To All the Single People Out There [for Rachel]

My dear friend Rachel, a fellow single woman, sent me the link to this video today. She must have been tipped off by Someone how much I needed it.
It blew my mind. I watched it three times in a row.
If you, like me, are waiting very impatiently for your future husband or wife, I urge you to listen to this spoken word piece.
If you're waiting for someone who will hold you, hug you, kiss you, take care of you, touch you, support you, miss you, pray for you, value you, respect you, and love you, don't settle. Don't settle. DON'T settle.

DON'T SETTLE. You hear me? Waiting is hard, I know that. But you'll never forgive yourself if you settle for someone who doesn't treat you the way you should be treated. That will hurt so much more than you hurt now, seeing your friends get married and find the fulfillment that you are so desperately searching for.

People can go on and on about how all you need is Jesus, He'll fill the void in your heart, He's the perfect man for you, etc. I believe all that. But I also believe that He's not going to simply fill that void with Himself. That's why I ache the way I do. I was designed to have a companion. Some day, we'll meet each other.

In the meantime...I guess I'm learning patience. Ha. Better than that, though, is this dear friend Rachel. Perhaps the funniest thing to me is that Rachel and I have known each other since middle school, when we started 7th grade at the same school. We weren't good friends, necessarily, but we were certainly friendly. A.P. Calculus definitely bonded us tighter than the strongest duct tape ever could. Other than that, we were always on the periphery of each other's social sphere.

Then we graduated from high school, and even graduated from the same college! Here's a picture of us.

As my impeccable timing would have it, we became close friends about two weeks before she moved to Indiana for grad school. I miss her a lot. We are fellow comrades in singleness. She got me started at Madison Square Church, where I've been attending the last few weeks.

I'm really proud of her, for moving, for starting over, for following her dream of becoming an eye doctor. So very proud. She's a lot braver than I am.

I'm so thankful for you, Rachel. You (and really, your entire family) have been an enormous blessing to me this year. I love you a lot.

I hope you all have someone in your life like Rachel.

Heart Is Where the Home Is

To anyone that has ever had to leave behind a church that they loved, a community that felt like family, or a place where they felt at home.
And especially to anyone who found all of those things in one place.

I know how you feel.

And I'll pray for you.

The Toilet Room Mural

It started with one verse. 

It turns out that this is my roommate Beth's verse of the year. She's focusing on letting the old things fall away and growing in the new things that God reveals to her. 

I didn't know all of that at the time that I designed this mural, so that made it all even more cool. 

As you can maybe see from the bottom-right corner, this is our toilet room. I say 'toilet room' because our bathroom is actually comprised of three rooms: a room with a toilet, a room with a shower, and the room that connects them both with mirrors and sinks and cabinets. It's a great setup. Anyway, the toilet room was quite boring with its blank white walls. 

By the end of the first weekend at school, this is how far I had gotten. The tree was done and the birds were flying out of the branches. But then it sat that way for about two more weeks because I didn't have time to complete it. 

It was a work in progress. 

Then, I finally got some time this weekend to finish the other half: the roots and fish. 

And here it is, the final product. Now we and all of our guests have something to look at when we go to the bathroom. No more yawning blank white space.

I felt this weird tension during the two weeks in which the mural was incomplete. It didn't look bad, by any means. It didn't even look like it was, in fact, incomplete. If you hadn't seen the original sketch, you wouldn't know that there was more to be done. But I knew. Every time I went to the bathroom, I saw that mural and knew that it wasn't finished yet. 

I feel that way with my life too. I am a work in progress. Some days I feel like I'm getting closer to being the person I'm meant to be, while other days I feel like I'm getting farther away. There is a gap between the person I want to be and the person that I am. There is tension in that gap. It is uncomfortable in that gap because I know that, in a perfect world, there would be no gap. One of life's great journeys is to close the gap. Or, rather, to let God close the gap, since I know that I haven't exactly proven capable at it so far. I'm still a work in progress. 

Good thing God is a patient artist.

Imperfections and Intercessory Drawing

Brace yourselves, this post gets weird. 

I have this sketchbook. This sketchbook went to Spain with me and became a scrapbook of sorts. I drew in it on occasion, but much more often, I wrote in it or taped in pictures or knickknacks or mementos to help me remember my time in Spain. In fact, the Spain portion of the book is a pretty accurate portrayal of culture shock and homesickness. 

Whenever I did draw, it was always visual representations of how I was feeling. 

This one is how I felt when I left the U.S.; as if there was a clean hole where my heart should have been.

  

This one came from an entire week of feeling this terrible sense of dread everywhere I went. 

Continually crashing into someone's self-made walls...

This one is perhaps the best visual representation of how I felt during my semester abroad.

So those ones were all from during my time in Spain. I didn't use my sketchbook nearly as often once I got back to the States, probably because I had other outlets available to me. I didn't do any drawing in my book for over a year. Then, about two weeks ago, I started drawing again. It wasn't the raw emotional drawing I had done before; mostly just ideas for the apartment and sketches of designs I'd like to decorate with. 

Then one night, this little guy flowed out through my pencil. 

I can tell you right now that this drawing was born out of several weeks in a row of engagement notices every few days from friends of mine. As happy as I am for them that they have found the person they want to spend their lives with, it serves to remind me that I haven't found that person. That person that is completely right for me. This drawing is of two people holding the "heart" of the other. That's how I feel right now. Like I'm holding onto a piece of someone else and desperately searching for that person who has the piece of me. 

Then, a few nights later, this little gem came out...

Now here's where it gets weird. I've never felt this emotion. Sure, I have a few OCD-like tendencies, but never have I felt compelled to measure the distances between my books and notebooks and pens and the edges of the desk. I've never felt compelled to wash my hands because I couldn't cope with an obsessive thought. I've never experienced the seemingly endless task of arranging one's life perfectly in order to stave off anxiety and a sense of doom. 

But while I was drawing, I did feel all of those things. During the last twenty-four hours, I've been trying to think of a way to describe what exactly went on during the time I was drawing. I can only describe it as intercessory drawing. 

You've heard of intercessory prayer, right? From what I've experienced, intercession happens when a person puts themselves into the place of the person they are praying for and opens him- or herself up to feel the emotions, pain, and struggles that that person is feeling. From that weak place, the intercessor can more adequately pray for the person. I've been learning how to do it ever since a spiritual gifts survey from church told me I had the gift of intercession. 

Anyway, as I was drawing, I unconsciously put myself in the place of the girl I was drawing, with her ruler in hand, trying in vain to align her books and pencils just so, failing miserably, but doing it anyway. I don't think I was drawing for myself. I think I was drawing for someone else. At the end, I wondered if there might be someone for whom this drawing conveyed the emotion inside of her. 

Maybe by me putting this picture up here, you will be affected by it. Maybe you'll see it and think, Yeah, I can identify with that girl, trying to make her life perfect but failing. I know I've tried it. I always think that if I can just control some of the aspects of my life, more and more of it will fall into perfect place. If you've been reading this blog at all, you'll know that my life is never in its perfect place. But where's the need for a perfect God and His perfect love if I've already got a perfect life? 

The imperfect catches the eye not simply because it is not perfect, but because it is determined to prove its worth anyway. There is beauty in imperfection. It is less obvious, but more rewarding. More meaningful. More real. 

If you're struggling today to be perfect, spoiler alert: you can't do it alone. God will make you perfect, but it takes time. His time, not ours. Let the beauty of your imperfections shine anyway. I'll try to do it too. 

God? I'm scared.

[Context: Last night was rough. I typed all of this out some time after midnight because I couldn't fall asleep. It's mostly a prayer, and I wanted to make sure it was still worth publishing once day came. Basically, I just laid in bed and said all the things I was scared about.]

God?
I'm scared that I won't be able to fall asleep tonight.
I'm scared that I'll feel lonely forever.
I'm scared that no one is going to want to marry me.
I'm scared that I won't make enough money to go to grad school.
I'm scared that my capstones are going to bury me.
I'm scared that my closest friends are going to keep getting engaged and eventually I'll be the only one left.
I'm scared that someone really close to me is going to die soon because no one close to me has ever died.
I'm scared that I'm getting really really really really tired again like before.
I'm scared that my depression will never go away.

[Amazingly, after saying all of these things, I felt better. I've never heard God's voice audibly before, but in my mind, a phrase kept repeating: "My grace is sufficient for you. My grace is sufficient for you. Sufficient." And then I think I fell right to sleep because the next thing I remember is hearing my phone alarm song.]

God is good.