I-don't-know-what-the-heck-I'm-doing-with-my-life amateur and it feels like only a short while ago I was diagnosed with a case of (what felt like eternal) mono at the end of my spring semester final exams. Freshman year went out with a nap.

I've been all over the place these past few months - from fourth of July vacations, concerts and hiking, to unexpected mission trips to even more unexpected family funerals to more mission trips to weekend get-aways to being home and scooping ice cream and still feeling like I'm away because I only felt like I came home to sleep. I've been stagnant and barely breathing to hurting and mourning to joyful and filled, to feeling like falling apart and simultaneously determined to find solid ground again.

Between people & relationships & family, to school & music, to ministry & community & alone time & the balance of everything in between, I can safely identify that I am in a season of both sleepiness & awakening.

I can't explain exactly what the sleepiness part means - maybe it's a combination of feeling apathetic or frustrated or confused and just trying to figure my life out - maybe it's hiding who I truly am from God and trying to prove myself otherwise, like trying to disprove a perception that once was and making myself appear better. making myself appear good enough. or just enough. Being a P.P.P (people pleasing perfectionist) is a frustrating road.  

I've been slowly realizing that if we're trying to prove ourselves better - emotionally, physically, mentally, socially, we're only deceiving and disappointing ourselves again and again. It's like a continuous cycle of striving for perfection & not reaching perfection - ending in low self-worth.

And then I think, "I can't love others, I can't care for others, I can't even be interested in other people's lives if I can't love myself, if I can't even see the good in me. The good that Jesus created in me. The good that Jesus wants for me to have and be. I'm too focused inwardly on myself."

And then I think, "JESUS JUST COME BACK NOW, because living on this earth with those feelings is brutally rough and I can't do it."

It's true. I can't do it.  

The more time I spend living, the more that each day does not go by where my heart utterly hurts for the brokenness of the world. The brokenness of myself, the brokenness of the people I'm around. Society and culture and trends and social media, the workplace, the work I'm in the process of doing, the encompassing hurting things I hear and see that aren't what it was intended to be - the harsh truth - the reality that before we even step foot out of bed to make coffee in the morning, we are broken people to the bone.   

My thought process goes something along the lines of: "So if I am engrained with sin, if sin is permeated in me and I'm infatuated, that's alright, that's okay, but is it possible to be rid of it? To recognize and get out of sinful patterns, to not be forever caught in this?"

I want control, I want an outcome. I want to achieve that outcome and prove myself perfect. To prove myself worth it.

And God, among all the eternal goodness that He is, doesn't need our approval. All the approval I'm seeking, just so that I can approval myself doesn't even minimally compare to the truth that God keeps us, chooses, us, wants us, doesn't want us to bring or prove or be anything. He just wants us to simply come.

Being honest with God has got to be one of the most heart-wrenching, humiliating, overwhelming things. And at the same time it is the most freeing, relieving, breathe-in-breathe-out things this world allows and contains.

When I get up to make my coffee tomorrow morning I am a Pegasus (you know, the beautiful flying horse in the clouds?), God sees me as a Pegasus, made me to be a Pegasus. When I enter the world tomorrow with my words and actions and thoughts, I am a Pegasus rolling around in the mud of this life, forgetting that I was made to fly. It's only through believing that truth - trusting that I am accepted, that that will never go away, that I can begin to love myself through the eyes of God.

It's a long and painful process learning how to love yourself, because we have to know ourselves first. But we're not stuck in the mud, nor do we have to choose to be in the mud in remembering how faithful God is in the mess.

We can do hard things.

"For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live in Him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing." - 1 Thessalonians 5:9-11 -  

    

I Don't Have A Creative Title For This Blog Post

these next couple weeks, back to back, I'm diving head-first into two different mission trips at two different places with two entirely different groups of people doing two totally different things and I don't feel incredibly connected to either groups of people on either mission trip and I don't exactly look forward to the unexpected and I'm not exactly clear about a lot of what will happen. I feel socially inept and not cool enough, not sure what my role is as leader? student? teenager? adult? I doubt God's ability to use me, I don't feel sure and on steady ground when it comes to handling power tools or organizing groups of people or engaging with littler kids or conversing in small talk when getting to know new people or figuring out where to go and when and what to do there. I don't necessarily enjoy the unknown and yet I'm wanting to go and experience all of the goodness of these things - risking the possible bursting of my comfortable bubble and entering into what seems like all chaos.  

what crazy person signed me up for this anyways...?

I have a hard time holding on to the utter reality that God works in chaos. My mind work in a way (a lot of the time) that is "well if I just get my life all calm, cool, and collected, then God can work immensely." And yeah, He works when everything feels calm cool and collected, too, but there's something crazy to say in the midst of this messy life and disorganization that God is the straight, sure, strong line supporting underneath and threading through the other wavy scribbles.

My constant back-and-forth musing is "to risk or not to risk"? "to enter in or not enter in"? After all this back-and-forth, and the missing of opportunities, experiencing God work through the unknown and still choosing to hide in my hole - it all essentially comes to: "to be or not to be"? (Didn't mean to go all Shakespeare on you.)

I feel inept. incompetent. struggling with all the unknown experiences, not knowing what will happen within them, weighing all my thoughts and feelings on these fears. But I want to be. ever-present in each moment, not looking inward towards myself kind of be-ing. taking in all of my surroundings and the people I am with and the work I am doing and the gracious life I've been given kind of be-ing. Not the monotonous-going-through-the-motions-doing-just-a-little-less-than-I-could-be, but the joyous-seeking-out-the-people-and-the-conversations-going-out-of-my-comfort-zone-in-surrender kind of be-ing.

and can I say that just even thinking about that kind of be-ing freaks me out. it reminds me of words from C.S Lewis: "We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."

"But God..." (x1000000000)

over and over in my head. 

it is not yourself, caitlyn. you can't do it alone and you can't do it on your own strength. 

I go into these next two weeks with a fear that I won't be enough. good enough, capable enough, strong enough, energetic enough, wise enough, cheerful enough, tough enough, loving enough. 

I make things so complex in my head and what does God say, that He is enough and that we are enough. in all our messy heads and hearts, chaotic lifestyles, we're enough. 

it's the choosing to enter into the unknown messy chaos of life that makes us hesitate. but I'll go rejoicing.

here's to God's inexplicable work and expanding glory in Philly and Easton.

 

Superwoman Can't Do It All

This is my day 10 with the blah-feeling, achey, energy-less disease called mono. And in case you wanted to stop reading right here because you don't want to hear about my mono and all its pitiful glory, these words are the farthest thing from my sick woes.

Though, I do realize that when I'm sick, I'm a difficult patient. I get emotional because I feel incapable and helpless, worthless because my body won't cooperate with me even though it screams "rest" loud enough for everyone and their second-cousin to hear. I get angry because I am stir-crazy and restless, and easily irritated because I want to and I just can't. I am not Superwoman. No matter how much I try and convince myself that I am and that I can, I am not. "I can't do it all", and "I don't have to do it all" are two truth-blaring, bittersweet phrases I continually fail to remind myself of. I struggle to see that in my trying-to-be-Superwoman, I am Self-reliant with a capital "S", and that leaves no room for God.

"your selfishness, your self-sufficiency, and pride, will inhibit God from His coming to live in your heart because God cannot fill what is already full." -Mother Theresa  

As I am sick, I am a difficult patient. I am sick with all this sin, and I am NOT an easy patient for God to take care of and love and heal. Goodness gracious, how does he put up with me? If I had to deal with me I would have diagnosed, prescribed the anti-biotic, said "I hope you feel better", and given up.

dear reader,

God keeps us. 

In all our mess and ruin, our beautifully broken, unbearably human selves, God saves and keeps us "by grace, through faith...and this is not from yourselves - it is a gift from God." This Creator not only prescribes a medicine for healing, but He gives it freely every. single. moment. And His medicine may taste bitter sometimes - it won't be a spoonful of sugar. Sometimes it is awful - it might be the traumatic downfall, the broken family, the lost relationship, the sting of death, the deeply-rooted sin pattern, the settling of depression, the cry of help, the feelings of fault and shame, the attack of anxiety.

But that can be His way of healing. It is so hard to see. How can a gracious Savior allow that? How can He let me suffer over. and over. and over?

"there is never a majestic mountain without a deep valley, and there is no birth without pain." -Daniel Crawford (Streams in the Desert, 18 August)

I believe the suffering is worth it all.

I know that there's a meaning to it all
a little resurrection every time I fall

The heavy, broken, side of life is lived and felt to its fullest extent because...God. Jesus endured every type of pain we experience. I can't not take comfort in knowing that when I feel like the only person in the world who is tasting bitter medicine, Jesus drank the bitter cup of death reserved for me.

I don't want to talk like I understand this eternal mystery, because I don't...

"my heart breaks every day in a new way - the pieces are held together by undying hope." -Ella Snyder

But this mystery casts a tiny piece of understanding when I see God working clearly in someone else's life or in my own life. The sufferings we are a part of, the things we experience, the joys and the pains, are ways of God working. They're important to tell, because they are stories of deep hurt and pain, and they mean something good.

I was at the beach for the first time today out on a jetty of big boulders, surrounded by water on three sides. It was windy and I couldn't control my whipping hair, my feet cramped up a little on the rock I stood upon and felt cool and steady underneath. The spray of water when the tide hit the rocks in front of me made it feel like it was raining. The spectrum of each wave was seaglass green and robin's egg blue, diving deeper to a richer cobalt. I could see far out till everything became nothing - till the sky met the sea and kissed it, like it was coming home. And I had a clear-as-water moment where I saw God working in amazing ways through sin and suffering. If we had no sin and suffering, we would have no reason to need God.

We need God. My Superwoman-self says "you can do it on your own", and that is Satan telling flat-out lies.

This life we live is busy and self-sufficient and independent and complicated. It's confusing and frustrating and monotonous, it's stressful and technological and success-oriented. It's built on works and acceptance, approval and ability, connections and networking. It is difficult and depressing, scary and horrifying.

But it is oh, so beautiful. It is a holy mess of everything. It is sweet to taste and freeing to live. It hits you with its moments of hard laughing, good conversation, creating, investing, taking, giving. It is beautiful in color and creatures. It is ready to let you live it. It is doing what you love, is it loving those you love, it is being loved.

and dear reader,

God keeps us. 

love, cait

 

Hole-y Week

i'm supposed to be writing an informative speech research plan right now, but my procrastinating, lazy, easily-distracted self tells me to do one and a half million other things besides my informative speech research plan.
here I am complaining about all the work I have to get done while I put it off. isn't that typical.

my head has "busy-life" on its front burner, but my heart keeps saying "it's Holy Week."

what?

Holy Week. the brutality of the crucifixion come to life - the lives of the people demanding the death of a Savior through the humiliating, degrading, ruthless, morbid reality of the cross.

"there in the ground His body lay
light of the world by darkness slain..."

not only was there the demanding crucifixion of a Savior...but He's my Savior. my Savior put on that cross. my Savior mocked and beaten. my Savior separated from His Father.

that's the turning point of Love manifesting itself in me by the Holy Spirit: when God captures and breaks my heart to see, that the same hands who cradle the stars are the hands that bled for me.

"and on that cross as Jesus died
the wrath of God was satisfied..."

the weight of the sins of the world all on Jesus - all the world's brokenness, all of our mess. all our selfishness, pride, jealousy, hatred, lust, doubt, sinful tendencies, our idols and divisions and broken relationships, our straying away, our fear.

and to think, only for a few days are we in darkness with Jesus. this is where we have to continually preach the truth of the gospel to ourselves. like a broken record:

"then bursting forth in glorious day
up from the grave He rose again"

over and over and over.

"and as He stands in victory
sins curse has lost its grip on me"

sin was strong but Jesus is stronger. half the time do I really truly believe that...

"for I am His and He is mine"

rest, dearly beloved. you are His.

"bought with the precious blood of Christ."

Holy Week has had some holes. It's Thursday (after midnight). It'll be Friday. It'll be Sunday. Jesus will die and overcome death all in one weekend and honestly, I'll still be worrying about my Aural Theory exam.

but thankfully, this crazy story isn't only reflected upon and celebrated this week and weekend.

being snuck up on by Holy Week reminds me to embrace the Holy Mess of this beautiful thing we call life. Jesus resurrects every single day, & we rise with Him.

"Till He returns or calls me home
here in the power of Christ I'll stand"

oh, just come Home.

Mid-Winter Hibernation Hole

dear reader,

I hope you're staying warm in this frigid degree weather. I think we can all agree that we want to crawl in our hibernation holes and not come out for awhile.

Maybe some of us don't want to hibernate only because of this arctic freeze. Maybe some of us want to crawl in a hole because of the messy, hard, hurting, busy, crazy, uncomfortable thing that is life.

It is mid-winter. It is the time of everything being cleared through and through down to the bare skin and bones - the trees that are leafless, the streets washed white from salt, the grass covered with snow, the mundane routine of life, the flatline feel, the apathetic heart, the numb mind, the color of grey. I was told once that this process of changing seasons is God's evidence. He brings winter upon us to wash-out everything and prepare it for new growth in the spring.

I guess I compare the bleakness of winter to God's faithfulness to mold us into who He wants us to become. And that is not a pretty, happy, comfortable process. The hardest pain we feel in this life can be God's season of winter within us. He's preparing us for better things come spring, greater things that we can't see yet.

Okay, so all of this "the best is yet to come" optimistic hullabaloo is all fine and dandy, but the thing is, I hate winter. I hate this process of Him stripping away the things we hold, stripping us to bare nothing, stripping us of the easy comforts and the things we build ourselves around. I hate to feel weak and out of control...but it's in this that I am a relying child again - needy of a Father.

God's season's can be long - months and months, maybe even a few years. I truly believe that right now in the life I live, God's gifted and graced me with goodness. Not like He hasn't graced me with goodness until now, but I believe that a certain long season of life has ended, and right now I'm steady with gratitude. Between school, people, music, opportunities, building new friendships, relationships, growth - there is this relief.

But I'm not resting. Shouldn't rest come with relief? Believing the hand of God is in this season of growth and goodness is with great gratitude, but I feel like it's too good to be true. Like I'm walking on ice, just waiting for it to crack.

Praising Him in and through the trial is one thing.
Praising Him in the steadiness and good is something totally different.

Maybe some think it's easy to praise in the good, and hard to praise in the pain.
I feel totally opposite - in the broken, messy, hurting of myself and the world and the situations and circumstances, I want to run to God and praise Him with my whole heart, holding to truth when all else is a lie.
But in praising in this steadiness that I'm at now, I'm figuring out what that all looks like.

Life isn't perfect, because what life is perfect?
I guess in the remembering of how faithful He is through pain, He is just as faithful and just as worthy of praise when I feel okay with where I am and who I'm with and what I'm doing.

I guess I just don't want to get too comfortable. And I want to live in what is now, take it in and enjoy it. Every bit of it. Without fear. Learning more so than ever, to trust.

When I feel afraid, this keeps popping in my head, "Perfect love casts out fear. His love is the only perfect love. His perfect love casts out my fear."

I hope we can become aware of our seasons that God puts us in. Whatever that may be, it's through that that maybe we can gain insight into ourselves. And that's a really scary thing - truly knowing yourself. But I'm trusting that it is good and important, and through the Holy Spirit, God works to fulfill His plan in each of us.

My prayer is the continual surrender of myself and all that I try to handle while living to Him who made all things and gives all things and controls all things in hope that He will accomplish all He plans.

"I have learned to accept it, even ask for it, this 'more than I can handle.' Because in these times, God shows Himself victorious. He reminds me that all of this life requires more of Him and less of me. God does give us more than we can handle. Not maliciously, but intentionally, in love, that Hid glory may be displayed, that we may have no doubt of who is in control, that people may see His grace and faithfulness shining through our lives." - Katie Davis

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