Love This Interview

My honey-babe found this interview with Don Miller on the Belmont Foundation website, and it says so well everything I love about the uniqueness of people's stories and the importance of knowing the stories we live in. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

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An Interview about Don's New Book:
Story: Why Some People's Lives Make Sense and Others Don't

What is the new book about?

Essentially, the premise is that the same principles screenwriters and novelist use to tell a good story also work in our lives. For instance, in story a character should have an ambition, or the story drags. And conflict is to be expected, but the way the character deals with the conflict determines the quality of the overall story. So screenwriters know this stuff, and they apply these principles so that people don't come to the end of their movie feeling let down. I think a lot of people come ot the end of their lives, or for that matter their day or week feeling let down as well. But living a good story is the antidote.

How did the book come about?

A couple of filmakers contacted me about making a movie out of Blue Like Jazz. I had turned down other opportunities, but these guys seemed to have some good ideas so I said yes. And in the course of writing the screenplay with them, I learned about these principles. The interesting thing about this experience was that we were shaping up a character who had my name and my overall story, we were just making his life a little less boring. Why not do the same with my own life.

What can a person do to live a good story?

The overall principles are pretty simple. But they can be expanded upon to make a story better and better. Essentially, though, a good story has a character with an ambition that is willing to overcome conflict to achieve a resolution. That's it. If we do that, then we've lived a good story and probably will feel more contented at the end of the day, or the end of the story how ever long it takes. But inside those basic elements there are a miriad of other ideas that can make a story better and better. The character of the character matters, for instance, and the nature of the ambition. The characters mentality about conflict matters and the way the story is resolved also matters. But the point is a person can feel just as fulfilled with a real-life experience as they might at the end of a movie that has touched them.

When will the book be out?

I am wrapping up the manuscript now and the publisher is thinking of a fall 2008 release. It will be my first hardback book so we are all pretty excited.

Some Cool News

I stopped by Hospice of the Comforter on Tuesday afternoon for a final interview with my volunteer coordinator. This is where we finished crossing all the t's and dotting all the i's for my file and talked more about how the formal process of volunteering works. It was a great meeting, but let me tell you about something funny that happened at the beginning and how it put a big, huge smile on my face for the rest of the day by the time I left.

When my coordinator came out to meet me in the lobby, I was chatting with one of the nurses I had met the night before on our final night of training. The three of us continued chatting for a moment, and I expressed how excited I was to get started. Then my coordinator said, "And then you've got your blog! That was so exciting!"

I was really surprised to have my blog come up. How had she heard about it? And what did the reference to it being so exciting mean? My mind went back to the previous evening, when I had typed up my previous post that mentioned just having finished my training and how much I had been blessed by the experience. My mind also went to the other, more personal post I had written about my grandmother a couple weeks ago when the training started. Was she referring to one of those? And again, how did she find out about it?

As she and I walked up to her office, I asked more about the situation. I slowly began to piece together that a lot of people at Hospice of the Comforter had visited my blog that morning. My coordinator had gotten the word from the volunteer recruiter, and then had passed it on to her husband, who also works for the organization. He had passed it along to other people in the development and communications departments, and before I knew it, she was telling me that the PR department wanted to talk to me about doing a special blog on my volunteer experiences!

All of this came down on me in a dazy haze. It felt really good, but it was so surprising that it also felt kind of numbing. But when we got into the conference room and we opened up my file, there was a printout of my blog sitting there, my little profile pic staring up at me and the "Lilies Have Dreams" banner at the top looking oh-so-familiar. Again, this felt so surreal.

At the end of my interview, my coordinator offered to bring in the girl from PR (whom I had met at one of the training meetings previously and really liked) to talk more about the volunteer blog. It wasn't clear to me whether they were wanting me to consider occasionally posting stories about my experiences here on Lilies Have Dreams or to start a completely new blog specifically tailored to that experience.

I found out it was the second option. They want me to consider starting a blog about my volunteering experiences (keeping patient information private under HIPPA laws, of course) and also the stories of other volunteers that I may meet out in the field. What's more, they want to also talk about how to possibly link that blog to their website so that anyone visiting their website for information can then click on my blog and learn firsthand from an unbiased perspective what hospice in general and Hospice of the Comforter in particular is all about, complete with the honest highs and lows and learning curves and all the sundry emotions that a patient or caregiver or friend or volunteer would experience if hospice became a part of their life.

This was such a strange, strange turn of events for me for a number of reasons, but also so surprising in a very good way. It feels wonderful to be asked to write about the stories I encounter, the ways they make me feel, the things I learn, the amazing people I meet, the beautiful patients and families I serve, and to be asked to do so because I love to write stories and write them well and because God has gifted me with the ability to do that.

So, please join me in celebrating this good news. I look forward to sharing more with you about it as this project gets underway!

Smatterings

I'm still here, sitting in my corner without saying much. It's so strange being in this place -- I'm usually so verbal, even if just with myself! Even so, I've had lots of other thought flickers I've been wanting to share with you. So here they are, in all their random jumble: some of the minor or major thoughts taking up some of my brain-space these days.

* I'm in the business finance class of my master's program this month. Have I ever told you how this program works? I take one class at a time for four hours a day, five days a week, for one month straight, for a total of thirteen courses over thirteen months. That's three and a half weeks to get a whole semester's worth of learning in. It's totally new, this way of learning for me, but I've found that I like the intense focus on one subject at a time. Everything moves so quickly, I can hardly believe I'm in my fourth month of the program already -- over a quarter of the way through!

* Anyway, business finance. Lots of fun. Yeah. But seriously, I am learning so much that's incredibly helpful and useful and moving me along in my business. For instance, we learned on Friday about financial statements and balance sheets, and we learned today how to analyze them. I would never have known any of this stuff if I just struck out on my own and got started without any training, and I probably would have failed big time. This way, at least my odds of failing are less stacked against me. Personally, I don't like learning about finance, especially at 9 in the morning and for four hours straight. However, I see the necessity for it and am glad to be learning from someone who will continue to be a great resource even after I leave Full Sail.

* Tomorrow, as part of an assignment, I'm having lunch with a guy I used to work with at the book publisher whose 20+ years of expertise is in manufacturing. I'm going to interview him about all that I need to know about working with suppliers. Next week, I'm going to meet with an arm of the Small Business Administration that specifically helps women and minorities (I'm both) find financing and/or funding for their small business, especially when starting out. And I have the business card of a guy who started a game board company in the last few years; I'm going to make an appointment to talk further with him about finding and working with manufacturers, since a number of the final pieces of my product will require a similar level of manufacturing and assembly. It's cool being able to be in the learning phase of this process right now, interviewing people who can help me along by sharing what they learned in their own journey.

* Speaking of classes, last month I took the brand management class. Can I tell you how amazingly awesome it was?! It was the third course in my program but the first one that was intensely practical and applicable to getting my business off the ground. We had to plan a complete brand strategy for our business, based on the immutable laws of branding that we studied during the month. It kicked my tail in gear to actually put this plan in place, but I am very pleased with the end result. I have to tell you, though, that it was somewhat intimidating presenting a brand strategy for a business centered around the heart of a woman when my class is 95% male! My classmates were great, though, and surprised me in the end by asking a ton of very thoughtful questions. (It probably helped put them at ease that I went off-script near the beginning and quipped, "I'm just forewarning you guys right now: my presentation is very girlie!") Anyway, besides their thoughtful questions, it additionally felt great to have already thought through many of those they asked so that instead of saying, "Hm. Good point. I'll have to think about that," I could tell them my response and then back it up with rationale.

* Tonight I finished my fifth and final night of hospice training. Can I just say that I am duly impressed with Hospice of the Comforter? Every single person who taught a segment of our training was so professional yet compassionate, so knowledgeable yet warm. This has got to be one of the best non-profit organizations out there. Oh yeah, and all the other volunteers were amazing to get to know, too. We were a great little group -- I'm going to miss seeing them, now that the training's over!

* Speaking of hospice training, did you know that the only people who benefit from hospice services are those in the end-stage of life? Meaning, they most certainly are going to die within the next six months (though most live shorter and a small percentage live longer). I must confess that when I signed up for this, I thought hospice was a home-care program for people who were too sick or frail to make it to the doctor's office or hospital. But, no. It's for people at the end of their lives who have chosen to die in the comfort of their homes, surrounded by their families, friends, and the comfort of the familiar, rather than prolonging their lives artificially or with additional treatment after treatment. (I'll likely write a longer post soon about all that I've learned so far -- which is so much!)

* Kirk and I have been praying about opening our home for regular gatherings of people. You can be praying with us about this, as we're taking it pretty seriously and weighing what that could look like. More than anything, we want to love Jesus and seek His face more than we seek anything else we could do "in His name." Simply put, we need wisdom.

* Oh, and speaking of noise and the need for quiet in soul space, I continue to be dismayed at the increasing glitz and in-your-face-ness of bookstores these days. I haven't found a book at Borders in months (except for two books I went into the store knowing I wanted to buy ahead of time). So last night Kirk and I went out of our way to visit a Barnes & Noble instead but left 20 minutes later completely discouraged. It seems like a million books are being sold these days but only a fraction of them with anything worth saying. It's like the gajillion of books in supply put publishers in the sad position of competing for the next biggest scoop, which means catering to the lowest common denominator of our humanity. Blah. And besides that, the people writing these books seem to want to capitalize on baseness, like the terrible conditions of their childhood or their slow descent into insanity or their fifteen minutes of celebrity. Yuck. Since I love real-life stories of ordinary people, I'm finding it increasingly hard to find anything worth reading, and this bums me out. If you've got any recommendations, I'll gladly take them. Keep in mind that I like personal memoir, quirky travel narratives, spiritual essays, and the occasional really good novel. :)

What I Wish I Could Tell Her

Dear Grandma,

I still miss you.

Sometimes I imagine you still live in your apartment on Magnolia, sitting at the dining table with a guest visiting, fingering a clump of fabric as you listened and spoke, just one clump of many that were layered into dozens of plastic boxes stacked in the closet by the bedroom door. Even though you hadn't quilted in so long before you died, those clear boxes with their many textured scraps and prints are always nearby in my memories of you. I love that quilting was an important part of who you were.

I don't know if I ever told you, Grandma, how much I regret the way I responded on the night that Grandpa died. With all of us crowded into that tiny apartment you shared with him, I went coward and mustered a reason to leave. "Grandpa wouldn't want us to sit here mourning and crying," I said. "He's in heaven with Jesus now." And then I went to party at a friend's house, snaking through the crowds of people in that house and wondering that whole time how I could have left everyone, and even my grief, so easily.

I always wished I could have apologized to him, and could have grieved properly when he died. I didn't know how, Grandma. For so many years afterward, I used to pray little prayers to him in heaven, asking him if he understood, telling him how much I wished I could redo that moment and all the days after his death, wishing he could come back so that I could begin to memorize the stories he was famous for, the ones everyone alludes to but I do not remember. I imagined that he'd look down from heaven, with all the knowledge Jesus gave him once he died, and would forgive me and love me in that place, understanding even more than I could understand about myself back then.

Now I picture you up there with him, both of you so happy to be together again after all those years. You were so sad toward the end, just missing him every day more and more. I wanted to understand that kind of love, and now I'm glad I do. It makes me smile to imagine the two of you looking down upon the large family of us left here, watching us go about our daily lives, smiling when we offer our thoughts and prayers up to you still, wondering if you can even hear us voice them.

Even though I know you're happy to be with Jesus and Grandpa in heaven now, and that you're free from pain, I still wish you were here, Grandma. I wish you were still that constant presence back at home, always welcoming us with so much gladness and a kind heart whenever we would come to see you. I wish for one more day I could sit and play cards with you, and listen to the stories of your life. I wish I could tell you about Kirk and how much I have learned in my life with him. I wish I could tell you about how it feels when I write a story, and about the kind of stories I want to tell, and how I'm doing something new with my life that feels more true than anything else I've spent time doing before. I wish you could have known more of me while you were here, Grandma.

I have some news to share with you, Grandma, that is special for me to tell you, especially, about. This month, I learned that a place called Hospice of the Comforter was looking for volunteers to record the life reflections and stories of their hospice patients. This caught my attention because of how important people's stories have become to me. I see so much dignity to be had in a person who wants to look at their life and fold it into some kind of meaningful understanding of their life's offering on this earth. And I also know that since God has gifted me with an ability to write stories well, perhaps this is one way I can bring glory to Him in the service of others with some of my time right now.

When I told Mom about this opportunity a couple weeks ago, she said it reminded her of what I had always hoped to do for you -- to write down yours and Grandpa's stories so that all of us could have your memories preserved as a legacy handed down, to remember where we came from and the people that you were. It surprised me when Mom said this, since I hadn't made that connection when signing up.

But then, when I received the volunteer application materials in the mail a few days later, I really made the connection. Grandma, I can't tell you how overcome I was with sadness at your passing as I read the materials Hospice of the Comforter had sent. It made me remember that you had hospice care when you were dying. Somehow my volunteering for Hospice of the Comforter suddenly made me feel closer to you, even though my first signing up to work with them hadn't been about that at all.

But even more than that, I was filled with so much memory about my intention to be the one in our family to record your memories. I never did that. I know you know this, but it helps to admit it out loud to you. That is another thing that I really regret in my life: never having gathered your story while you were here. I remember getting started on it the summer after I graduated high school, when I came to visit you in Minnesota. It was the first trip I'd ever taken by myself, and I began to ask you questions about your life growing up and when you first met Grandpa. It was all with the intention to start writing it down, but then I never did. Years later, we all kept saying it should be done, and I always intended for the person to do it to be me, but still I let other things get in the way. I got busy and didn't make it a priority. And now the opportunity has passed forever, except for what we might piece together from our own memories. Still, it could never be the same. I am so sorry for failing you in this, Grandma. I hope you can forgive me.

Sitting there, reading those hospice materials last week, I was really struck with grief that you are gone. And last night, during my first full night of orientation and training, you were never far from my mind. There are so many ways we do not make as much of the days as we should, and I really feel that is the case in my loss of you in my life.

I wish that you were here. I trust that you are well. I love you.

Love,
Christianne

Update on Mother Teresa

I was sitting in church last night, just after the time of worship ended, when the lights dimmed and our worship pastor stood on the stage for a few moments to share with us about Psalm 10. This is the psalm that begins, "How long, O Lord, will you stand afar off?" It is a psalm, he said, that had been on his mind for a few days, one reason of which was the upcoming release of a book of letters that reveals Mother Teresa's sustained season of feeling bereft of God.

I sat up straight, of course, and nudged Kirk with my elbow. He nodded at me encouragingly, knowing my ongoing and continually growing interest in this woman.

Vernon (our worship pastor) went on to say that this season of darkness lasted over four decades of Mother Teresa's life. Whoa. And he also made reference to the book's title, Come Be My Light, which sent me on a hunt again this morning for more information.

That hunt led me to this extraordinary article that TIME released last Thursday that explores Mother Teresa's doubts from a number of well-researched and thoughtfully considered angles. (I was happily surprised to see that James Martin, whose book was among the favorites of those I wrote about reading here, was one of the key persons interviewed for this article, and I thoroughly enjoyed and felt deep resonance with the perspectives he shared on the subject.)

After my indignation at the CBS article last week, which cooled a bit after reading the CNN article shortly afterward, this TIME article did much to repair my faith in solid news practices. It is a thorough rendering of a complex subject (at least, as thorough a rendering as a magazine article can give), and I appreciate the efforts taken to secure a greater degree of historic understanding of the movements of personal faith.

For those interested, Come Be My Light releases on September 4. I know that I, for one, will pick it up . . . and you can expect to hear more on the subject here, as I go.

Mother Teresa and Faith

Back in January, I wrote a post about how I was led to know more about Mother Teresa. Then I wrote another one that marveled at the obedience that directed her life before she could serve the poor. And today I am writing one more.

CBS News has just released an article about Mother Teresa's doubts. This article is based on a new book of letters coming out, many of which have never been seen before. Some of these letters find Teresa voicing her doubts about God, about prayer, about the existence of the soul, about Jesus. She questions the integrity of her heart sometimes. She wonders at what she is doing.

Personally, I love that she wrote these things. I want to pick up the book and explore its every page because I expect to find encouragement and kinship there, a greater sense of her inward person.

The media, however, pose a different view. To them, the voicing of questions unhinges our faith in her piety. It calls into question her service, as though those acts were performed with divided motives and an insincere heart and therefore, supposedly, worth nothing. And it seems that, for them, if prayer ceases at some point in time, it's never recovered again.

I suppose we can't expect those whose understanding has been darkened and whose eyes have not been opened to apprehend the life of faith, to know that it rises and falls with great tides at times, and that God is still near when it does. But it bothers me that such powerful entities get to stand on such visible stages, leading the rest of the world to conclusions perceived with their unseeing eyes.

Interesting postnote: As I was doing a search for the book of letters to determine its title and date of release (as of yet, I've been unable to locate this information), I uncovered this article released by CNN on September 7, 2001, which relays much of the same information, except in a more objective spirit. It's unclear to me, given the six-year lapse, what CBS is seeking to accomplish with their recycling of what I now see is actually "old" news.

Business Not as Usual

In the past two months, I had begun to adjust quite nicely to quiet mornings at home after dropping Kirk at his morning class. I’d come in the door, get my English Breakfast tea brewing, and launch the Becoming Jane soundtrack on iTunes. With my cup of hot tea properly creamed and sugared, beautiful strains of music softly filling the farmroom, Diva purring at my feet, and soothing green forest scenes randomizing on my screensaver, I would open my Bible and begin to read the next few psalms. Then I would read three or four chapters aloud from Isaiah, and then a few verses from Matthew. I’d journal a couple paragraphs in the margins as offerings of prayer and then head to the bedroom to spend time in silence, listening for His voice. After that, I’d re-enter public life: check e-mail, catch up on blogs, and begin to prepare for afternoon class.

Unfortunately, the past two weeks have disrupted that lovely expectation. This month's course in project and team management has found me working busily away at a major project that aids a local non-profit, which has meant team meetings and phone conferences and lots of project planning, not to mention keeping up with the regular course material and preparing for exams. Add to that mix the occasional lunch or coffee date with a friend, and you have one very busy girl!

But that’s not all. Also due this past Friday was our business plan proposal. (Have I mentioned yet how insane this month has been?!) This has meant crystallizing the slow incubation process I’ve been going through and watching my idea begin to take on glorious new life.

This new life was mostly spurred on by necessity. I learned through the grapevine (meaning Kirk, since he's a month ahead of me in this process) that the faculty who approve the business plan proposals are looking for achievable ideas that don't require an exorbitant amount of capital. They want us to be working on ideas we can actually make happen once we leave. I can certainly appreciate that, as I'm in this program to make something happen when I leave anyway.

So, as I'd been preparing for this proposal in my head over the past few weeks, I continued to imagine that my idea was achievable simply because I could envision it in my mind and knew that I would work hard to develop it and would eventually assemble the team necessary to make up for the abilities and talents I wasn’t personally bringing to the table. Achievable? Check.

I'd also begun preparing myself to scale down my initial expectations of what the online product launch could look like so that it doesn't require as much start-up capital as I'd come to believe it would need. In other words, I began to talk myself into being willing to consider ways to bring my initial launch costs into the $300,000 range instead of $3 million. Affordable? Check. (Well, at least more so than before!)

But ultimately, I had to rethink both those things. An idea is not achievable simply because you can envision it in your head. You have to consider milestones and how to get to those milestones and what resources and talent you will need at the ready to reach them. And plainly put, the idea I’ve had in mind requires a greater scope than I’m presently qualified to meet by myself. This means taking on capable partners and assembling a hefty board of advisors, neither of which I am in the least opposed to doing but both of which will require a lot of time to instate, which consequently means quite a bit of lagtime before any results can actually, finally, be tested and proven. And to some degree, you need some legitimate, proven results before you can expect major funding, even at that lowered figure amount I mentioned above.

As the deadline for the proposal neared, I began to realize how far in over my head I would be if I pursued this big idea right away. So I began to ask the question, What can I do right now?

What I can do right now, I discovered, is start a small group right here in my own house that goes through the kind of personal development process I was envisioning creating for the online world. This will allow for immediate testing with immediate feedback, all in a context I love best and with the opportunity to grow into my capacity and authority to lead this venture wherever God decides to allow it to go from there. For all I know (and hope), perhaps one small group will expand into two, or three, or even four over the course of this next year, which puts me that much farther ahead of the curve at graduation than I could have been with the initial idea. Plus, as a major bonus, getting started this way is virtually costless, and the costs I'm imagining would come with an official, real-world product launch are somewhere in the range of 10-20 percent of the lowered expected cost for the online version. And as this real-world approach incurs profits, we can begin to pave the way for online adaptations.

Wow! My mind is ablaze with dazzling sparkles of light at the mere thought of all this goodness. Isn't yours??

Run to You

About three weeks ago, I read a psalm that struck me with the disparity between David's faith and my own, between his relationship with the heavenly Father and mine, between what he knew he could ask of God and what I feel I can ask of Him. The words that I read were as follows:

I love you, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.

The cords of death encompassed me;
the torrents of destruction assailed me;
the cords of Sheol entangled me;
the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears.

Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations also of the mountains trembled
and quaked, because he was angry.
Smoke went up from his nostrils,
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
He bowed the heavens and came down;
thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode on a cherub and flew;
he came swiftly on the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him,
thick clouds dark with water.
Out of the brightness before him
hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds.

The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice,
hailstones and coals of fire.
And he sent out his arrows and scattered them:
he flashed forth lightnings and routed them.
Then the channels of the sea were seen,
and the foundations of the world were laid bare
at your rebuke, O Lord,
at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.

He sent from on high, he took me;
he drew me out of many waters.
He rescued me from my strong enemy
and from those who hated me,
for they were too mighty for me.
They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
but the Lord was my support.
He brought me out into a broad place;
he rescued me, because he delighted in me.

--Psalm 18:1-19

Such awareness, once it struck me, produced the following prayer in the margins of my Bible:

I can't help but wonder if You would respond this way to me, too, Lord, if I called for help in my distress. Sometimes I go and bury my head in Your chest, or throw myself down at Your feet, but I don't ask You to come and rescue me, to come down from the heights of Your heaven and defeat my enemies on my behalf. Sometimes I pray for You to send Your angels to protect me, or for You to hide me under the shadow of Your wings, like the words of Psalm 91 encourage me to do. Sometimes I pray that You would send Your Sprit of peace, like a dove, to rest upon my head and the heads of others.

But I do not pray for You to come and rescue me. Perhaps I doubt You will, and perhaps it's easier for me to run to You, knowing You are there, than to expect You to come to where I am. At least with You, Father, I want to grow in my faith and understanding that You will -- and that You even want -- to come after me like You came after David. Help me grow in the faith that moves me to receive what You have to offer me. Amen.

I've been sitting with this psalm and this prayer since then, marveling at the rock-bottom truth of my heart in this place, the truth that I do not expect that God will run to me and rescue me with the vengeance He showed His servant David. Then last night at church, my thoughts on the matter expanded yet again.

Our church has just moved into a new building. I may share more on that experience later, but let it suffice for the purposes of this story that the new building is much larger and more technically complex and, overall, inspiring quite a bit of awe in all of us. (We've worshipped in a rundown but renovated old rollerskating rink for the past 20 years.) Our pastors were good to us in many ways this weekend, encouraging us with gentleness back to the King, bestowing on all of us the permission to sink slowly into this big change, and then reminding us that we are meant for worship. "Remember that it's about Him conforming us ever more into His likeness," our pastor said, which turned my mind back to this psalm and my quandary in grappling with it.

If it is God's nature and desire to run to us and rescue us and lift us into the palm of His hand, up into a safe and quiet place, does this mean we are to extend the same to others? Would this be one part of what it means to be conformed into His likeness? This question struck down deep inside me.

Why do I cry at the brokenness of others? Why do tears stream from my face as I lay in bed some nights, the faces of beloved friends and family whose stories I know and whose journeys I have watched, flashing before my mind's eye while unspoken, wordless prayers bubble up from my spirit to His? Why does God choose to sit me beside random, lone women at church, my heart burning in prayer for them throughout the service, prayers that plead with God for the rescuing and heartening of their spirits, though we have never met and I know not the road they walk? Why do the words of Isaiah 61 and 62 haunt me evermore, bringing me to weep and pray for faceless girls and women I can only believe someday I'll meet?

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion --
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. . . .

You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no more be termed Desolate,
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,
and your land Married;
for the Lord delights in you,
and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your sons marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you. . . .

You shall be called Sought Out,
A City Not Forsaken.

--Isaiah 61:1-3, 62:3-4, 12

Mac and Choice

It wasn't so long ago that I fell into Mac envy. June 5th, to be exact. That's not so far, either, from another important date in my recent history. June 4th, to be exact -- the day I gave notice at my work.

On the Monday I gave notice, I was positively shaking with nerves. Nevermind that God had shown up on the scene to tell me what to do with the next huge chunk of my life, and nevermind that I'd prayed for weeks about leaving on June 29th and giving notice on June 4th. When the Day of Notice came, I was quaking in my boots.

One big reason for the nervousness was because I felt I would be leaving my department in the lurch. We had some other positions that needed filling, which made it hard enough, but there was also the fact that I was part of a smaller team within a bigger team that managed a lot of its own multifacted projects. My leaving would make that small team-within-a-team even smaller.

The other big reason for my nerves was the sheer audacity of the thing. Basically, it meant cutting off our income stream -- kablooey, bam, pow, it's no more! And even though we believed it was the right thing to do and had complete faith in God's provision, it was still one of the scariest moves I'd ever made. Thankfully, Kirk's faith in God's financial provision had been strengthened a lot in the past couple years, so he was nothing but supportive as we moved in this direction.

If you'll remember, though, there was also the factor of having just taken on a new lease in a new house that was five times the expense of our previous situation. That's right -- five times! (Obviously we got our previous digs at a rock bottom rate.) We knew all this change was right around the corner when we took the lease, so it's not like we were looking around to suddenly find ourselves stuck with this expense we hadn't planned for, but still -- it required faith to keep going forward with the plan now that the new house was officially ours.

Things moved into slow motion on that Monday morning. I told my big boss first, who was gracious and kind and prayed with me for this venture. Then I told my girlfriends in the office suite when we met for morning prayer. They prayed for me, too. Then, when my immediate supervisor came in, I told her, too. Before I knew it, the move had been made. I was officially leaving. Gulp.

Make that: Double Gulp.

Cut to Tuesday, June 5th, the very next day. It's after work, and dinner is done. Kirk pulls out his beautiful new Mac and shows me its squeaky clean, super cool features for the very first time. I fall in love with my very first Mac. I write an ecstatic post. Kirk pops his head into the farmroom from the kitchen as I'm writing and says, "You know how you can get your own one of these, don't you?"

"Oh yeah," I respond a bit sarcastically, since I knew he was joking me. "Be like you and get a master's in entertainment business from Full Sail, too?"

"Ha-ha-ha!" we laugh. "Ha-ha-ha! That's funny!"

And then we stopped. We stared at each other. We cocked our heads and raised our eyebrows. Hm.

"Hm," Kirk said.

"Shhhh! I know what you're thinking, and it's nuts! That's crazy! I'm not even going to let myself think about it!"

"I think it's time for a family conference," Kirk says anyway. "Meet me in the other room when you're done writing your post."

I finished a final once-over of the post and then strode into the other room, where he was already sitting with the course catalog in his hands, slowly perusing the pages. We looked at it for the zillionth time, only this time through the lens of what these courses might mean for me and this new business I'm embarking upon. If I took the program, I'd enroll in courses like Storytelling in Business. Brand Development. Business Venture and Finance. Executive Leadership. Project and Team Management. Entertainment Media Publishing. Mobile Marketing and Commerce. Business Plan Development.

In other words, courses that would give me everything I don't have -- business knowledge and entrepreneurial training and web media instruction -- to supplement everything I do have -- passion and intuition and creativity and personal journey and feminine insight.

To make a long story short, all of this came to be. It took a couple conversations with our good friend Paul in admissions to learn that my professional work experience in book publishing, magazine, and newspaper, coupled with the high GPA from my totally un-business-related bachelor's degree would qualify me as a candidate for this program. It took another conversation with the financial aid department to learn that I'd get student loan funding not only for the school expense but also for living expenses. It's not much, but coupled with the amount Kirk's getting from his program, too, it amounts to a little more than I was making on the job. Wow!

Not to mention I'm now the proud owner of my very own Mac. My beautiful, beautiful Mac.

Ah, life sometimes converges into some very, very sweet spots. We enjoy them to the fullest when they come.

The Road to the Beautiful New

Seeing as how meaningful conversations bent toward others have been the cornerstone of my days, even at a very young age, and that the unfolding of the individual journey has become the increasingly central theme of the past 10 years of my life, it should have come as no surprise that God would tap me on the shoulder to create something new that honors these themes on a grander scale for others . . . but it did. It came as a very big surprise.

Seeing as how God led me deeper and deeper into the wilderness in recent years in order to strip and strip and strip again thick layers of identity in order to render me barren and empty and poor, with nothing but upturned hands to offer Him, it should have come as no surprise that He would place something new into those hands in His due time . . . but it did. It came as a very big surprise.

Seeing as how I've been willing to risk more and more of my heart and resources on behalf of God's work in recent years, so much so that risk has become a deep value of my faith, it should have come as no surprise that God would ask of me another risk, this time even bigger and more unknown than ever before . . . but it did. It, too, came as a very big surprise.

And yet, once all this had arrived, it came as no surprise at all.

Earlier this year, Kirk and I had begun sharing conversations about different business ideas he might pursue, now that he'd finished his entertainment business degree at Full Sail. We'd been brainstorming and getting excited about some of them, all with the understanding that any of these projects, if pursued, would ultimately be his deal. He's the more entrepreneurial of our pairing, after all, and I felt satisfied to simply provide insight, intuition, and support.

One early evening, driving home from a great Mexican dinner at a local restaurant, Kirk looked over at me in the car and said, "You know that this idea [the one we'd talked about at dinner] will likely resonate most powerfully with women, don't you?"

I nodded.

He paused. "I never, ever saw myself starting a business for women."

"Me either!"

We laughed hard, finding it a bit hilarious in the moment.

"I'll be here to help you out," I said. "I can help with the women's intuition side of things."

He nodded, and we left it at that.

About a week and a half later, we shared a conversation that left us both with the impression that perhaps I was the one to be pursuing this idea for women instead of him. It surprised both of us to think this, especially me, since I'd not considered myself in any sense the primary "owner" of any of the ideas we'd been considering the whole time we'd been discussing them. Like I said, he's the entrepreneurial one who thinks big and creatively and strategically. I, too, am willing to dream and imagine with him, and even ask the hard questions that will eventually make the ideas go, but I hadn't anticipated engineering one of them myself! But I agreed to pray about it through the weekend and asked God to confirm if this was indeed part of His plan.

Well.

You know how I'd been walking in a desert recently? God hadn't shown up on the scene in ages. I was okay with this, since I knew He was still there, but I didn't have much faith that He'd show up over the course of the weekend. Except then He showed up in a whirlwind. Over the next five days, He led me to a windfall of resources about how to reach women, how to market to women, how to brand a business for women, and how to understand female behavior on the Web.

All of this was unusual reading for me, but very interesting. And that's because He was simultaneously reminding me of my deep heart: the journeys that people, and especially women, take to discover who they are. I started thinking about the countless relationships in my life that had sounded upon this theme. I recalled the way the Life Group community of girls I led last year in California changed all of our lives for the better. I realized that even this space, Lilies Have Dreams, has been a gathering place of what? Primarily women.

Through the course of that weekend, He caused me to view my life in retrospect in order to see how my heart had already been opening up more and more to women and the journeys of their lives with each passing year of my life. He also kept presenting me with information about how women, in the busy climate of their demanding lives, are increasingly turning to online communities to express themselves and find support. You can find dozens of online communities out there that are just for women. But why would the world need another, I wondered?

As I continued to do research, I found that those online communities offer two primary things for the female soul: information for their interests (such as articles on health, beauty, entertainment, parenting, and careers) and platforms for free expression (such as blogs and forums and chatrooms and specialized interest groups). What they lack is a redemptive objective. What if something beautiful was created in response to that need? Is there, in fact, such a need?

I couldn't avoid the bald fact that God had indeed showed up that weekend in response to my prayer for confirmation. He seemed to have something in mind, though I had no clear idea what it was or how it would come to be. But at this point, in obedience, I agreed to be the key player on its behalf. And I began to generate some preliminary ideas.

After about a month of working on this part-time, in the evenings and on weekends, I reached a critical point. I needed to either jump in all the way and start the formal development process or resign myself to the fact that it would take a long, long time to get done. I asked God to help me determine if leaving my job was the right and timely thing to do. He responded by providing a continued knowledge that I'd leave my job at the end of June. This seemed somewhat crazy, but I couldn't shake the belief that it was right. I put in my resignation letter, and the very next day, as if rewarding this obedience in the face of great risk, He provided some surprising but perfect resources (which I'll share about in another post).

So now I'm home, working on this idea, and officially in the research development phase. Like I said already, I've generated some ideas about what this online space might eventually look like . . . but I'm only one woman carrying one perspective, and I'd love the privilege of hearing yours! 

And please note: Every woman of any age or stage is welcome to participate in this research process, and the more the merrier, so pass the word!

The Final Goodbyes

Even though I didn't know as a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, I eventually came to believe my most satisfying version of an adult life would find me doing one of two things: teaching in a university or working as a book editor. Thankfully, I've already had time to try both, and it's been a very surprising ride to learn that neither of these roles are ultimately the best fit for who God created me to be in this world.

You already know how God turned me away from a collegiate life, but even after I faced this realization I went back to the college honors program to teach for one more year. I shared in my last post that my second year of teaching in this program found me relaxing into a bit more of a personable creature. This third year (and three years had elapsed since that second one) made even more clear how much of a metamorphosis I had undergone.

Students who remembered me from the previous era warned others that writing for me required a pretty ambitious game face. As a result, younger students flocked into my office, eager to learn what they could do to survive. "Um," they would begin, a bit nervously. "I wondered if you could share what you are looking for when you grade?"

The first few times I faced this question, I almost laughed aloud, so clear was it to me that I had changed from my previous incarnation at this job. The last time, I would have upheld the written word as a pristine entity to be respected, learned, and preserved. I would have required that students learn its technical aspects in order to earn my esteem. I would have railed against undisciplined writing as evidence of undisciplined thinking. And probably those things are true. But it wasn't my job to campaign with zeal for those things anymore. God had changed me too much. (This isn't to say I didn't still teach these things. I did. But my heart was no longer enflamed with passion to uphold these tenets the rest of my life.)

What mattered most to me in that third year were the conversations students carried with me about who they were. Most of the time, all they had were questions. But those moments of vulnerability and questions and doubts, and the moments of sheer epiphany that sometimes followed, were the real reason God had me there. I wouldn't trade those conversations for the world. I've come to believe those moments literally expanded the kingdom of heaven.

Like I said in my previous post, it took about half a year to settle into the knowledge that this was the case, that creating a safe space for real conversation was what He had created me to offer those students and had brought me there to do. But once this clicked, the conversations took off. I could hardly keep up with it all, and I loved it. I fell in love with many of those students, and I was sad to let them go in order to move to Florida. I'm thankful, though, that God used that year to show me more of who I am, and also who I'm not.

Over the course of the next year (meaning, this last year of my life), I had the opportunity to experience that second life I always thought I wanted: that of a book editor. I made some great friends, developed relationships with some wonderful writers, brought my technical merits to bear on my work each day, and learned just how many projects it's possible for me to manage at one time.

If I had found this job about five years ago, I probably would have been in heaven. For some of us A-types, there is a certain kind of high to be found in managing a busy production schedule and bringing an editorial eye to a diverse handful of projects each day. But I was no longer just an A-type, and no longer just a strident editorial eye. I needed more relational and creative expansiveness if I was to flourish in life.

The greatest gift I received in that time was the opportunity to work with novelists and champion their projects from the first time the agented submission came through our office on into the acquisition process, and from the time the contracted manuscript came in until it uploaded on deadline to the printer. I say it was a gift because, for one, I loved working with novelists. They have such extensive creativity and depth because they have to inhabit whole stories and characters. The phone conversations and e-mails we shared were among the most satisfying of my career at that publishing house. Since I loved this part of my job so much, I thought perhaps my greater involvement with this line of books would provide the expansiveness I sought in that professional corner of my life.

I also say it was a gift because it was through the fiction line that I was able to witness more concretely how the publishing process unfolds. I was invited into acquisition meetings to represent novels, and I saw the kind of decision-making that necessarily goes into contracting a book. Again, my five-years-ago self would have flipped out in ecstasy at the challenge of learning this process and getting better and better at pitching books to the acquisitions team. But my fire for these things had just burned out. I cared more about the relational side of life and the unique stories each of us inhabit than working with pitches and sales. In the end, I saw that life as a book editor was, in fact, too closed-ended a life for me. Being invited into those meetings was a great gift because, again, it showed me who I had become and who I had moved away from becoming.

It was also along about this time that I looked around to discover myself in a wilderness. Most of the things I had used to define my life previously had suddenly fled the landscape, and I was left with nothing. Nothing that could be seen, at least. All I could do was wait. It was hard, but I found myself surprisingly willing to endure whatever process was having to take place because God clearly seemed to be up to something. I had no idea what it was or where it was headed, only knew that it required my letting go of my plans and ways of defining myself until He showed back up on the scene. And eventually, of course, He did.

My next post will (finally!) detail what He showed up back on the scene to say, what I've walked away from full-time work to do, and how you might even play a part in helping me design it.

A Series of Unfortunate Career Phobias

I'd like to say that what happened next is that I began to bask in God's irrepressible love and receive care from others with the greatest of ease and that, ultimately, everything became all good rather quickly. Unfortunately, that's not how it happened at all.

As I shared in my last post, everything came to a standstill about two years after my junior year. For a college student, this roughly translates into the time of graduation and finding one's first real job. What that translated into for me was two first real jobs: one that was full-time and one that was part-time but acted like a crazy full-time job every couple of months.

The reason I took two jobs straight out of the gate was because I'd recently become a bit of a Dorothy Sayers fanatic. If you don't know her, she was a contemporary of the Inklings in England who could hold her own in the classics at Oxford while publishing mainstream detective fiction. She had all these interesting notions about work that basically boiled down to our needing to find the work we were uniquely suited to doing in the world and then doing it with all our might. (In case you're interested, this came from her interpretation of the creation account in Genesis, in that man was created in the image of God but that all we know about God and the image He bears up to that point in Scripture is that He is a creator.)

At this point, my life split onto two drastically different train tracks. On one track I was hunkering down and refusing to conform to anything that reeked of my value being contained in how I performed for anyone else in my life. On the other track, I was performing like crazy at work because I thought work was the end goal of my life. Looking at this now, it's hard to believe these two trains coexisted inside me at the same time. But they did, and I was blind to the contradiction for a while.

Of course, the eventual collision of these two freight carriers holding the cargo of my life was inevitable. As my conviction grew to follow God through the complete overhaul of some of my most deeply seated core beliefs, this had to eventually also affect the person I took with me to work every day (meaning, myself). The only trouble was, things became very, very messy for a long, long while.

There were days I would wake up and feel like my lungs were stuck in my throat, their too-big size for that constricted space keeping all the fresh air out. My stomach seemed to gnaw on itself interminably. I would avoid people's eyes, passing through halls with my eyes on the ground or making eye contact only briefly before quickly flitting away. Every Sunday found me sinking into a slow but absorbing funk as the prospect of yet another five days ahead became an unavoidable terror.

Why the extreme behavior? It certainly wasn't intentional, and I would have done anything to make it stop, but I think it was the natural (albeit unbearable) result of a war between my two selves: the subconscious self that was scrambling to keep up the acceptable order of the day, meaning stellar performance after stellar performance in order to keep things safe and controlled and protected, and my conscious self, which had begun to firmly reject that way of being.

It's like my subconscious self was yelping and screaming, "Hey! Go back now! You're going to die! You're going to die! And no one will come to your funeral!" Whereas my conscious self was like a young girl in summer stepping off the porch steps into the sun with a yellow tank top and hot-pink shorts setting off her spindly, tan legs, and the wayward strands of hair that won't quite fit into her ponytail puffing and curling around her head like a halo in the heat of the day. You see how truly young and vulnerable she is in that bright light, with only those tiny legs to hold her, except she knows she's somehow held and strengthened by the sun.

Embracing the Unknown

Besides absorbing books like a sponge, I also loved solving math problems as a kid. And playing piano. And the way stories always resolved themselves like cadences in a classical piece. In other words, I liked things that eventually figured themselves out. It soothed me with a kind of satisfying, interior release.

Except that's not how life operates on an actual, day-to-day level. Things don't resolve themselves at the end of the day. They don't work out like some elaborate geometric proof. With the 798,067 variables at play in our lives at any one moment, isn't it somewhat outlandish to hope we can somehow make sense of it all?

Well, maybe. But maybe not. Check out what David Whyte has to say about it in his Crossing the Unknown Sea:

We need a sense of spaciousness and freedom, but find we can claim that freedom only by living out a radical, courageous simplicity -- a simplicity based on the particular way we belong to the world we inhabit. The genius of an individual lies in the inhabitation of their peculiar and particular spirit in conversation with the world. The task is simple and takes a life pilgrimage to attain, to inhabit our lives fully, just as we find it, and in that inhabitation, let everything ripen to the next stage of the conversation. We do this because that is how we make meaning and how we make everything real.

According to this view, every person has a unique genius to uncover and offer the world, and it is a gift that must be found and offered or else the world will be much less without it. Uncovering it, though, means meaning-making, sorting through the past that has led to this actual moment and then garnering enough strength to cut our lives down to the simplest common denominator that is only ours to claim.

My own path has led to me to this cliff's edge now, and as of Friday I will step into the wide unknown to take a chance on building something that will bring my "simplicity" to life. It's an exhilarating step, knowing that I'll be inhabiting that truer claim on my identity, and yet it is a terrifying feat. Thankfully, David Whyte has encouraging words to offer on that score, too:

Taking any step that is courageous, however small, is a way of bringing any gifts we have to a surface, where they can be received. For that we have to come out of hiding, out from behind insulation. Wherever our edge of understanding has been established is the very place we should look more intently, but it is also the very place that fills us most with fear. Once we begin to engage those elemental edges through daily courageous speech, we start to build a living picture of our own nature.

It's good to know other good pilgrims further along on the journey have set down truths for the rest of us newer, greener sojourners to find that light the way.

Making Meaning of It All

Last Friday, Kirk's instructor invited a music business professional into the classroom. This is a classroom filled with 22 creatives, half of which just completed a digital arts bachelor's degree (meaning, they love graphic design, web design, animation, effects, motion graphics, and other such image-driven livelihoods).

For a master's-level class on executive leadership, what do you think happened, come Monday? The instructor threw out the question, "What did you guys think of the guest speaker last week?" To which one of the graphic arts guys said, "Honestly, it felt like a waste of time. The guy was in music; I'm in graphic arts. Plus, he didn't spend any time talking about leadership. I just didn't get anything out of it."

What followed was a high-energy, almost explosive conversation. Everyone had an opinion, and the instructor kept stoking the fire, drawing them out with incisive questions. Obviously, the main question is: if you're a leader, how do you ultimately respond to situations in which you, on the surface, see no redemptive value? In other words, how do you make meaning of it all?

Reportedly, there are at least 221 known definitions of the word leader. Just last week, Kirk told me that leaders are ultimately meaning-makers, interpreting events and fueling energy and attention toward a desirable outcome for a group. I find it interesting that today, this group of emerging leaders got to see this theory in action . . . and measure themselves accordingly.

Some Background on Why Me

If you're at all familiar with the Ransomed Heart corpus of literature (of Epic, Sacred Romance, Journey of Desire, Wild at Heart, and Captivating fame), you know they hold close a few core beliefs:

1) That our lives are caught up in story at both a micro (our own) and macro (God's ultimate) level.

2) That knowing both stories helps make a lot more sense of our lives.

3) That one powerful way we are meant to unveil God's glory on earth is through the unique imprint of His glory in us.

4) And that we have an enemy that seeks to steal, kill, and destroy that glory in us, with an aim toward rendering God's power impotent on earth.

These are pretty powerful truths, if you think about them. I've spent the last big handful of years making sense of the first two points in my own life -- what story have I been living in? how much of that has been given by God and how much is of my own making? where do I go from here? -- but it's really with the latter two that it all begins. It's with the question of His unique imprint in us and the enemy's attempts to mar and destroy that image that we're able to begin making sense of the part of the story God meant for us to share.

And it's with these latter two ideas that I'll begin to establish some backstory with you about this new adventure He's invited me into.

His Unique Imprint

Were you to see me as a little kid, you would more often than not find me one way: curled up in some random corner reading a book. Some people who read this voraciously as a kid did so to escape their reality. Others did it as a precursor to their own eventual storytelling. But neither of these were my bent. (Indeed, the teacher's invitation to make up stories or draw something of my own choosing felt more like a ticket to horror than any exciting ride.) No, I finally realized recently that the reason I gobbled up novels like candy as a kid was because it was the closest I could get to inhabiting another human being's skin. (I find it interesting that my appetite for real, human stories has grown considerably in my adult years, completely overshadowing my previous interest in novels.)

Let me elaborate on this further. When I read Ramona Quimby, Age 8, I felt that I truly knew Ramona's insides. I got all her jokes, even if nobody else did, and I felt each and every one of her scowls. I keenly sensed Beezus for the awkward, gangly, miserable teenager that she was. I could feel Susan with the Boing-Boing Curls's impudence as a mask to some other deep-seated loneliness. (Whoa. Did I just psychoanalyze the Ramona Quimby books?!) Similarly, when I read Dear Mr. Henshaw, I felt the deep layers of that young boy's pain as he wrote those heartfelt letters, and I wished I could have responded to him myself. And when I read Island of the Blue Dolphins, I felt the young girl's acute loneliness on the island and applauded the bravery, ingenuity, and strength she demonstrated in her forays. I even felt the joy and friendliness of the visiting dolphins when they came around!

And when it came to knowing people in real life, it was more of the same. Obviously, I was bent toward one-to-one friendships rather than the raucous, popularity-driven crowds, preferring to know one other person deeply rather than lots of people superficially. (This was a conscious choice in elementary school.) But at a deeper level, you wouldn't believe the kind of conversations I held with adults in my life when I was very young age (say, seven?). There was something in my makeup that caused other people -- even, and especially, adults -- to trust and confide in me. For some reason, I could go there with them and even champion their journey.

I guess, simply put, you could say that God embedded in me a deep ability and desire to see people as they truly are, to hear their actual stories, to care for their unique journeys, and to be sensitive to their needs. Summed up, He gave me acute perception, discernment, and sensitivity . . . which, to be honest, was also, and often, a crying curse.

The Enemy's Affliction

I suppose in a way you could say all that reading was still a form of escape. It was fueled by the desire to really and truly know another, to find kinship and understanding and beauty in their personhood, but that's probably because it was so difficult to find that in any safe and authentic way in the real world. What I mean is, when God gives you a gift for seeing others and being a strength for them on their journey, it really is a gift -- it's not something every single person in the world has an ability to do. Which means, if you're the one giving it, you often feel lonely and unseen by the people you love in that way.

I've endured the pain of loneliness in my fair share of relationships in my life, and I wish it wasn't so. Sometimes I've wanted to throw in the towel and not be so giving (clearly one of the enemy's attempts to thwart God's glory in my life), since it makes me so perceptibly aware of what I, too, desire to receive but maybe won't. But then I can't do it. This is partly because God formed me this way, and I can't not be it. But it's also because I know the desire to be known is implanted by God -- it's really a desire for Him that people have, as He is the One who knows and sees us more deeply than any other human being ever could -- and so loving people this way, I know, is one way I bear the Imago Dei. It's also what keeps me running, arms splayed wide open, straight into His chest when I need to be known in that way, too. It's also what makes me unfailingly grateful for the people in my life who care in this reciprocal way. It's rare, and I don't take it for granted.

When I think about other ways the enemy tried to advance his forces against my soul, even in my youthful years, a few sharp memories spring into focus.

The first happened when I was 5. I was in first grade, and I had a crush on Stevie Moore. The teacher had taken the class to the upper playground, where there was lots of grass, for the daily dose of physical education (which I hated), and we were playing a chase game called "Trees." At the first whistle, everyone in class runs around like wild hyenas. At the second whistle, groups of two pair up and interlace their hands overhead, forming a "tree," while the remaining kids run underneath the paired arms to get "caught" in the trees. Or something like that.

On the day of this particular memory, I got caught in Stevie Moore's tree, only facing the other way, toward his partner. Then I felt a small kiss on my back. Stevie Moore had kissed my back! Wow. Can a five-year-old experience heart palpitations?

Back in the classroom, winded and exhilarated, I confided this with a girl at my table -- the prettiest girl in class who always wore frilly dresses and had silky, long brown hair and deep blue eyes. "He kissed me on the back!" I cheered.

"Well, he kissed me on the lips," the girl said, and flounced her hair over her shoulder. And just like that, I was dismissed in a moment when I had chosen to put myself out there.

Another time a group of boys, led by the class bully, circled around me at recess as I wandered through a line of trees on the edge of the playground field. They circled closer and closer, and finally grabbed my arms while the bully ordered another one to lift my dress so they could stare at my underpants. I remember the small boy's face who took the order, pleading wordlessly with me for forgiveness as he put me through this shame, as though he knew it was wrong and that it would hurt me badly. And it did. Again, another moment of dismissal in a moment of vulnerability as I wandered, carefree and joyfully, through the line of trees.

It's these kinds of experiences (and there are more that I could tell) that caused me to close up and guard my words and actions, and definitely my deepest thoughts and feelings, from the rest of the world. It's probably what made reading feel so safe and established, since I got kinship and deep knowledge of another without the pain. But really, the pain was still there. I had just learned to lock it up deep inside, hidden from others, and even sometimes, though not so successfully most of the time, even myself.

In my next installment on the subject, I'll share more about the path toward freedom God began to carve out in my life . . . and how this all, eventually, relates to what He and I are beginning to build, together.

Changing Stories

If you've been following this blog for any good length of time, you know that my story has seen its fair share of changes. In the past few years alone, I've moved from being a newly divorced woman learning the ropes of single adulthood to being a woman surprised into love by a God whose plans far exceeded my greatest hopes. I've been directed away from the life of the mind (though not rendered mindless, I hope!) toward the rich, deep life of the heart. I've survived a depression. I've moved across the country. I've walked through a spiritual desert. I've been rendered positively speechless.

Threaded through each of these changes is the story of a God releasing splendor in my heart. All this time, He's been after my vulnerability. He's been after my rest. He's been after my relinquishment of control. He's been after my absolute availability.

And now He begins something new.

Over this past month, God has invited me into a new adventure involving great risk and great faith. He has posed a question: Am I willing to leave my 9-to-5 job to begin a new work that offers these same gifts of the heart to other women who are just as in search of life and hope and freedom as I was? He has asked me to say yes . . . and I have.

And so, at the end of this month, I will be leaving behind a regular paycheck to chart a new course. Already it is forming in my mind's eye. Already, new and marvelous resources have sprung up. I'll share more about all these things in the days ahead, but for now I will leave you with the heartbeat and essence of what I'll be creating, with God's help, in the words of a post written almost a full a year ago . . .

"Thoughts on Love, Somewhat Muddled"

I think the whole point of life is learning how to love. And the object of our love can be broken into two categories: God and others.

One way (but not the only way) God helps us love Him is by meeting us in our need. What I mean is, deep down inside of us, each of us have very real hurts. Some of us don't like thinking about this, and others of us like to think and nurse on this too much. Either way, they're there. They exist. We are broken people.

We can be broken from big or little moments, in an instant or over a lifetime, in moments seared deep into our memories and moments we've now long forgotten. Those moments, from the instant they take place, affect the way we live, whether we know it or not. And once we get real about this with ourselves and with God -- face who we really are and what we really think and how we really feel in the most sincere moments of our lives -- God can finally get to work in a true and powerful way. In a life-transforming way. In a way that's far beyond and far more effective than what He can do -- and will do -- when we're unaware of what we need and He has to do all the work Himself.

I learned this in a very real way last year when I was all tied up in knots at work. It took every ounce of power in my body to get myself out of bed and out the door on weekday mornings. The pain of perfection and the fear of rejection was, quite literally, going to kill me. But at the root of it all was one big spiritual mess He'd been working to clear out of me for years.

A lot of what I'm sharing is nothing new. Everyone has hurts, like I already sufficiently covered a few paragraphs up, and everyone is dealing with something that pretty much boils down to thinking their value has been reduced to the mere function they perform -- that what they do is more important than who they simply are.

I know a lot of this, again, sounds like pop-culture mumbo-jumbo. But the thing is, it's my story. And it's what God used to eventually grow me into loving Him more, and into loving others more truly.

Some mornings, the only thing that would give me the strength to face the day was to picture in my mind that I was that woman in the crowd who touched Jesus' cloak and received His healing power because of it. Except instead of being in a crowd, I would picture myself the privileged and private audience in His throneroom in heaven, and that I was -- and am -- His beloved daughter. In this picture in my mind, God's cloak was a deep red velvet, and it extended far down from around His throne and onto the ground, closer and closer to me. In that image, I would reach forward, having been bent and huddled over in pain and shame, and I would clutch at the cloak that beckoned me to touch it.

And that was enough. As I sat huddled on the floor of that throneroom, totally broken and weak and unable to get myself up off the ground, I felt God gently watching me. I felt His invitation to touch His garment. His love extended down to where I was, so patient and involved. And once I touched it, I heard Him saying all He had to offer was all the strength I needed: His love, His sufficiency, His determination of my value. Not the determination of others or even what I concocted in my mind.

Somehow, that helped me get up and out of the door. And on my way to work, Kirk would talk and pray me through it. On lunch breaks and odd moments in the day, he would talk and pray me through it again, reminding me of that throneroom and ushering me back into the presence of God.

Somewhere along about that time, Hannah spoke those words I mentioned a few entries back about my being and bringing "color" -- bringing a life and vibrancy to places where life and vibrancy didn't previously exist, simply because of the heart He had given me to feel and care and listen and love from a place that understood the kind of questions and pain and confusion others were facing themselves, simply because I had been there.

Soon after all of that, something finally clicked. The panic attacks and the anxiety and the terror went away. I spent the next 6 months feeling free and resourceful and beautiful and alive and able to love those entrusted to my care, without reservation.

God began to use me, more than He ever had before.

And this is what I learned. Somehow, in the middle of all that mess, He was forming in me a heart that deeply loves. And feels. And grieves. And prays. And trusts. And, eventually, heals. And then passes it along to others who need to love and feel and grieve and pray and trust and eventually heal, too.

I met with more students in the past academic year who were dealing with their own trust and love and acceptance and parent and future and God and growing-up issues than I ever imagined possible. For some reason, they started coming out of the woodwork. A group of them even asked me to visit their morning Bible study one week, and all I could think to share was what I've attempted to share above: that the only thing that matters in life is who we are to God. That is what saves us, and that is what then propels our lives to helping others see this truth about their impenetrable and ever-esteemed value from God.

Nothing can change the way we matter to God. The only thing that can change is whether or not we really get what that means, and what happens in our hearts as a result. The only thing that can change is whether we will keep living for the approval of others or start resting in the real truth -- that we are more precious to God in our plain and true existence than we can even fathom, and He wants to care for us and fill us up.

To sum up, I guess all I'm trying to share in this whole long-winded post is one of the most precious gems of truth I've learned so far on this journey.

And that truth is: When God meets us in our need, we grow in our capacity to love both Him and others. We love others with the love He has accorded unto us, and we love Him with both great gratitude and utter acknowledgement of His magnitude and sufficiency for all our bodily and spiritual needs. He becomes intensely personal, and, as a result, so do we.

How He Sometimes Strips Us, or What Writing Means to Me (Part 8)

This past weekend, in celebration and remembrance of our engagement that happened on St. Patrick's Day last year, Kirk took me to our favorite Orlando hotel, the JW Marriott, which I have shared about a few times before. (For those inquisitive types out there who may be somewhat new to this blog, you can read more about those times here and here.)

We spent time at the pool, enjoyed the luxurious bed (I can never get over the splendor of their fabulous beds!), and shared a fantastic meal on Saturday night. It was a meal replete with soul-stirring conversation, a glorious bottle of wine, and melt-in-your-mouth desserts.

The restaurant was a new experience for both of us and, like I said, a fantastic one. The place is high-class, and they serve perfect portion sizes of the most perfectly prepared food, all of it organic and grown either in the garden right outside their doors or brought in from local farmers and fishermen. (For those of you un-health-conscious types, this is not to say that "organic" and "locally grown" translates into "boring" and "blah" food. On the contrary, actually. I enjoyed a very light and tasty shrimp scampi linguini, while Kirk enjoyed fall-apart-in-your-mouth sea scallops and asparagus spears. Yum!)

That was one fantabulously perfect meal, I tell you. I would love to re-live it again.

But the most important aspect of the weekend was quite outside all these things. The most important part of the weekend was the way God showed up when we asked Him to. On our way there, as we were driving away from our home toward the yet-undisclosed-location, I said a prayer out loud in the car that invited God deeper into our time away. We had previously voiced that this weekend was set aside as a devotional one, filled with worship and closeness in Him and the seeking out of His face, so I prayed that He would reveal the deeper heart of His plans for us over the course of the weekend, no matter what that might mean. And in His faithful way, He did just that.

He did this in a number of ways, but I want to share one of the life-crashing ways He did it with me. For some context, I should say that for the past two and a half months, I've been committed to a writing partner I have never met. She contacted me through a mutual friend toward the end of last year, and she lives in Iowa. We agreed to work on "pages," as we've come to affectionately call them, and to send them to each other for review at regular intervals through the mail. Just what this agreement actually means to both of us has morphed several times in the near-three months we've worked at it, as each of us have had to clarify again and again to ourselves what, exactly, our projects are. It has been exciting at times, and it has been flat-out exasperating at others. We've said things to each other like, "I resent your presence in my life, even though I choose for you to be in it" and "I like the way e-mail can keep me from dealing with you." All said in the most affectionate of tones and with the greatest of respect, of course.

The truth on my end of things, though, is that I've dried up like a stick. I'll commit to a project, write ten pages on it, send it to her, and hit that infuriating wall. So then I'll commit to a different project, tell myself, "Yeah -- this is what I should have been committed to doing instead," distance myself emotionally from the previous project, only to slam up against that blank wall of a page a few days later. Pretty much, it's awful. Pretty much, I hate it. Pretty much, it makes me loathe myself.

You know what it feels like? It feels like I've gone all the way back to that writer-poser self I thought I had so successfully sloughed off of my skin. (You know, the one I wrote about here and here.) But as I've faced the fright of the blank page with absolutely nothing soon in coming, the terror of having nothing to say has grown worse and my resistance to sitting down and continuing to try has only grown stronger.

Has my worst nightmare descended finally upon me, I've wondered slowly. Am I a writer with nothing to say?

All of this came to a head this past weekend. As part of our commitment to the devotional aspect of our weekend, Kirk brought along some ivory cardstock cards and proceeded to lead us in a time of giving-over on Saturday night, after we'd returned to the room after dinner. As we sat with these cards, we kept asking ourselves the question, "What would He have us commit to His care and His lordship?" We then would take turns writing things down on the cards before signing and dating them.

On my second card, I wrote, "My writing -- whatever it's meant to be and to be for." I signed and dated it. I put it in the pile. I affirmed in my heart that He means my writing for Him and that He wants to dictate what it becomes. I brought my will into agreement with that belief and went to sleep peacefully upon it.

I did not, however, realize what was waiting just around the corner.

In the morning, Kirk and I left the hotel and stopped by a restaurant for breakfast. We had a great conversation that stirred up a bunch of energy and excitement, and so we decided to stop at Starbucks before going home so we could work out some of that energy in productive activity. He was going to work on his business idea, and I wanted to work on my writing (even though I had no idea, at that point, what that actually meant anymore). But as we drew nearer the Starbucks, the more my enthusiasm faded with every mile and turn. I felt a sinking in my heart. I felt a dense, cold, clay rock begin to ball itself up in my stomach. In actuality, I wanted to throw up.

We decided to sit outside, and Kirk went inside to order our drinks. I pulled out my laptop, opened it up to a brand-new blank page, and stared blankly at the screen. I blinked a few times, since the sun was hitting it, then moved around to a better angle. I stared at the screen some more and then realized: I didn't have anything to say.

Kirk came out with our drinks. I made an effort to smile. (It was a pitiful effort.) Shortly afterward, I closed the laptop and asked if he could pass me a notepad from his backpack. Perhaps if I write it longhand it will come, I thought. Nevermind that I hadn't written in longhand in probably at least six years, but maybe this would do the trick in freeing me up to land upon an idea.

I wrote about a paragraph that was a puking, mewling attempt at prayer. It was riddled with complaints and cries. It testified to my very lost self. Pretty soon, I gave that up, too, and began drawing in the margins with my purple felt pen, making designs and then blotting them out. Kirk watched me for a while and then gently suggested we make our way on home. I shrugged and then let him lead me to the car like I was a blind girl who needed to be steered.

When we got home, I curled up on the couch and faced the wall. I pulled a blanket over my body and closed my eyes tight. I have nothing to say, I admitted to myself in a tiny, tiny voice. I want with everything in me for this not to be true, but it's true. I don't know what to say.

You want to know the point of this whole story? It's to say that even though, in theory, I wanted my work to be God's, what I actually wanted more was to have work. To have written. To have something to say.

"I want to be shiny," I confessed to Kirk a little later, after I'd come to grips with this truth inside myself. That about sums it up.

Because He loves me so much, I believe God is allowing me to come to the end of myself through this whole process. I believe the point is to begin to realize how insufficient I am to control or dictate my own life, and even my own measly words. I believe it's to have absolutely nothing left so that all I have is this big gaping hole that needs Him and Him alone. Because that is His greatest joy: our need of Him, His own sufficiency.

I am only beginning to scratch the surface of what this might mean. But I have hope that the surface is there, that I'm scratching it, and that it's leading to more. I hope you'll accompany me along in the journey. Amen.

Our God Is So Ingenius

As many of you know, when I first moved to Winter Park I was going to write full-time instead of working a regular job. After a couple months, I discovered that was a plunge I was not ready to take. So, I started hunting for work. Where did I direct most of my hopes? Relevant Media Group.

As many of you also know, Kirk has been working on a degree in Entertainment Business over the course of this past year. (And he just completed his last class on Saturday. Bravo for him!) Along about three-quarters of his way through the program, he started thinking about life after Full Sail. Where would God have him go? One night over sushi, he shared that if he ever worked for someone else again, he would want it to be Walden Media.

And you know what? God gave both of us those dreams but in unexpected channels. Instead of working for Relevant, I got to write for them. Instead of working for Walden, Kirk got to independently contract his services to them as the marketing coordinator for Amazing Grace here in the Orlando area. And what's more, both these gigs were centered on Wilberforce's story -- something we've both cared about for longer than this film's been around or even in the works. Pretty cool, huh?

When Kirk pointed this out to me tonight, we got dazzled by God's genius. After that, we scratched our heads. What on earth is God up to with us, anyway? He sure takes us along the most inventive of roads on this journey of life we are sharing together. I, for one, am glad to be upon it.

Pushing Wilberforce a Little Further

An article I wrote for Relevant Magazine Online just went live on their site. In it, I put forth a challenge to take Wilberforce's legacy one step further. Will you take up the challenge and answer the question? Will you share your thoughts with the rest of us?

What Writing Means to Me (Part 7)

I've written bits and pieces of my journey as a writer in this series, but I haven't talked much about actual progress. Or actual projects, I should say. This is where it gets comical and highly revealing. In the interest of authenticity, and in order to shed light on where I am today, I thought it high time I shared.

As I've already detailed previously, I took a creative writing class geared toward short stories in my senior year of college. (Rebecca took that class with me, too, in fact.) I wrote three short stories that semester, all of them pitiful, and left the class in a greater quagmire of self-loathing and confusion than when I began. I had officially entered my "tortured artist" phase.

The following semester, I took a class on writing for children. Besides reading lots of great contemporary children's lit, our first assigment was to come up with five high concepts for children's novels, which basically means creating story ideas that can be boiled down into a sentence. After this, we had to pick one idea and develop it into an outline. Then we had to write the first 30 pages, pitch a query letter to an actual publisher, and wait and see what happened.

Mine was one of two novels that got a favorable response from a publisher: Scholastic wanted to see the full manuscript -- wow! The only trouble was, I had written just 30 pages. I was about to graduate from college. I was looking for jobs and trying to finish a senior thesis. I didn't have much time for writing a novel.

So I asked my professor for his advice.

"Do you realize how rare it is to get a response from a publisher?" he asked. "Especially when your query was unsolicited and unagented?"

"I think so," I said in a small, small voice.

"You have to finish it," he said. "How could you possibly not?"

I agreed with him and kept on writing. I took a graduation trip up north to do extra research on land deeds and farms. (My novel was set on a farm in Central California during the Great Depression.) In all, I wrote about 30 more pages but then stopped. I got stuck, or I got feedback -- I don't know which -- and never finished. I still wonder how things would have turned out if I'd actually finished that book. Maybe someday I will.

Over the next two years, as I was working out my thoughts on calling and vocation in real life, I started a new novel about a girl who -- surprise, surprise -- was working out issues of calling and vocation in her life, too. I moved to Missouri and, while there, petitioned into a members-only writer's group and kept plugging away at this book. When I moved back to California not long after, I gave this entire book up. I had, again, hit the 70-page-mark wall.

I should probably mention here that I was living in my writer-poser phase this entire time. I was enamoured with the idea of being a writer, being an editor, and being in publishing. I was stunned by the freedom of expression I could find in writing, since I had been a rather shy, repressed person in my younger years, but I didn't know what this meant. You can't just move from sharing nothing to sharing anything and/or everything in one fell swoop, you know. At least, I couldn't. I felt tortured, totally hung up on my own hang-ups and unable to see my way out of them.

Along about this time, after I'd moved back to California, my writing aspirations went underground and my hopes for an academic life bubbled up. This post here details the way I was led eventually back to the page in that long saga. And if you want to know what I've been up to ever since, you're going to have to stay tuned . . .