I Found Favor

Someone at some point gave the Bible chapters and sections and verses. While this is super helpful for Bible studies and memorizing verses and creating sections to focus on, it’s not how the original text was written. Therefore, it can occasionally hinder how we read, study, and understand the Bible.

I’m a writer and that, on top of doing BCC with YWAM, has kind of conditioned me to read the Bible in a literary way. Meaning, I try not to read the Bible as individual verses or chapters, but chunks of texts we now know of as books. For the bigger ones, it’s difficult because we don’t always have time to read all of Genesis in one sitting. But you can take the larger context into consideration and always look at what was before and what is after.

It can make the biggest difference in how you understand what you’re reading.

For example, this verse, which is the start of a new section of Genesis 6:9.

These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.

-Genesis 6:9

Advertisements

The Time in Between

I found this photo on Pinterest and I’m pretty sure the credit goes to these guys. It seems to perfectly encompass what I feel these days. The time in between.

Slow motion. Blurred. Still and alone.

There’s this weird period a lot of us go through where we’ve finished college or school or whatever it is but don’t have our next step lined up yet.

If we’re lucky, we get to live at home with good parents while we figure it out. Or maybe we have a significant other we move in with. If not, it gets a little harder.

We apply to jobs, ones we really want but don’t get, and ones we don’t want but need. We apply to entry-level positions and we reach out to any connection we might have. We scour LinkedIn and Indeed and job search sites.

Champions.

I can’t explain how proud of my friends I am. Whatever they do, they do it with all they are. Monica crushes the arts and Amy crushes the academics. They are lights in the dark, make you feel so known and loved, and are each champion for people, for the unheard, the unjustly judged, the misunderstood, and the lonely.

I have the immense opportunity to visit them in Atlanta every few months and watch them work hard and love well. Monica recently choreographed an incredible show and Amy kicked a$$ during her first year of Emory while working multiple jobs. Anyway, this isn’t brag on my friends hour (though it should be).

The Facade We Wear

I’ve talked a lot on this blog about vulnerability, being honest, the hard parts of life, trusting God, etc. but I realize that even those honest blogs that can be hard for me to post may be a facade I hide behind.

My mom and I are really interested in the Enneagram, which is another personality test but with a lot of levels. It has the Basic Personality Type, The Centers, The Wing, The Levels of Development, Directions of Integration (Growth) and Disintegration (Stress), and The Three Instincts (Mind, Body, and Heart).

All this to say, with the enneagram it’s common to say “I’m an 8,” (which I am) but it’s really more than that. The Enneagram is built on a childhood “wound” or “fear” and how you perceived it and therefore what sort of armor or facade you build up in order to protect yourself from that fear years later.

According to Enneagram Monthly, “Eights possess an instinctual sense of truth and the inherent ability to relate to others without prejudice. As children, however, they learn to conceal their openness as they observe a world in which the weak are often victimized and the truth is defined by the most powerful.”

Agendas

The Feminist Agenda.

The Gay Agenda.

The Christian Agenda.

The Muslim Agenda.

The Republican Agenda.

The Democrat Agenda.

Are you tired of counting them? Because I am. I’m tired of trying to understand them, of trying to figure out which feminists, which Republicans, which LGBT members and which Christians have these crazy radical agendas and which simply

are.

Unless we are talking about inherently violent groups, then I think it’s safe to say that none of these “agendas” are actually what the other people say about it. These agendas most likely have a pure heart behind them. A desire to see love overrule hate. A desire to see life instead of death. Of acceptance rather than rejection or societal and relational exile.

Searching

I’m really really tired.

Exhausted.

And not because I have a lot of stuff going on in my life. Actually, sort of the opposite.

On a personal level, I’m in one of the hardest transitioning periods ever. I think people tried to warn me with “Leaving College is hard,” and “Transitioning to adult life is challenging,” but I literally always went deaf to these warnings.

Not because I didn’t trust them, but because I wasn’t worried. I was in a great place, I knew what I wanted to do, I had/have tremendous trust and faith in God, and honestly, I just never really struggled when life changed dramatically. I craved change and handled it in stride. I found jobs and passions so easily I didn’t realize how hard it can be and usually is. Boy, was I in for a rude awakening.

Now that I’m here, job searching, church searching, apartment searching, friend searching, soul searching, I’m tired.

τετέλεσται

Tetelestai.

“It is Finished.”

Maybe it’s cliche to start a blog like that on Good Friday. Maybe it’s even a bit hypocritical when I literally forgot it was Good Friday until my cousin asked if BookClub was going to be open and I didn’t know why she was asking.

Maybe it is. Maybe I’m only writing this blog because I’ve been feeling frustrated at my stagnation and the lack of enthusiasm to post. Maybe I’m digging something out of my heart that’s not there so I can save face and put SOME sort of new content on this blog that only a handful of people read regularly.

Delight in the Law

The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 119. It has 176 verses and 174 of them mention God’s law, statutes, word, or scripture in one way or another. The longest chapter of the Bible is dedicated to the Bible itself.

Oh how I love your law!
It is my meditation all the day.

Great peace have those who love your law;
nothing can make them stumble.

-Psalm 119:97;165

Sometimes I feel like I rarely actually know what I’m reading when I read the word of God. I try to understand. I do research and study and read and re-read, but I’m still often left with wonderings, musings, and questions. And sometimes I adore the law. I love the scriptures. All I want to do is study it and learn from it and read it. But other days it is a chore to get myself to open the Bible. I want to do anything but read Jeremiah.

Keep Going

My mom is so strong. She is not afraid to show emotions, to be vulnerable, and to feel pain. She is also tough, secure, and a force to be reckoned with. (None of these things are mutually exclusive). She has had a hell of a year, from my dad getting sick to this last week when she lost her daddy, she has stood firm in the love of Jesus and her faith that God is good through and through.

I admire my mom. I want to be more like her.

When we lost Gaga, I was good for a while. I firmly believe that he is so happy right now and it’s a joyous thing to know that Gaga gets to spend time with the King, with the God he spent his life serving. I’m so happy for him and I feel so blessed to have known him, been his partner, and learned from him over the years.

How Did I Get Here?

Why, oh why, do I make things so difficult? Why do I give myself unnecessary work? Why, when I’m [hypothetically] walking down a path, do I see a turn that has been blocked off with large rocks and think, “hmm, here’s the direction I should go,” rather than continuing straight on the path that’s been lit up for me?

I don’t know about you, but the way I get places, whether it’s college or to a relationship or to a milestone in my relationship with the Lord, is always crooked and more difficult than it should be.

But I make it. And I am under NO delusion that I make it because of my own ability to follow a bath or to not fall or to succeed. The only reason I make it anywhere in life is because God has willed it.