Prayers, Books, and An Attitude Adjustment!

It's late on a Wednesday night. And I return to work in the morning. So, I don't have the time or energy for a long post, or an insightful one either, perhaps.

But there are a few things which God has placed on my heart to share, despite the hour.

First, a plea for prayer for two people. The first is my grandfather, and subsequently, my family. He is living his last days. We are certain of this now. Although his body is nowhere close to acting 98 years old, his mind and heart are already longing for Heaven. I know that he is desperate to finally go home. To be with the only woman he has ever loved and adored, and the only God he has ever loved and worshipped. The second is for my friend's 3 year old cousin. His name is Jonathon. He was diagnosed a few days ago with brain cancer. They careflighted him to Tennessee, and performed an emergency surgery. They were able to remove about 90% of the tumor, but of course that means that there's still more to get. They will attack the remainder with chemo.

It's hard to pray for my grandfather to finally have the freedom of death. Even though I know he wants it to come quickly. It will be sad to say goodbye to my last living grandparent. It will be sad that he won't live to see me get married or see the great grandchildren I will someday bring into the family. Of course, it's so very much harder to pray for God to let a little toddler live. I know that at some point my grandfather is going to get his wish. I do not know, however, if God will grant us the request for Jonathon's life. And it's just very sad that a little boy who's lived so very small an amount of time would actually have to fight against death, already.

So my heart is heavy for these.

Second is a book recommendation. Well, possibly two. The book that I think I would recommend to everyone is called The Martyr's Song by Ted Dekker. Great book! It includes a CD with the same-named song on it. Amazing song! I listen to it at the highest volume my stereo will go to. And I imagine, when the children sing, that my nephew and my friend's daughter (and other children who have lost the battle to stay on earth for awhile) are in that choir! I can't help the tears that seem to fall each and every time. But even though I've revealed a sense of a sad nature to the book, please, please pick it up. It is well worth the time, and the emotions! Because it is truly alive with the message of hope and joy awaiting us who believe! The second book is a bit thicker, and much harder. I only recommend it to those who are at a point of dissatisfaction with their current methods of Christianity. For those who feel stuck in a Christian world that cares a little too much about do's and don'ts, rights and wrongs - this may be the book for you. But proceed with caution, because it may say some things that might ruffle your conservative, evangelical, modernistic feathers! ;o) If your faith is solid in the foundations, and you feel mature enough to handle asking some questions that you'll have to chew on for awhile, then this book may be right up your alley. It's called A New Kind of Christian by Brian D. McLaren. I've only read the first chapter, but it's really hard to put down. And I'm in that place. I'm tired of the Christianity I see at church, in people who care more about correcting the sin than loving the sinner as is. I'm especially tired of seeing it in myself. I want to love like Jesus loves. So, I'm ready to evaluate some things that I've believed all my life, and find out if they're really God's Truth, or just doctrine. I invite you to join in my journey if you're ready for a crazy and uncomfortable ride!

The last thing is a thought that God put on my heart the other day. Well, more of an image or word-picture, really. There is a minister I'm struggling with right now. Who I'm especially struggling to show mercy to. Mostly because I feel he is unmerciful. And I feel like he isn't living up to the qualifications of a minister in his position. And in the midst of that, I know wholeheartedly that it is truly my own heart that needs to change. It is my attitude that I have the ability and need to correct. So God gave me this:

Being Jesus to someone is not: showing them how much unlike Jesus they are. Being Jesus to someone is: wrapping the hand of God around them and squeezing, to a degree and in such a way, to bring them to a point where the Jesus in them can't help but begin to flow out of them, ever so slowly.

Maybe that was just for me. And I'm not entirely able to articulate the image that God gave me, but this is the best I could do. And I think it is most in relation to those who you want to be self-righteous toward. Those who you want to just shout at: "That's not what Jesus would have done!" I guess in some ways its more about controlling one's own desire to be the convicter. Or maybe what our response should be when we feel that way. I guess, whether or not it already makes sense to you, the best way to explain it is this: When we most want to tell someone how unlike Christ they're acting, what we need to do is draw Christ out of them. Instead of shouting "You're not..!", we should whisper "You are...!"

Just a thought. Or two. As for me . . . goodnight!

Friendship

I'm pondering friendships today. My friendships.

There are a couple broken relationships. A long-time friendship that continues to blossom. And some new friendships forming. And some old friendships that are getting sweeter with time, like aging fine wine!

Friendship is a funny thing. It's hard to define. It's hard to know how to distinguish sometimes between friendships and aquaintences. At least for me. Friendship usually comes quick for me. Or at least I like to refer to people as friends rather quickly after meeting them, usually on our second encounter they acquire the title "Friend". Yet, there are so many layers and levels to my friendships.

There are the friends who I've known practically all my life, but rarely ever see. But when we do (after years and years) finally get together, we pick up right where we left off. We catch each other up, and then just delight in one another's company. They don't know the deep things of me, but they share in my mountains and valleys, the "big events". They know my sorrows and my joys, at least the "front-page" ones.

There are friends who I'm around a lot more often, but still not often enough. Those whose company brings me a sense of renewal each week. Those who I play with, laugh with, cry with, share with, fellowship, and talk about God with. They don't necessarily know all the deep things of me, but they are fun. They know a bit more of me. They know what makes me sad or frustrated, excited or scared.

Then there are the friends who I talk to very rarely. We see each other on occassion. Usually special occassions and get-togethers. We don't keep in touch. But for awhile, we were part of one another's lives. At some point in our histories, something caused us to be part of something together. I seem to have a whole lot of these friends. Some of them know deeper things than others, depending on what was happening in my life while we were together. But none of them knows the deepest parts of me. My hopes, dreams, aspirations, greatest fears, abiding joys. They only know the highlights of my life.

And then there are a couple friends who have sat with me as I've processed some hard, tragic, overwhelmingly exciting, and awesome things in life. These two have been there when I've been between a rock and hard place - spiritually, emotionally, physically. They've held me when I didn't think I could stand up any longer. They've wiped away many tears from my eyes. Their words have been life-giving and challenging. They've loved me the best, and hurt me the worst. But they have stayed. Through all of my crap. All of the things about me that God has been refining me of year after year after year after year - they've stayed by my side, no matter how ugly, and uninviting, and difficult, and horrible, and unforgiving, and pig-headed I've been. They've seen my worst. And they've loved me anyways. And they've refused their own desire to leave, to walk away, and to abandon me. They are so very precious to me.

But then there's One. My very Best Friend. The Man who goes beyond never leaving, He makes my ugly look beautiful. Not only does He wipe away my tears, He kisses them and turns them into diamonds of hope, renewal, and restoration! He has never hurt me. He's challenged me, and taken me through some difficult places, but never hurt me. He is the One who gives those two special friends the ability to be how they are. He gives them the strength to stay. To be His arms to hug me, and lips to speak words to comfort me, and ears to hear my every triumph and failure. He loves me more than I can ever fathom! He desires me with passion that no lovers have ever experienced! His tears over my sorrows are rains and floods. His delight in my joys are the sunniest afternoons, with flowers in bloom and trees for shade. His presence is like the most comfortable sweatshirt, or a quiet evening by the fire with hot chocolate and snow falling gently outside the window.

That's what I would say Jesus' friendship feels like. He is the depth and height of me. He is every mountain and every valley. Every walk through the woods or pause along the beach. He is that quiet awe that comes when you stare out over the expanse of the ocean, and you recongnize how small and insignificant you are. And He is the giant roar that wells up inside you when you hold a wounded animal in one hand and know that you are, in that moment, in charge of its every next heartbeat. He is... He is truly I AM. Because there is no end to the descriptions of who He is, and what He accomplishes, ignites, stirs, and calms within us.

So those are my friendships. As best as I can describe them. My attempt definitely falls short of reality in its entirety, though. However, I am thankful for each type of friend. My life is full because of the diversity of them all. I wouldn't discard any of them. Nor would I be satisfied if I had to pick only one kind from them all. As hard as it is sometimes, as frustrated as I get, each type of friendship draws out something in me that makes me get better. That helps me know more about how to love and look like Christ. Each type offers its own set of challenges and joys.

And right now, it's those broken ones that weigh on my heart. That cause me to sit at the throne of grace and seek wisdom, healing. I beg the Father to bring Himself into those and bandage my failures in their lives. I'm trusting that only He has the power to restore those friendships to any level. So I wait, and pray, and hope. That forgiveness is growing in their hearts, and healing is waiting just around the corner. Pray with me and for me. Because until Christ comes, I am doomed to continue messing up.

Because of all this, in the midst of all this - I can say with conviction: I'm truly blessed.

Shootin' the Breeze

There's really not that much to blog about today. It's a slow Saturday at work. Hardly anyone's come to work out today. I'm still recovering from being really sick over the past week. Actually, yes, since last Saturday - come to think of it! Last Saturday I left work early because I could barely sit up. Then Sunday I noticed large white chunks on my bumpy, inflamed tonsils (so inflamed, by the way, that I thought I would suffocate!). So I had something in between tonsilitis and strep throat. I definitely wasn't to the level of "please kill me, I want to die!" which comes with strep, but I was definitely not well, either!

Monday night my friend Hollie went to a Ranger's game and took a line drive fast ball in the eye! So, about 21 stitches and a broken nose later....she's in recovery. And not so much of a baseball fan anymore!

Thursday I went out in public again! That was a good day. I worked all day, (used more energy in 15 minutes than I had in the past 4 days), and then hung out with my college students. And I've slowly been able to do more and more the last couple of days! Amazing how exciting that can be, given the right circumstance. I was definitely going through people-withdrawal!

But I've had some awesome times with God, studying the Word, because of my solitude. If you haven't checked out some of Matt Chandler's sermons I definitely encourage you to do so. He was my college minister in Abilene. And boy can he bring the Word! I highly recommend a few of his series: Sex (3 part), Family Traits (5 part), and Letters to the Churches (6 part), but then again, I highly recommend all of his sermons! Anyways, I've spent the week, really learning from him a good outline of what I think church should look like. And maybe his ideas don't work in every church. But I think the concepts behind them do. The idea of getting rid of this right vs. wrong, do's and don'ts, stuffy, boring, spiritual heirarchy crap that church has become across America.

Anyways. If you check out any of the sermons in the Family Traits series you'll understand better what I mean.

And last night, I went to a Ranger's game myself with the Singles group from church. No worries, we sat way up top in the nosebleeds, so - no fastballs coming our way! We had fun. I did miss my nice seats way down front though. And I don't know how much longer I'll have them, since Dad is threatening to quit working for the ballpark after this season. I'll definitely miss the perks if he follows through with that plan. I love me some baseball!

So that's my week. Exciting, I know! Anyways, God is doing great things. I hope He is causing you to fall more and more in love with Himself each day, like He is for me! Right now I am overwhelmed at how incredibly amazing He is. Even in the midst of being sick and alone, and sad at times, I have felt so much peace and comfort this week from resting in His arms!

May He be your hiding place this week. Or whatever you may need!

Wanna Get Away?

On Thursday night, after a long day of work and taking care of a friend's children (and playing some volleyball with my college students), I came home and began reading to unwind before heading to bed. At about 1:30 am the house phone rang, and my mom answered. This is what the caller said:

"Mrs. Young, I'm so sorry to have to tell you that your father-in-law has expired."

I didn't hear the conversation, but my mom saw my light on and came and told me that basically she was just informed that my grandfather had died.

(I have to say this, the use of the word "expired" needs to be nixed. Not a good choice of terms to relate that someone has died. "Passed away" would be so much better. I'm sorry, but expired makes my grandfather sound like a can of beans or something.)

So my parents and I get dressed and get things ready to go up to the rehab center where my grandfather has been.

This would be a good time to explain some things. My grandfather is 98 years old. A few weeks ago, he feel and broke his leg from just below his hip to just above his knee in a spiral all the way around his leg. For a 98 year old, that's a really big deal. They had to do surgery to try and fix it, but during the procedure he lost about 8 units of blood, roughly 2 gallons, I believe. He was in ICU for a little less than a week, and after some strength tests, which he passed, was put into a rehab facility to start preparing to walk again! Amazing, really! He's doing so great!

So, as my parents and I got ready, they were both baffled by his sudden death, because he has been doing so well lately, both of them have had great conversations with him when they've visited, saw good improvement in his mental health since getting rid of all the drugs out of him from surgery. (Apparently anesthesia does wacky things to older people, he was hallucinating a lot after the surgery.) So anyways, it was kindof shocking that all of the sudden he was gone.

My parents were both mostly in a state of shock. I began grieving right away. Mostly out of guilt. I was planning on visiting him the next day. I'm not good with hospitals, and so I'd pretty much been procrastinating on going up there. I had had a busy week, and the only other day I could've gone was the Monday before all this. So I felt pretty awful that I hadn't taken the opportunities I had been given to go and see him. Also, before his surgery we had to remove personal items, like his watch and his wedding ring. I volunteered to hold on to his wedding ring, and wore it on my index finger to also serve as a reminder to pray for him. But of course because of his age and the situation, none of us were that optimistic that he'd survive the operation. So, in light of his awesome recovery, I felt especially bad that I had not gotten his ring back to him before this.

So these were the emotions welling up inside me as I tearfully and quietly got into the car and rode over to the hospital for whatever they needed the family to do. I was internally praying that somehow God would fix it. That somehow he'd give me that one more day, so I could see him like I intended. I just needed Friday, and God took him on Thursday. There is such regret in that - in being a day late, especially when it's because of selfishness.

About halfway there, my dad got a call on his cell phone. All my mom and I heard were "Uh huh", "Ok", "That's ok", "Alright" - kind of responses from my dad. When he hung up, he said, "That was the rehab center, Dad's alive, they made a mistake." Of course my mom and I just looked at him like he was crazy, "What?!" Dad said, "Apparently there was a mixup with the charts and they sent Dad's paperwork with someone else!" So as we waited for Dad to get more information out of the hospital, on the phone, we sat in stunned silence.

We decided to go to the rehab center just to be sure. When we got to the nurses' station everyone was in a frenzy, talking on the phone, looking through charts. When what seemed to be the head nurse on duty looked up and acknowledged us, my mom said pointedly, "We're the Young family."

So she began to recount how the other nurse involved had been handed the wrong chart. He only works there once every like 6 months. So he had no way of knowing that the chart didn't belong with the deceased patient. He followed procedure and called the family of the patient whose chart he held. Somehow, in the midst of all that they figured out the the chart belonged to a patient in a different room. Had checked on my grandfather, who was sleeping peacefully, perfectly alive and well!

The male nurse, who was taking the fall for all of this, was somewhere between tears and laughter. It seemed as though he had already done his share of both. We were in that same place. But both of them kept apologizing profusely, knowing the emotional rollercoaster they had just put us on.

When we got in the car, I said, "This would be a great "Wanna Get Away" commercial. Is it Southwest Airlines who does those? Can't you imagine the nurse going through all the standard procedures of notifying a family that there loved one has died, and then the end scene is him walking into the correct room, and seeing that patient sleeping peacefully, fully alive! Looking down at the chart with a horrified expression, and then "Wanna Get Away?" appears!

Well, good commercial material or not, it's an absolutely true story! Talk about crazy! But awesome at the same time. Because though I didn't expect it, God gave me a second chance to spend time with my grandpa. And to realize that I don't know the day or the hour that will be his last, so I need to take ahold of every opportunity to spend time with him. He's my last grandparent alive, so I better treasure these moments.

Learning Obedience (& a Birth Announcement!)

Although I won't say much about it, I wanted it to be in writing.

Today I finally chose to be obedient to God, and do something that He's been telling me to do for quite awhile, in all honesty, for a couple years or so.

So yay! Today is a good day. A hard day, but a good day. Even today, on the way to do it, I didn't want to, and prayed and begged God to change His mind the whole drive. Being obedient is rarely easy. But the peace and joy that comes afterwards is wonderful.

Kinda funny, in a not so humerous way, that I know that someday in the near future I will still struggle with choosing to be obedient with something else, even as good as I know it feels when I am.

Grrr. Sometimes I drive myself crazy!

Thank you, Lord, for your tender mercy, and patience, and gentle ways. I know you're probably laughing to yourself, waiting for me to just get a clue! You are a good God.

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Also, I want to praise God for the birth of a healthy baby boy to a friend of mine from church. His name is Jacob Patrick Mitchell! He was born today just after noon, and he was 7 pounds, 10 ounces, and 20 and a half inches long!

I got to hold him a little while ago, and he is just one of the most precious things in all creation! I love how babies let you get a taste of God, up close!

Congratulations Bill, Tricia, John and Ruth! He's beautiful!

My Thoughts on Hurricane Katrina

For my fellow Christians:

Yes, I think it's safe to say that Hurricane Katrina is part of God's judgment on the US. I think 9/11 was for us an awakening that God has not been pleased by the sin in America, especially the sin that we shout here of being capable of existing without Him. I think that sin, more than any other, ignites the fires of anger in the heart of God. I think that's evident all over Scripture, but especially in the Old Testament. When Israel strayed from full reliance on God, when they sought other gods, when they thought they could make it on their own, God's wrath brought them back in repentance - through famine, through drought, through death, through the absence of His presence.

I believe we are experiencing some of that in the US these days. But I think it's bigger than that. I told my college students last night: When I heard that it is evident that oil has been spilled into the waters covering New Orleans by the rainbow effect it leaves on the top of the water, my first though was actually of Noah. And the first rainbow that God set in the sky as a visual reminder of a covenant between Him and every living thing, man and animal. His covenant with us that He would never completely destroy the earth by a flood again. He allows floods, but He promised (and is faithful to keep it) that it would never cover the entire earth ever again. And so, in the midst of an act that was indeed a judgment of sin (greater sin and wickedness than had ever been present since Creation), God's mercy came forth. It was redemptive and restorative as well as refining.

So that's why I'm blogging about Lousiana and Hurricane Katrina today. Because, yes, New Orleans is a place pretty well-known for its sinfulness, especially that which is centered around Mardi Gras. And yes, I do believe that God is judging our sin. And just like with the Israelites, many have died because of the sin of the community as a whole. There are several examples in Scripture when the sin of one person, just one, affected the entire community. One I read about last night was Miriam in Numbers 12 - check it out. And so even though we may not all be at fault, we are all sinners, and we are all part of this community called America. And so we are all held responsible. Because even if we haven't partaken, all of us have allowed it - by ignoring it rather than correcting it, by accepting it as "how things are in a fallen world" rather than fighting, taking up our sword and shield and really battling against it.

(Maybe that's easy for me to say on a computer screen. And I confess, it's a lot harder to do. Because I have to admit and confess that I'm undergoing conviction from my own words. I, too, have been apathetic toward the degree of sin our culture has allowed and invited in. I, too, have just summed it up to "the way things are" in this world.)

But there's one other thing I need to say. It's a word of warning that I believe the LORD gave me today. It is this:

Do not let your understanding of punishment for sin cause you to forget that God is merciful. That He is slow to anger and abounding in love and forgiveness. Just as with Noah, God's purposes in this speak just as loudly of His love, forgiveness, grace, and mercy as His judgment of sin. God's plans for those affected by Katrina overflow with promises and the hope of redemption.

I have prayed in faith that not one more person in Lousiana and Mississippi and anywhere else along the path of Katrina's destruction, not one more will perish. That all who are alive today will remain so. And that beyond that, not one more will perish spiritually. That everyone affected by this storm will be part of the thousands upon thousands who stand before God and proclaim:

"Holy Holy Holy, Is the Lord God Almighty,

Who Was, And Is, And Is To Come!!!"

"For God so loved the world,

that He gave His One and Only Son,

that whoever believes in Him, will not perish,

but have eternal life.

For God did not send His Son into the world

to condemn the world,

but to save the world

through Him!"

John 3:16-17