kirk: 'i'm not gonna have any memory left, because i downloaded a university'

my hub has discovered itunes university. this is a place on itunes where colleges like stanford and yale and duke offer free lectures -- and entire courses -- through downloadable podcasts.

this morning, kirk was up about three hours before me. his first words to me after i woke up were that he'll be getting a free education from RTS seminary while i'm getting my MA in spiritual formation over the next three years. this is because he downloaded 650 podcasts, which is 23 courses in total, from the local seminary into his itunes.

i find this utterly adorable, because that's just who kirk is. he loves to learn, and especially to find new, untraditional ways of doing it.

it was also particularly sweet to watch him discover that the available memory in his macbook pro had shrunk from 65 to 52 gigabytes as a result. he's such a silly boy. and you know what? i love that about him.

some words, for now

hello, friends. i know i have been quiet around here lately. my last few posts have been an unusual string, redirecting you to places that have inspired me, be it a blog or an interview or a piece of beautiful music. i have done this rather than sharing my own heart with you here, and it has not escaped my notice.

this is unusual behavior for me in this space, and you are not alone in noticing and even feeling the change. and perhaps you are concerned. i would not be surprised if you were wondering if i'm okay, since i've walked through seasons of wordlessness on this blog before, and they have usually been fraught with so much pain and confusion.

that is not the case this time. i am thankful that i can say this, as i believe it is the first time i have ever been able to say that my quietness on this blog has nothing to do with confusion or pain or turmoil or my usual incarnation of wordlessness.

i wish i could say that i am back, that words will flow like liquid from me now. but i can't promise that. there is much going on in this world of mine over here, and my heart is full and overflows with adoration of our God for all of it. he has been faithful and good to me, faithful to hear my heart's cry for many things over many years, now responding in ways that are surreal and surprising and so personal.

i will be sharing more of these experiences with you soon, as the stories ready themselves to be pieced into words meant just for you. but in the meantime, know that i am well and that i am thinking of you and that i continue to love all of you in this beautiful blogging community.

and, because i can't resist passing along something that touches me deeply, i hope you will be blessed by the following article that expresses so much of my own heart for wounded people sitting in broken places. the piece is written by jon acuff of "stuff christians like," and it is called #195: believing bad times equals bad us (the cocaine testimony).

be blessed and a blessing.

oh, and p.s.: kirk and i just got home from seeing michael w. smith perform live in concert to a packed house at our church. did you know that guy's been recording and performing music for 25 years? did you listen to "go west, young man" and "friends are friends forever" when you were in junior high like i did? you better believe he performed "secret ambition" tonight . . . and those of us who were old enough to remember that song felt like we'd flashed back fifteen years. but it was a blessed night of worship, arms and voices raised to our God in unity, and i felt like we'd gotten a tiny glimpse of heaven.

if this music doesn't make you cry, something is wrong with your heart

this theme, called "gabriel's oboe," is one of the most beautiful, haunting melodies i have ever heard in my life. when i hear it, my breath catches in my throat and i feel a squeezing in my heart. my eyes swell with tears and i invariably whisper, "our God is so beautiful." because when i hear music like this, it moves me to worship God.

conducted by the composer himself, the great ennio morricone, this piece is the theme music for the film, "the mission."

video run time: approximately 2 minutes.

best blog of the week

for the past week, thanks to the great recommendation by jennwith2ns, i have found a new favorite way to procrastinate. rather, i have found a new favorite way to ensure that i'll have an opportunity to laugh really, really hard every morning.

put more succinctly, i have found a new favorite blog.

the blog is called stuff christians like. the writer, jon acuff, writes advertising for a living. this explains how he is able to write hilarious, to-the-point riffs on stuff christians like in order to help us laugh at ourselves, learn from ourselves, and take ourselves a little less seriously. i find it has quickly become my essential daily dose of cyber-coffee. it's brilliant and funny and thoughtful and incisive and, yes, even heartfelt and genuine. the guy truly loves jesus, but he also thinks the christian subculture is just a little . . . well, weird. and what can i say? i totally agree with the guy.

as you'll see, jon is chronicling his way through all the stuff christians like. you could entertain yourself for a really long time just by clicking randomly on posts that sound interesting or strike a chord with you. to give you a little jumpstart, here are a few of my favorites:

* #114: not knowing how to act in a counselor's lobby

* #159: the "pray if you feel led" prayer

* #110: donald miller

* #145: weird christian dating sites

* #169: clapping our hands (a step-by-step guide to the death of rhythm)

dallas willard, technology, and community

given recent conversations here and in other places, i found the following interview with dallas willard profoundly moving and uplifting. i learned that this interview with relevant magazine took place back in may 2005, but the ideas still run deep because they are timeless.

stepping into community: an interview with dallas willard

i was refreshed by this article today. i hope you will be, too.

extending grace

note: this is the second in a two-part series. click to read the first installment here.

as i shared in my previous post, i spent about three days heeding the compelling invitation to listen to the quiet. at first, it felt comforting, like a sweet relief from all the noise i had been cramming in my head for days on end. but toward the end of that intense three-day directive, i began to feel just plain irritable.

i had grasped that all those distractions were not the answer to my plight, that they would never fill me in the way that i wanted them to. so now i couldn't read books. i couldn't sit for another moment longer in front of my computer. i couldn't handle the thought of one more movie. all of it felt empty, devoid of the life i sought. these days of quiet had revealed this to me, and i had actually lost my taste for them [at least in such large doses]. but just sitting and listening to the quiet? it took forever. it seemed to go nowhere. it even felt [gasp! the horror!] boring.

so there i was, feeling completely irritable and stuck. the hole inside my chest kept growing more vast, pleading with me to fill it now, but i felt completely helpless to do so. i couldn't go back to the futility of the old ways, but hearing that listen to the quiet prompt was making me want to scream and punch my pillow.

thus began the days of walking listlessly around inside my house. there were a handful of these, and they were pretty intolerable. i would hear the prompt and heed it half-heartedly, and then i would get up and walk around my house aimlessly. mind you, our house is not very large, so the walk took very little time. it landed me back at square one way before i was ready to be there.

one night, kirk and i were out driving around town. we were talking about how we could best invest our time and resources after graduation to get us moving along again financially. as we were throwing around ideas, i could feel that cavernous place inside my chest begin to fill. i began to feel excited. i began to envision throwing myself into some new adventure. i began to think of all the ways my competencies could be used somewhere. oh, yeah! i thought. here we go. i just needed a direction in which to focus this whole time. that's all that i've been waiting for.

except i quickly realized this wasn't true. because you know what? in the same amount of time it took for me to think gleefully that i'd found the answer to filling my chest-sized emptiness, that answer just as quickly revealed itself to be a sham. that hole was filling up in the exact same way that the hole had filled when i threw myself into thinking of writing as my vocation in the last few years, and then into thinking that the business idea i'd been developing over this past year was my vocation. really, all of this was just another form of distraction, albeit a weightier one than the piddly distractions that had occupied the extent of my days in recent weeks.

but perhaps it was an even more insidious distraction . . . because these attention-claimers, the ones that have been tied to vocation and questions about what i should do with my life, are also so closely tied to the notions i hold of my core identity. and, given my experience with how things have gone before with all these things, i knew that the same thing would happen this time around if i wasn't careful.

what would happen is this: i would think i had found some answer to my life, some notion of what i was meant to do, and then throw myself into frenzied activity in that direction. i would work and work and work so hard to make something happen with all of that, and i would feel so fulfilled in doing it. the hole in my chest would close, having become filled to the full with a mission for life that i was purposely called to do. and then suddenly i would wake up one day and realize that it had become empty again. i would cast about, wondering what had happened. and eventually, i would find that my attempts to distill my life into some active direction that encompassed all of me wouldn't last because no one thing could possibly encapsulate all of me. and so the hole inside my chest would empty and i would be back to that cavernous ache, unsure of who i was or what i was supposed to do with myself. i would be back to feeling aimless and alone. i would be back to feeling completely lost.

that night in the car, i felt myself go through this roller coaster in a handful of minutes, filling up with excitement and then seeing it through in my mind's eye to its inevitable end. and this time, i was able to see how often and how easily this happens inside of me because i attach my whole life and identity to these kinds of answers. i encamp my very worth around them, and then i feel depleted and devalued when the bubble eventually pops, as it always does.

i didn't want to do that again. i wanted to learn forward this time. the only trouble was, i was back to sitting with that cavernous hole. i still did not know how to fill it. this was very frustrating, and also frightening. what was i going to do? and if it had taken me this long to search and try and still be misguided, how long would it take to search and try and find the actual life i was looking for?

a couple days later, kirk and i attended a training day that his friend kevin was conducting. kevin runs a business that helps people and businesses discover their purpose and align their lives and practices with that purpose. in the past few years, kirk has been working as an independent contractor with kevin in this, so he was attending the training day to connect with others who may also begin to offer these services. kevin was kind enough to extend the invitation for the "train the trainer" day to me, given my interest in helping people along in the area of God's work in their lives.

it was a valuable day of training that ran the full workday. as a group, we went through the primary materials that kevin and kirk and others have been using to consult with clients, and a lot of us took notes and asked questions and posed scenarios from different points of view. as i was participating, i was thinking only of how to apply this knowledge in a client setting, not of how to apply it personally to my life. that is, until about the last 45 minutes of the training day, when the personal application hit me completely unaware.

the entire day, we had been building up to the final segment of how to help clients write their overarching life purpose statements, the idea being that each person has a unique spiritual DNA, beyond the collective spiritual DNA we all have [to glorify God and enjoy him forever], which is the specific way each person is designed to exhibit that collective aim. kevin didn't describe it this way, but i'm thinking it is somewhat similar to the concept of naming in the scriptures: the way people named their children, the way God renamed people at times, the new and secret name that we will receive in heaven . . . all of these speak to a uniqueness that describes an expression of the image of God that each person individually bears.

so we're in the session, fleshing this out, hearing some examples, and i start noodling with some ideas on my notebook for what mine could potentially be. i didn't work too hard at it, and nothing i wrote felt like it tapped into the deepest, most fundamental parts of me, so eventually i turned the page and continued along with the rest of the group.

at this point, kevin began to the tell the story of a woman who had approached him after a lecture he gave one time. she told him she had found her purpose in life, and that purpose was to lose weight. of course, kevin's spirits dropped when he heard that, and he took a moment to talk further with her about it, sharing that losing weight was more like a goal, whereas your purpose is fundamental to your sense of being. and then he asked her if she knew what grace meant.

as soon as i heard the word grace, my mind was off and running again. i thought about how crucial that word has been to my spiritual journey in the past ten years. i thought about how that spiritual journey began in response to a lack of grace i had carried toward myself or received from others in the previous years of my life. i thought about how much i desire to share grace with others now, in whatever form it can possibly take. and i thought about how even that day i had heard a few people share that a person's purpose usually ends up being connected to something they had personally struggled with over the course of their life.

i turned back a page and looked at the examples that were written there. i looked at the ones i had tried to create for myself. i added a couple more possibilities, with question marks attached to them: offering grace? extending grace? thinking about my desire to minister to others, i figured offering grace made the most sense, so i circled it and turned the page again. but the longer i sat there listening, the more the words extending grace kept resounding in my head. extending grace. extending grace. extending grace.

i turned the page back again and stared at the two options. although offering grace was circled, my eyes kept moving to extending grace. i tried to think why that might be. and then i thought about the fact that grace is really something that flows down from heaven. of myself, i have no grace to offer. i can only extend that which has been given to me. also, i thought about how much of my life has been about learning to receive grace myself, and about continuing to receive it every day. i'm not here, completely healed, ready to offer without need to receive. but i can be here to extend grace to others and to myself. this is something i will need to do the rest of my life, in fact.

suddenly, i realized that i had it. i had hit upon my purpose statement without even realizing i was looking for it that day.

i exist to serve by extending grace.

i tried to get kirk's attention in order to share it with him, but he thought i was just trying to hold and squeeze his hand. [hee hee.] but a few minutes later, an opportunity naturally presented itself for me to share my discovery with the group, and that was such an amazing experience. it felt so good to profess what i was coming to understand was core to my life, my soul, my mind, my heart -- what God created me to offer of himself in the world. and even though i've been circling around this word grace for quite some time now, there is something really special about naming it as fundamental to my being. i exist to serve by extending grace. it gave me tears and goose bumps. it does still to this day, even a week later.

it is so neat how every single thing they shared that day through the course of the training about what would happen when someone hit upon their real and true purpose statement was true for me: that it would make sense of every major event in their life, that it would transcend a specific job or vocation they could hold, that it would inform the devotional way they read the scriptures and would explain why particular passages mean so much to them, that it will form the basis for even the slightest interactions they have with others or the way they carry themselves to complete different tasks in their life. i could see it in an instant. i knew it was true down to the depth of my bones. and i knew that this was something bigger than any "answer" i could try to find for my life. it was simply about a matter of being.

earlier in the day, kevin had shared an illustration of what he calls a person's core life accounts [spiritual, emotional, mental, social, financial, and so on] by depicting a circle with a lot of smaller circles nestled within the large circle, funneling their way down to a hole in the middle. these circles represent the different core life accounts of a person's life and the way they move outward hierarchically from the core of the person to their more external interactions in the world. like i said, at the center of the diagram, depicting the core of the person, was a hole. and you know what goes in that hole? according to kevin, it's the person's individual purpose.

at the time, i didn't connect this diagram at all to the hole that i had been feeling in my own chest so intensely in the previous days, but once i uncovered my purpose statement later in the day, my mind flew back to the diagram and made the connection immediately. i find that so totally cool. it makes so much sense of why i'd been having trouble knowing what to do with that hole, how much filling it with a particular activity or job or calling, as great as some of those things can be, can never be permanent enough or big enough to fill that hole there inside of me. that hole was meant to be filled with something more transcendent yet fundamental to who i am. it's meant to be filled with, simply, my way of being.

listen to the quiet

note: this is the first of a two-part series.

do you remember how i wrote to you about the dimming of my shining star? this is something that has continued to be the theme of my experience of life for the past few weeks. for example . . .

* even though the pivotal and holy conversation i shared with kirsten a couple months ago helped me see that writing has become less important to me than sitting with people in the quiet, broken, imperfect, shattered, and redemptive places of their hearts, i have had to keep laying it down. in recent weeks, as i have found myself surrounded by so many beautiful books already in the world, by friends who are publishing new books and completing novels and drafting book proposals with words that seem to have fallen down like manna from the heavenly skies, i have been thankful for these wonderful gifts in the world but have also looked upon them with a measure of wistfulness. no matter how long i have labored in that direction myself, the words just have not come. and even though God is showing me my deeper heart for other things right now, there is still a sadness that comes with the death of a long-held hope. it has been humbling to let this hope go, at least for the time being, when it has been so long tied to my identity and experience of life.

* when we went to california, i was, for the most part, away from blogland. though i would check e-mail and the blogs of my closest friends, i could not even attempt to keep up with the rest. as a result, i began to see a sliver of just how many words are continually being launched into the world. i would pull up my bloglines account and just stare at it. first there were 10 unread posts . . . then 25 . . . then 52 . . . then 110 . . . then 132 . . . then 187. the numbers just continued to grow every day, creating a greater and greater sense of how many voices are speaking out there in the world. and if i never personally contributed anything to the conversation again, no blog posts of my own to add, the posts would just keep coming, and the world would just kept running, churning out more and more words and perspectives and opinions and stories and experiences and lives. it was humbling to realize just how small i really am, in the scope of the big wide world out there that is consistently saying its piece.

* when we went to biola and visited isf, it was so wonderful to have found a community that understands the same deep calling of my heart. they used language like "heart" and "grace" and "journey" and "formation," and i felt like i was home. i could not wait to get started, to take courses that would grow my understanding even deeper, to eventually participate in practical intensives, to be in fellowship with others who are intentional about growth in themselves and in the lives of others. but there was also a measure of humbling that came alongside all of this. it may sound strange, and it is hard for me to admit that i even felt this way, but i felt humbled when i realized how many workers are already working in these fields of harvest. i suppose this tapped into the crusader in me who sometimes wants to blaze a trail that is not yet known, only to find that this particular trail has been revived for quite some time and that many have walked back and forth upon it many times over.

i came home from california pretty discouraged. i've already shared about the ways the trip was different than either of us expected, but now i was adding to the mix a full measure of my own insignificance. there are some days in the aftermath of that trip when my response to all of this was to bow before my God and pray. but most days, i ran away. [clearly, this is nothing new with me.]

here is what running away looked like for me in those handful of days. i would leave my e-mail account open on my screen all day long, my eyes flitting to it constantly to see if there were any new messages, voices from my life affirming my existence. i would check my bloglines account about ten times every hour, so deep was my need to fill the gaping hole inside of me with content i found meaningful, with voices i have come to love. i would scour new blogs for hours, searching for new ones to add to my bloglines, trying to slake my neverending thirst for more and more content. i would check news headlines twice an hour, trying to keep my hands around a globe so vast that it exceeds my grasp no matter how faithfully i tried to capture all of it in me. i would dig deeper into books and ask kirk if he wanted to watch more movies. i would curl myself under the covers and fall asleep for handfuls of hours with my sweet kitty diva close to my side.

really, i was alternating between a chaos of noise and utter oblivion.

i knew it wasn't working. it left me feeling even emptier than before, and all i knew was that i felt very, very small and alone in my experience. kirk saw what was going on and expressed his concern, but i felt helpless to explain these compulsions or turn away from them. i knew God was there, that he wanted me close, but still i fled. i could not face him. i could not sit still and stare into his eyes or let him put his arms around me. i wanted to be alone, but i feared this very aloneness all the same, more than anything else in the world.

after about five or six days of this, kirk encouraged me to close the laptop, put it down, and spend some time in the quiet with God. as he left the room, i pulled the covers close and turned onto my side, staring at the floor below. i shook my head, my eyes swimming with tears, my mouth closed and lips turned down. i let the tears fall and just tried to listen to the space inside that i'd been trying so hard to fill.

i heard it speaking of a need to feel significant, and yet of feeling so small and insignificant. i heard it speaking of the terror of this reality, of its helplessness in that place, of its being so exhausted from trying. and then i heard another voice.

listen to the quiet.

this one line echoed again and again in my consciousness for the next three days straight. listen to the quiet. i heard it at almost every turn. listen to the quiet. every time i was tempted to turn to my computer one more time. listen to the quiet. every time i turned to the stack of books standing on the little table next to my bed. listen to the quiet. every time i wanted to pull a movie out of the cupboard, any movie that might satisfy that ache inside of me or distract me from its presence. listen to the quiet.

and so i did. as completely frustrating as it was to hear that voice in those places, as much as i wanted it to just go away already, i heeded the invitation.

i wish i could say that i got answers from the quiet, but i didn't. pretty much, i sat there in silence, no words going out or coming in. the silence didn't say much. in fact, it said nothing at all. i heard no words from God, other than this short four-word phrase, over and over again, which obviously runs a little short on directives other than the one i'm to heed in the present moment.

if i learned anything from the quiet, i learned how hard it is for me to sit inside of it. the introvert in me has always been content to sit quietly with a book, to journal quietly, to have a quiet morning at home, and yet that kind of quiet is not the same as this kind. this quiet was about keeping a discipline of silence not filled with other activity or any incoming or outgoing information, no matter how quietly those activities and information flow. with this kind of quiet, i learned i have so far to go.

and i guess you could also say that the quiet made me face the truth of myself, how quickly i would rather run to other gods to fill me up, how much my insides are hurting, how many questions about my existence still go unanswered. but as much as the feeling of insignificance has pervaded my experience of life of late, i could no longer abide the message that i was, in truth, insignificant. after all, the God of the universe was speaking four words to me over and over again. this means he sees me and all the many details of my life, enough to speak into it. it means that what is going on, all of it, every last thread of my story that is connected to whole handfuls of other threads in my story . . . all of them are meaningful: full of meaning.

and this, my friends, was a hope i could not evade any longer, even if i had no other words or directives to follow in the thick of all this silence. it was a truth i had to sit with, to let just be, even though the hole inside my chest that wanted to be filled and given some sense of direction kept revealing itself to me in greater, more frequent intervals.

off to the spa

after spending yesterday knocked out on doses of nyquil, today is going to be quite a treat that a portion of our tax return is providing for us. kirk and i will be spending the day at our favorite spa retreat, getting massage treatments and reading by the pool and making use of the sauna and enjoying a healthy lunch. my eyes will certainly benefit from the cool restorative of cucumber slices, and my pores will be reopened by the steam room. i'll be trying out a neuromuscular treatment for the first time, which will focus on deep muscle tissue in the neck, shoulders, back, and head. kirk's going for a reflexology foot message this time around. i can hardly wait! what a treat. my body is so going to love this, and so will my soul.

ok, this is just amazing

i'm a huge jason mraz fan. this boy can do things with his voice and with lyrics that never cease to amaze me. he's genius. i think my bro-ham turned me on to jason mraz years ago, and i'm so glad he did! [thanks, bobby!]

thanks to aimee at greeblemonkey for the great showcase of this video of a new single. perfect spring song!

chewing on garlic is . . . er, interesting

i might be getting sick. blergh!

kirk had an upper respiratory infection two weeks ago, but i sailed through with a hardy immune system and didn't get a lick of it. we traveled on four airplanes and sat in airports on four different occasions over this last week during a very busy season of travel, and i didn't pick up one sick germ. but yesterday, i came back to school and sat next to a girl who was getting over a nasty cold and interfaced with a faculty member who was getting over her own upper respiratory infection, and this morning i woke up with a bad sore throat.

this afternoon, the sore throat was still there. i took a long nap. i woke up with my skin feeling sensitive, my bones feeling achy, and my eyelids feeling very, very heavy. my eyeballs themselves have started to hurt.

i hate getting sick.

so kirk is on high-alert mode. he asked if i was willing to do everything i could to ward off the bad effects getting worse. i said no, knowing this would mean ingesting all sorts of herbs and fruits and medicines. then he asked if i was willing to risk it getting worse and having to go to the yucky walk-in clinic we visited twice for him when he was sick. i said no.

i could see i was stuck between a rock and a hard place. blergh.

so i consented. he brought me a bowl of sliced orange wedges with the peels peeled off and a large garlic clove cut into four chunks. he advised me to chew on a garlic chunk, swallow it, and then immediately eat an orange wedge. 'why?' i wondered. 'because the garlic can be kind of strong,' he said. i wasn't sure i believed him. how bad could garlic be?

well, the answer is that it can feel like it's blowing your brain out your ears. wow, that stuff is strong! but i did as my 'doctor' prescribed, even though it's not in my natural inclination to do so, and already i feel myself a little boosted on the energy front. good juju.

let's get this girl better fast, God. i don't want to be sick.

notes on california 2

there is a lot to share about our experience in california last week, and it has taken more time than i expected to sort through all of the related thoughts and feelings.

in some ways, the trip was quite different than either of us expected. i think both of us expected that the angels would sing and all would fall naturally into place the entire time we were there. and some of that did happen. but some of that also did not happen. some of it was surprising and hard. some of our conversations coming back here to florida have been quite honest and candid in ways neither of us really want them to be. and in that place, reflecting on those things, i feel a measure of disappointment.

it's been hard to sift through that disappointment to discern the true root of it. and i think one reason that has been hard is because there is both good and bad to hold in our hands through this, both amazingness and difficulty. in my heart, i feel the good and the bad judging each other, making it difficult for either of them to coexist and be true at the same time.

so, despite the difficulty and my not fully understanding all that God is up to yet, i will try to relate some of how things went. this will not be an exhaustive list.

* our time with ISF was very fruitful and peaceful and lovely. we spent about an hour talking with the program administrator. i loved her energy and the language she used to talk about the program and its students. i felt a continued connection to what this program is about and what i am about, which was exciting and encouraging. then kirk and i had individual interviews with the program administrator and an additional staff person. mine lasted about an hour, and kirk's lasted about 40 minutes. all told, we were there for nearly three hours. i am amazed they took as much time with us as they did, and that they were continually gracious to have offered us all of that time.

* as i was sitting in the lobby during kirk's interview, reflecting on how mine had gone and praying for him during his, i was overcome with a sense of right-now-ness, similar to what i experienced on easter sunday from my previous post. i could feel my heart bubbling up with a sense of urgency, like this program is very much for me and the time for it is very much right now. that felt really good and accorded me a great measure of peace and contentedness and happiness as i sat there in that lobby waiting for him to come out.

* kirk's experience had a little bit of a different twist. about halfway through his interview, it became really clear to him that God is moving him into a season of focusing on career. this wasn't wholly surprising, since he has always been anticipating working full-time and taking classes just part-time. the surprising thing is that he realized he would be okay if he waited a little while to start the program, perhaps a semester or even a year. he even felt strongly enough about this to express it in his interview, sharing that if their decision came down to having room for only one of us in the fall, he hoped they would choose me instead of him. wow. that was quite a revelation for him to experience and for me to hear.

* as the week went on, kirk's conviction about this grew. we are now pretty certain that one of the primary ways God used this week was to grant kirk the gift of perspective and clarity of priorities. this is pretty amazing, as kirk has spent the past three years completely reorienting his life toward receiving a new kingdom or territory over which to rule and has been walking in a desert for much of that time, wondering when that kingdom will come into view and what it will entail. God has made it clear to kirk that the time for ruling and reigning is upon him. whoa. God totally showed up for kirk this week in that way. we are both totally blown away by that.

* we visited a handful of areas in which we thought we might like to live. we saw some beautiful communities and some not-so-beautiful communities. overall, the house-hunting aspect of our trip seemed to provoke more stress than expected. both of us became quite struck by what a special place we inhabit right now in winter park and what a beautiful home and quality of life we share for such a low, low cost of living. it's extraordinary, really. we will be hard-pressed to find a similar situation in southern california, which is high-priced and congested and very much filled with concrete and track homes. neither of us are very sure which area of california will ultimately be for us, but we acknowledge and trust that all of that will work itself out in the way it needs to at the time it needs to do so, eventually.

* ultimately, this is going to come down to a question of financial viability. there is the possibility that when we receive our notices from ISF (which should come in about two months, just after memorial day), that we will find ourselves in a position of practical readiness to move and create a life in california, if invited to do so. we are having conversations about what that could look like. but we are also having conversations about what it could look like if we aren't ready, if we need more time, if prolonging the move for six months or a year might need to be an option for financial reasons.

* i think this is the part that is hard for me to think about. this is the part where i want to close my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, and cry, "la-la-la-la-la! la-la-la-la-la!" like a little kid throwing a tantrum and being unwilling to listen to reason. but i'm getting better at having this conversation. i'm conceding the truths of reality and the truths of what things are important to us. i'm conceding that there needs to be a measure of wisdom. and i'm conceding that in some ways, God could also be up to some other things not fully in view quite yet. and we want to be open to all of that. we want to receive the full measure.

* right now, kirk and i are very clear that getting to california will take some practical readiness on a financial level that we need to build toward intentionally. we do not want to get there and have to blow through our savings and then be up a creek, not knowing what to do next. we want to be prepared, and we think that means exercising wisdom and restraint, if necessary. it also means doing what we can to prepare while waiting to hear from ISF in the next two months.

* so in the interim, we are both exploring some handfuls of options for what this new momentum could look like for both of us, both in california (if we move immediately) and in florida (if we need to wait). even though the initial thought of this part was difficult to swallow and somewhat distasteful to me, it has started to become exciting. i am looking forward to what will emerge. i wonder, for both of us, what we will find.

notes on california 1

our easter experience began with the unexpected blessing of sharing it with two of my dear friends, kate and hannah, and hannah's boyfriend todd. it was such a gift for us to worship with these friends so dear to us, standing together in an outdoor amphitheatre with thousands of others who had gathered to celebrate God's victory over sin and death in the resurrection joy of jesus. we clapped our hands, danced our feet, and raised our hands heavenward in one great worship collective.

and worship, we did. our lead pastor, todd proctor, has a gift for leading people to the feet of jesus in this way. we sang songs of celebration and joy and freedom, and we honored God for who he is.

but we worshipped through more than mere song. rock harbor artists, in the way only they can do, created a symbolic offering of dance and rhythm to communicate the fall and redemption of man, and the power of this visual story caused tears to drop down my cheeks.

then a young man named rudy stood on the stage and told the story of his many years' struggle with cancer, spinal meningitis, and hearing loss with sign language and the help of our teaching pastor, mike erre. after signing his story for us with the help of mike's voice to tell it, rudy took the microphone into his own hands and offered his final words with a muted voice so precious and vulnerable that tears coursed down my cheeks once more.

hearing rudy's voice, then receiving mike's message about our need for the compassion of jesus, and then singing a song that praises God as the defender of the weak and the comfort of those in need . . . all of this made me feel i had come home. i realized that i am indeed already on the path God has laid out before me. i saw yet again that this jar of clay that is my life is a mere vessel to receive the infilling of God's own Spirit to accomplish his own purposes: the binding up of the brokenhearted, the setting free of those held captive, the restoring of sight to the blind.

i felt in a flash that the work of this journey has already been accomplished, that as i stood there in orange county on that sunday, a part of this body collective, one mere worker in the fields of harvest, one mere learner along the road, i am already home.

a physical step in the westerly direction

hello, friends.

this afternoon marks the official start to our spring break holiday. today kirk and i are checking in and choosing seats, doing laundry, arranging for a 4 a.m. taxi cab, calling our friend who watches the kitties, packing bags, tidying up, and saying goodbye to solomon and diva. we're headed for california in the early morning. it is a trip that lasts a week and is yet another exercise in faith.

we planned this trip the week we started thinking california was a distinct possibility. realizing that august would come quite soon, that july would only afford us the possibility of a quick weekend whirlwind trip, if any at all, to secure a place and leave deposits, suddenly it struck us that spring break was fast approaching and our only real chance to do advanced legwork in the direction of california.

so we hopped online and hemmed and hawed at the $430 price for each airline ticket. then we looked at one another, reconsidered our options to go exploring and making connections on the west coast anytime soon, and ultimately clicked to purchase. then we went about making plans.

usually our visits to california are filled with fun and anything goes. this time, it has a more serious, productive feel. we've secured our application interviews for the isf program, back-to-back interviews on tuesday morning. we have plans to scout around in old town pasadena one day, fullerton and historic orange on another, getting a feel for the rental housing market in the areas we prefer. we'll visit my old church, which may become kirk's new one. we'll think on possibilities for employment, and perhaps make connections there.

on the whole, we'll be evaluating this experience in the light of living there, not just visiting, not just passing a fun-filled holiday.

we've never attempted something like this together before. when kirk and i dated, we traveled a lot, but one or the other of us usually visited the other person in their native land, where they already lived. there was already a homebase established, too, when i moved here to marry kirk. and though we've traveled many other places together, it has always been a matter of striking out together as tourists, visitors, explorers, scavengers, nomads.

but this trip? on this trip we're descending as beginning creators together, creating something new from scratch. because even though so-cal is my hometown and the prospect of moving there makes me feel i'm coming home, it has not been my home for two years now. my home has been here in winter park, with kirkum and our two cats. and so, in the coming months, we'll be exploring how to create a new home, secure for ourselves new jobs, approach a new season of training, develop a relationship with a new but well-loved church, and forge into nurturing new relationships, developing a new sense of community together.

thank goodness that it will not all be brand-new. thank goodness for the love and care and community of already long-established relationships that we'll enter into with great intentionality and overwhelming thankfulness. thank goodness at least one of us will know how to pretty much get us anywhere we want to go and will know about how much time it will take to get there every time. thank goodness the school we're hoping to attend is where i have worked and completed my undergrad, so that the environment is already known in many ways. and thank goodness that so-cal will feel like an old familiar in many ways even for kirk, thanks to the many visits he's already taken there on behalf of his life with me.

but still. we are feeling the stretch of faith that incarnates fear and trembling and constant self-reminding that we are not in this alone. when we really stop and think about all this, we realize just how big a feat it is. gathering up all we own and striking out for a new land makes us feel like abraham. looking out at the wide expanse of employment possibilities to meet our daily needs and future hopes makes us feel like moses and the israelites in the wilderness, looking to heaven for manna and quail to come raining on down. and anticipating our hopes to nurture community around ourselves in new, life-giving ways makes us hope for something like the experience of the early christians, whose love and affection for one another brought continual fellowship and generosity of spirit among one and all.

we truly hope and pray that God will show up and not leave us abandoned in all this exploration, that he will make his plans for us plain. some days i have greater faith in this than others. but new steps forward like this one serve to increase my faith because, in its own way, it's like holding up one side of a continual conversation. i wonder what God will say when it's his turn to share some thoughts?

in the mail

today my ISF application made it into the mail and now charts its course across the country to meet the ready hands of my grad admissions counselor.

i must say, it is a relief to have completed this part of the giant marathon we are running to explore the possibility of california in our future, as this application ended up being quite a bit more intensive than i anticipated it would be. it took quite a bit out of me, and parts of it made me sad.

this is because in addition to the four-page application and the three 1000+ word essays that ISF requests of all its applicants (and which were an absolute and complete joy to write), i also needed to include three essays that expounded in great detail some parts of my life that are not so easy to remember. they are parts of my life that i hold close to my heart. they are significant to my journey. they have formed a large part of who i am today, but for the reasons of forging me through fires of grief and pain and darkness and questions.

one essay in particular required entering into years of dark memories and striving for a particular direction in my life that i believed God wanted and the eventual toppling of that effort to the ground. it was a long essay that shared details and dates, efforts and failings, biblical passages and explanations of understanding, expressions of healing and expectations and hopes for the future. it was really, really hard.

this one essay alone was enough to take me out for an entire week. it came on top of the already difficult realization that God has much purifying he wants to do in me, and the shame i could encounter merely by facing the black sins of my heart in that place was doubled by these old places of memory that served to land me in deeper seats of shame.

i am glad i took the time i needed to breathe in the aftermath of writing those three extra essays. when the time came for me to compose the standard 1000-word essays for ISF, essays that asked me to share about my spiritual journey, the significant developments therein, the places in which i find myself growing today, essays that asked me to share what i understand spiritual formation to be, what soul care means to me, and the ministerial goals and interests that now inform my life . . . i had the energy and wherewithal to write them from the fullest places i could find inside, instead of the exhausted, broken place i landed after pouring myself into the other essays. i am glad i honored both sides of my story, the pain-filled side and the hope-filled side, so that the fullness of me could shine out in the best way it knew how.

and now, on wings of prayers, i pray those pages go forth on my behalf in God's grace and truth and love to meet the plans he has for me, whether those plans materialize in the way i have been hoping they will or not. it is a scary and quite vulnerable place in which to stand, but i cannot desire to be standing anyplace else.

a more perfect union

i am posting below one of the most inspired speeches i have ever heard uttered in my lifetime. it is a long speech, clocking in at 38 minutes, but one inspired on every level we could possibly hope for a presidential candidate's speech to be inspired.

this speech by barack obama evidences his gracious manner, his genuine respect for all human beings, his ability to think deeply and critically and originally and thoughtfully on complex concerns, his understanding of what it means and what it will take for a people to become united through what they share instead of divided for what they don't share, and his continued conviction that hope in our nation is worth fighting fiercely for.

and while some of barack obama's opponents will continue to say that he knows how to craft and deliver pretty speeches but lacks the ability and experience to act or to lead, i will say three things.

first, that thoughtful and thorough and originally penned speeches like this one indicate a man who truly knows how to think critically and form beliefs about appropriate responses to difficult issues. there are no simple sound bytes here; these are long and thoughtful ideas strung together into a weighty message that overwhelmingly delivers real substance. frankly, it makes the former college honors writing instructor in me swoon with amazement and pride.

second, i echo michelle obama's own conviction that a long line of years spent working on the south side streets of chicago as a civil rights activist gives a man more experience and hard skills and leadership opportunity than years spent reading bills and submitting votes in washington. i have long wondered why this experience goes unacknowledged by his critics, when it demonstrates firsthand that he not only knows how to bring about real change for real people but also how to lead and to act decisively and with passion.

and third, i offer the words of his former colleague at the university of chicago, whose surprising phone call with barack obama gave him deeper insight into the kind of leader obama will be as president: that he is someone who wants to understand both sides of an issue before opening his mouth or deciding his own mind about it, someone who is humble enough to ask questions, and someone who will surround himself with people skilled in the necessary areas. i cannot imagine a finer candidate to be our next president of the united states of america.

note: text version of this speech is available here.

the dimming of a shining star

have you ever suffered from shining-star syndrome?

shining-star syndrome defined: the aspiration to shine brighter than any other star in the galaxy. the secret wish to be the best equipped of any other star to rescue beings cloaked in darkness or partial shadows by bearing the brightest and shiniest light in the universe. the hope of perpetually existing as the greatest star ever to light the world [the sun] and therefore to be the north star toward which all other stars and every other created being turns for its energy, light, and existence.

in other words, the syndrome of all kinds of messed-up, mixed-up, mashed-up, mushed-up, ultimate fallen-starness around.

have you ever suffered from this? i have. and right now, God's trying to turn that dimmer switch on down. and it really hurts. it's really, truly embarrassing. it totally humbles. it makes me feel like a falling star. like i am plummeting to the ground at warp speed and will soon hit the earth and explode and instantaneously reform into scattered shards of dead rock, never to be heard from or seen in brilliant, shining glory again. it makes me want to lope around to the other hemisphere of the globe in some kind of crazy, misguided attempt to disappear from my own orbit.

i don't know about you, but i picked up this little proclivity in childhood and have carried it with me ever since. i know it's part of my participation in the fallen race that began when one woman and one man decided they wanted nothing more than to be like God, and who were shown the way to that desire by a being who had wanted the exact same thing. but he fell, and they fell, and, well, here i am: fallen, too.

but i know it's also part of what we pick up along in life. at least, that's been my experience. the exposure to great humiliations at a young age informed me that the only way to survive and thrive was to be above reproach, immune to humiliation, and therefore perpetually above the rest of the world. and i somehow made the jump to think that in this perfection, i would invite the praises of men instead of derision, to become essential for all positive outcomes instead of inconsequential to any, and to be the one with divine answers instead of just fumbling, human-sized questions.

when i first learned this was my way, it confounded and disgusted me. i went about slowly unlearning it. it look a long, long time. but God was faithful, and he showed up, and he taught me a new and better way: that humanity, imperfection, mystery, equality, humility, and the great unknowing states of our existence are not only breathtakingly beautiful but exactly as God would have them be. we are human; he is God. we don't have it all together; he does. there's no expectation of perfection on our part; there's every expectation of perfection on his. we can all just let go, sit back, look around, and breathe.

i lived in the jubilant peace of these revelations for a pretty long time and sought to offer them to others in need of refreshing life whenever the need crossed my path. eventually, i learned that this was an essential footprint God planted in me so that he could more fully walk the earth and incarnate grace in these places through my human hands. all this was good. i was happy to be a vessel and overjoyed to have received such grace from him in my story.

except that now, he seems to be wanting more. he seems to be showing me more of my flawed, fallen starness. he seems to be wanting to dim that super-shiny star on down so that he can dispose it toward a different kind of energy than it currently exhibits.

i am sure there will be many, many seasons like this in my life. seasons where i am vividly aware of habits and beliefs and behaviors i thought i had unlearned coming back to be unlearned again, of ugly ways i relate to God, myself, and others that were never God's design at all, of graces i need to learn to accept when i've already learned to accept them to certain degrees already. even though i know that this is the way of our life in him, our continual sanctification that circles and circles and circles around over and over again on themes and lessons familiar that necessarily take a lifetime to unfold . . . even though i know this, it does not make this present dimming any less painful. i feel like i am starting over. and honestly? it makes me really mad.

it took me a few days to realize that mad is what i really feel. but now that i have located it, i am crying out to God and asking why he has to do this. he has already taken and formed so much in me in these past years, and pretty much entirely with my quite willing, though often clueless and in-pain, cooperation. why more? why now? were these past years just not good enough? have they been deemed not good enough to be useful? will there always be another season of waiting to be useful in ministry as he takes me through yet another growth spurt again? will i never be ready to go? will i always be deemed unworthy? because unworthy is what i'm beginning to feel.

please hear my heart . . . i don't mean to say that i am, in fact, unworthy or that God is not, has not, and will not use me. only that it feels that way right now, when i am being shown a very dark terrain of my heart and feel myself entering into a pretty intense time of cleansing by his hands. i also don't mean to say that i am never meant to shine like a star in the sky. only that he never meant me to desire after shinier, more brilliant hues than he made me to offer. only that i've been created to offer light that shines from a source wholly other than myself, whereas i'm coming to see how much i still try to self-perpetuate my light. only that i'm learning just how black my self-perpetuated light-source really is.

and so these days, the dimming. i am being confronted on every side of my fallen humanity. i am being presented quite frequently with my pride. my covetousness. my envy. my self-exaltation. my craving for the praise of men. my manipulations. my doubt. my well-planned exits of escape. my drivenness toward distraction. my sloth. my greed. my criticisms. my poor judgment. my impulsivity. my denial. my anger. my judgments. my wrath. my competitive edge. my evil intents. my mind-numbing planning. my fear. my unforgiveness. my jealousies.

it is not pretty, folks. i am embarrassed to even air these things here. i feel like that initial breaking i shared with you here was just a quick and expedient initial hose-down in preparation for a full-throttle, firehose-sized cleansing that has arrived with every intention of staying to rain down pelting showers on me for a very long time. at least, that is what seems to be happening now. i am not pleased about it. i am already rather exhausted. but i pray for the strength and faithfulness to remain here while he cleanses me in a way that ultimately bursts forth an eternal, brilliant beam of his own self.

a first big step

today i mailed off my reference forms for the isf program to each of my three references, after having secured their agreement to write these references over this last week. it was a huge step, and i felt little nervous pricklies in my stomach as i drove them to the post office and then dropped them in the box, saying a little prayer as they went whooshing down the shoot. they are now out of my hands and into the gracious hands of others. it is an act of trust.

before i mailed them, i spent quite a bit of time composing cover letters for each one. the one going to my dear, dear friend was easy. she's been in my life for going on 12 years and is providing the character reference and an additional personal letter of affirmation for me. but the letters going to my pastor and employer references took more time. it's been almost two years since i've been in touch with either of them, and a lot has happened in that time. i've developed more into the person i'm meant to be. i've taken more concrete steps in the direction of my calling. i needed to share this growth with them in a way that felt authentic but not overwhelming. i also needed to share how my interactions in the spheres in which they've known me have served to shepherd me deeper into this journey, and where some divergences have happened since the time i've spent with them.

so it was no easy task, and i took care in writing both of them. when i was finished, i felt a clearness inside of my heart and mind, like they had formed a closer union through that process. this is where i see how much writing is still a part of me and always will be; it's how i make sense of my world and my journey and most fully convey it to others. it felt so good to share more of that world and that journey with these special individuals today. and now that those letters and forms have been mailed, this process has officially begun.

holding courage

it's been a rough week. last sunday, we learned that kirk's best friend's dad died quite unexpectedly. it has been a week of mourning with our friends. at school, i had papers and presentations due almost every day of the week, with still two papers to go this weekend. it has been a week of treading to keep my head above water. throughout the week, different situations popped up that made us feel half in california and half in florida, not fully present in either place and still not fully knowing how all this will play out. it has been a week of perplexity and surprise.

i keep trying to find a still place, but i'm pretty unsuccessful most of the time. i shared with one friend this afternoon that i feel myself breaking, being asked to give something over but not being quite sure what that something even is. i told another friend today that i feel such shame for being in this place, that i feel myself heaping the pressure on my head and shoulders to have things worked out, put together, waving proudly with a flag in my hand from the top of a very high hill.

but that's not the way i feel at all. i feel a bit lost, a bit broken, a bit like God is trying to take my favorite stuffed bear from my hands. that's what the breaking feeling feels like: an awareness of a comfort in my arms that is not God's comfort but my own stuffed bear, worn down from being held, with matted spots from my tears and one lost button eye. it feels like he wants me with open hands and open arms, nothing in between us, when that comfortable bear in my arms makes me feel so warm and secure.

it's hard to believe right now that God's presence will fill up that space in my empty arms.

heather has been talking about death-to-self lately, both on her blog and in my comment space. when she first mentioned it to me, i accepted it warmly and quite optimistically. of course death-to-self is good when it comes from God, i thought, and it feels so good to feel him move through us when it's him moving and not ourselves. and i have sincerely experienced that as true. except that as the day and week wore on, i began to see glimpses of the self that still needs that death right now. the pride and the self-dependence. the seize for control and the lack of faith.

these things will hold me back if i do not let them go. and yet still i won't let go. and so, the breaking. i'm breaking. i am trying not to break, and yet still i am breaking. and it makes me feel so sad.

so tonight, i am trying to hold courage in my hands, instead of my warm bear. perhaps tomorrow the courage will be replaced with God himself. tonight, that is my hope.

conversation between me and kirk last night, in which he demonstrates understanding of God's growth in me and how much that growing might hurt

me: "how did you get to be so wise?"

kirk: "i swallowed an owl."

the battle between faith and sight

so basically, i'm just going to come right out and tell you that kirk and i believe God is moving us to california. to orange county. in august. to enroll in the spiritual formation and soul care program at isf. to be trained to offer what God created us to offer. to bring that to those embarking into deep soul journeys there. to join with those already at work in these fields of harvest there, and perhaps, just perhaps, to create something new, with them, together.

on that thursday when so much crazy conversation happened with tammy in her comment space, when my heart had been uncovered so that only the bald truth of it remained, when i was shaken into seeing how God can blow the roof off expectations and create new rooms of possibility, kirk was having his own kind of day with God. i won't share the details here because it is his own story to have and to hold, but it is enough to relay that it was soul-shaking and penetrating in its own right for him, too.

that night, as we were preparing for bed, i looked over at kirk and said, "what if God is going to move us back to california to take the isf program?" this is something that has been on our radar screen for a couple years and which we've looked into more deeply a couple different times, always feeling the time just has never been quite right, quite yet, even though it has always been near and dear to our hearts. but maybe, just maybe, with all that has been ripening inside of us now, the time for isf had now, also, become ripe.

and then, on a bit of a whim, i said, "and what if afterward, he wants to do something crazy, like have us purchase a house that can be used for spiritual direction for people?" then i steamrolled this crazy notion forward even more and said, "we could use each room in the house as an office space for each spiritual director who works there, and people can make appointments to come sit with them and process through their journey and what God is trying to work out in them. and i could work there, and maybe sarah could work there, and maybe my other friend sara could work there, and maybe even you could, too!"

it was a crazy idea.

but it started to grip me. i could see the house. it kinda looked like this on the outside. and in my mind, i could see an open room directly inside the front door that could be used as a reception space. with three or four rooms going off to the side and down the hallway that could be used as offices for the spiritual directors. with a kitchen and dining room gathering space in the middle. and with an upstairs that, just perhaps, could be used for administration.

and then i made the connection back to all tammy had said earlier that very same day about non-profits. and how i had felt so resistant to that idea when i first considered it, but how energizing it now felt to imagine running a place like this, where i could cast and uphold the vision but also be working one-on-one with individual people in their unique spiritual journeys each and every day, too.

so then i kind of freaked out. something that had been an off-the-cuff, just-stumbled-into-my-brain idea had already, in the span of just a few minutes, crystallized into an entire plan for a house plopped down into orange county, california, complete with a detailed exterior and interior, with all kinds of rooms and spaces and all variety of achingly beautiful, imaginative, soulful, caring, loving, deeply spiritual people moving around on the inside.

i didn't quite know what to do with all this, so i did the only obvious thing i knew how to do. i prayed. "lord, you know all that is transpiring here, and all that has been transpiring, within both of our hearts and in all these conversations happening all over the place. i don't know what to do with what you've made my heart to offer. but here we are with these thoughts of california and isf again, and now this crazy idea about a house. is it possible for you to . . . confirm . . . any of this?"

i know sometimes God just doesn't work that way. sometimes God doesn't tell his people where he is taking them. he didn't tell abraham. he didn't tell moses. he just said go to a place i will show you. just keep walking in darkness, and i will get you there.

so i knew asking him to confirm these thoughts was kinda risky. and i told him i knew that. i told him he could do anything he wanted with us. he could choose to keep us in darkness until the last possible moment, when suddenly a stone would appear in the water for us to step on just before we would have landed ourselves in the deep to drown.

but i also knew that sometimes he does confirm. not always, but sometimes. so i asked it in a small voice. knowing he knows just how little i trust myself these days to have any idea about what is going on. knowing he knows that i'm full of second-guessing and discouragement at my own ability to discern his actual voice, instead of just my own. so, yes. in all that, this tiny-voiced prayer: "if you want to, God, would you . . . confirm . . . any of this?"

well.

the next day, kirk sent me a link to a beautiful memoriam and poem written by david whyte in honor of the late john o'donohue, whose poem i had recently quoted here for my beautiful soul friend, kirsten. on the day kirk sent the link, there was an announcement at the bottom of the page about a poetry contest hosted by an organization called spiritual directors international. at first, i clicked on the advertisement because i was thinking about the beautiful poem kirsten had just shared with all of us, and i wanted to see if her poem would qualify to enter. unfortunately, it didn't, but pretty soon i was clicking around on their website and found a page discussing the question, "what is christian spiritual direction?"

just about every single explanation given on that page in response to this question resonated with a place so deep within me that i felt like my soul was swimming up from deep waters to make actual, living contact with my heart. the response was just that physical. i felt like every single part of my core being had found its true home.

that's general signpost number one.

later that day, i got an e-mail from terri. she had been following the conversation in tammy's comment thread on the previous day, and she wanted to share with me privately that she sees in me something of a care pastor or spiritual director. she was wondering, had i ever looked into any spiritual direction programs?

well, yes. in fact, i had. isf, to be exact. and funny you should mention . . .

that was general signpost number two.

it seemed pretty clear God was showing up and showing off to me that day. he was making his way through my prayer. he was affirming that this is indeed the path of my heart. he was putting a little arrow-pointer on the road saying, "keep going this way."

so i said okay. i will, God.

but i still went to bed that night with questions. what about that house idea . . . ? did God want to show up and show off for that, too? or would that be too much to ask, on top of everything he'd already just done?

so i decided to talk to him about it. "lord, you are God. you can do all that you want. i will keep walking in this direction, and you can use it however you want. but as far as this house idea goes . . . is it your idea, or just another one of those bizarre, newfangled ones kirk and i are prone to having from time to time? might you also want to . . . confirm . . . your thoughts on this thought, too?"

and then i went to sleep.

the next day, kirk and i decided to check out a catholic retreat center in town that we had just learned offers training in spiritual direction. (this was one of the discoveries i had made on that spiritual director website the day before.) even though it was saturday and we likely wouldn't be able to find anyone to talk to that day, we wanted to take another step. just to see what we might see.

the visit was brief. we walked around a bit, saw a thomas merton retreat going on, discovered a really cool tree, and then left. we had a feeling it wasn't the right place for us, but it felt good to take some kind of concrete step in the right direction.

but then, as we were driving around, we found ourselves in a pretty commercial area of town, crowded with big-box stores like target and bed, bath, and beyond and linens 'n things and borders. all the commercialism felt like it started to crowd close around, and i started to feel really, really funky as we were driving along. it kinda felt like all the air was being sucked out of the car and out of me. i started slumping down in my seat. when kirk asked what was wrong, i could barely communicate. basically, it felt like the energy of God was being displaced for the energy of his enemy.

needless to say, kirk turned the car toward home. as soon as we walked in the door, i went straight for the bedroom, laid face-down on the bed, covered my head with my arm, and began to cry. i started praying out loud to God by myself in the room, telling him that i didn't know what was wrong or why i was crying. i just kept saying that over and over. i didn't know what was wrong or why i was crying. but i couldn't stop crying, and i couldn't stop feeling like something was wrong.

kirk came in the room and started talking to me. it took him a moment to realize i was crying. but when he did, he came close and let me rest my head on his chest, and he asked if i could tell him what was wrong. i shook my head, tears still streaming. i really didn't know what was wrong.

"well, can you try to talk about it?" he asked.

and then a torrent of words i had no idea were inside me began pouring out of my mouth. what makes us think this house idea could ever happen? what makes us think we could try to buy a house in the middle of orange county, california, of all places, one of the most expensive places to try to buy a home? what makes us think we could ever know how to fundraise the money for some kind of project like that? nobody even knows what spiritual direction even is, so how could they want to give money to help create something like that? and what makes us think we could run that house on donations, just letting people pay whatever they're able to pay, anonymously, when they come to meet with someone? how are we going to pay salaries to spiritual directors on that kind of setup? what me, fundraise? what me, run something like this? how are we supposed to even let people know that we're there to offer them some kind of service like this, that they don't even know they might need? we're there to just love on them? we're there to walk with them through their journeys? what the heck does that even mean? and how the heck could any of this ever happen? and who am i to think i can do any of it, even the most itty-bitty parts? i have nothing. nothing.

and then kirk just said quietly, "maybe that's because it's exactly the kind of thing God can do. it's the kind of thing that lets him do it all, just like he does best."

which only made me cry even harder because i knew what he said was true. and that perhaps it was the exact reason we should keep walking in this direction. suddenly i was confronted with the thought, perhaps this is God showing up to answer my specific prayer. is this house idea yours, God? yes, christianne, because it's something only i can do. (but even in that moment, and even still, i've still been asking the question, doubting that i know for sure. and that's okay.)

basically, i felt in that moment that i had absolutely nothing to offer except my heart. and maybe a little business training on the side. but pretty much, just my heart. i had no resources. i had no spiritual formation training. i had no house. i had no manpower. i had no fundraising experience. i had no grant-writing skills. i had no contacts. and i was all the way in florida, far away from the place i thought all this was meant to be. i guess you could say that i also had no idea . . . how this would happen, i mean.

but you know what that also means, don't you? it means it would have to be all God. every single last bit of it. it would have to come about through the vehicle of prayer and the vast provision of his resources, plucked out of heaven and handed down to earth. and that scared the crap out of me. even though i've trusted him with many things before, this has got to be requiring of me -- of both of us, actually -- the most ruthless trust of all.

but we've said yes. we have no idea how any of this will come about and every idea of what is required. we need to apply for the spiritual formation program at isf (which in and of itself is going to be no easy feat), and we need to get accepted. we need to finish our degree programs here. we need to find a place to live in the orange county area, and we need to find jobs to support ourselves once we're there. we need to do all this while still living in florida. then we need to move ourselves from florida to california, which will cost a lot of money and, what's more, be quite a life-shift for kirk, who has lived in florida his entire life. we need to get student loans for the spiritual formation program, while student loan funding is on a bit of a downturn right now. and we need to, eventually, determine whether anything is really meant to be pursued when it comes to this house idea, and then uncover all the appropriate needs related to moving in that direction.

it's a lot. right now we are walking by faith, not sight, and we keep doing this because we cannot shake that God is in it. we wake up every day and ask each other how california feels that day. we ask each other at noon, when we see each other for lunch. we ask each other at home, when our days have come to an end. and we ask each other in bed, before we close our eyes for sleep. how does california feel today? how does isf feel today? how does the house idea feel today? how does moving feel today? how does finding work in los angeles feel today? all of which ultimately means, is God still confirming it in your spirit?

and the answer has always been yes.