A New Hospitality Code

My small group and I have been going through the book of Luke. I picked Luke because I had never really delved into that Gospel before. Actually I don't think I had ever read the book of Luke straight through before. I think partly I have never read Luke all the way through is because it seems like a forgotten Gospel. Matthew has the sermon on the mount, Mark is full of action and John is the Gospel concerned most with the Holy Spirit. Luke seemed to be overshadowed within the rest of the Gospels but what I have found within the book has truly amazed me.

I am going through the tenth chapter of Luke this week and the contrast between those who welcome the disciples and those who reject the disciples is clear as a warm spring day. Jesus starts of with a pep talk to the disciples before he sends them out. He basically tells them that those who welcome you are giving you the gift of hospitality. Those who welcome you are following the hospitality code from the days of the Old Testament. Those who welcome you still have a grasp on what the people of Israel could and should look like. Jesus also warns them of those who will reject the disciples. Those people who have lost the importance of who the people of Israel are called to become. Those people who are more concerned with proving a political point rather than helping a brother or sister in need. Those people who just are apathetic towards their neighbors.

The climax of this speech and of the hospitality code within the Jewish world is verse sixteen. Jesus culminates this Old Testament law and tradition and centers himself within it. He states that if anyone is accepted within the people of God then he is accepted and if anyone is rejected he is rejected.

Jesus then goes on and talks about the Good Samaritan. He is using one of the most unclean people to demonstrate this new hospitality. Jesus is ripping the scab off the hatred of the Jews towards the Samaritans and is using that hatred to teach them about the Kingdom.

Looking at this scripture, I see that our discriminations, our hatreds, our bleeding scabs should be surrendered to this new code of hospitality. That when we are hating our brother, when we are ignoring our brother, when we are degrading our brother, we are hating, ignoring and degrading Christ.

When she sits behind the wheel of her white pickup truck the world seems livable. When she looks out the window she sees the beauty of an uninterrupted creation. A creation that has no faults or errors. However, when she starts driving her pickup down the highway at a mere fifty miles an hour, she starts to see the side- effects of a lost and alluded reality. She drives over road kill, gets honked at for going too slow, and even feels the anger rise up in her heart as someone cuts her off.

Living faith is a lot like driving a pickup truck. The first time you get behind the wheel you have a sense of excitement and wonder. You feel a certian amount of freedom from your old life of asking for rides to your new life of independence. There is a sense of excitment and sense of legalism when a person enters into the faith. We throw away all of our "bad" c.d.'s. We burn all our "bad" books, we throw out all our "bad movies" and we live in a world of compete abstinance. We don't cuss, drink, spit on the floor. We become perfect moral beings.

We live in a moral perfection until we get hurt by another christian, or until we are confronted by a situation where morals don't apply.

Our perfect morality that starts our faith journey off suddenley comes to a hault as we realize that Jesus didn't come and die so that we could be good, neat, moral beings.

When we find ourselves living by our own moral standards we find ourselves treating our faith cheaply. The reason I say this is because when we balance our own lives on the thread of morality we are living in the shallow end of the pool. We have created our own personal law and that at times becomes an idol. The church often gets focused on doing. The church often gets focused on saying. If we do and say then we will achieve our salvation. If we serve the church until our fingers fall off and if we say that we are christians until we loose our voice we still are not grasping the reality of faith. Doing and saying are wonderful venues of showing people the Gospel. But they are not the foundation of our faith.

Our faith cannot be morality, or actions, or words.

Our faith is believing the story and living it out. Not just teaching the story, or praying the story, or moralizing the story, or acting the story, but actually believing the story.


When we believe the story we seek to holistically represent the Gospel in our human existence.

Our faith will bind our divided parts. Our faith will be a catalyst and a sustaining reality in bringing us into completion through Jesus.


But, we first have to believe in the story.

Sunday School

                                           "God blesses those who mourn,

                   for they will be comforted."
Matthew 5:4

Don't take scripture for granted. Scripture will reach you in your humanity when you decide to soak your life in it. I have decided to teach the sermon on the mount to my Sunday School class. I have a group of young women who have been in church together since they were little.

The Sermon on the Mount was meant for the kingdom people to digest. Jesus is teaching with an expectation for people to wet their appetite and to devour his words with an absolute hunger. He is not teaching to a group of people who are going to walk away and forget his words. He is not teaching to luke warm people. Jesus is teaching to a group of men who will be rembered for living out these words, throughout their lives and throughout their deaths.

I was studying the beatitudes because it will be the first section of scripture that I teach. While I was reading the mourning verse caught my eye. Blessed are those who mourn. This seems so odd at first. When I think of mourn I think of someone mourning the loss of a family memeber, or a friend. This is true to some extent. However, it is a very narrow view point of a mourner.

A mourner is one who mourns the loss. Not necessarily the loss of someone, but just the loss. The loss of a job, the loss of a position, the loss of a name, the loss of a specific identity, the loss of time, the loss of completion.

A mourner is one who despairs in the loss of completion. 

It is someone who recognizes the world as a broken place, and cries out in pain. Someone who hides under the covers and cries for the world. Someone who carries a heaviness around for those who are lost. Someone who can love no matter how many wounds they have been pierced with.

Someone like Jesus. A man who cried for the loss of Israel, for the brokeness of Israel.

A mourner is one who despairs in the loss of completion.

This mourner is blessed, and he will be comforted.

This idea of comforted actually is a demonstration of companionship. A demonstration of completion. The mourner is blessed. He is free from his tedious life. He is free from the world's pain. Because of this freedom a disciple can mourn. Because of his freedom a disciple can be comforted.

Without this freedom, without this blessing we all find ourselves in despair. We find ourselves living as a nihilist. However, with this freedom we can mourn the loss of completion, but we can also be comforted because of the glimpse of restoration that will be.

Those who mourn, who hide under the covers on dark days, know that there are glimpses of the wonderful completion that we will all receive.

"Trace the shape of my heart
Til it becomes more familiar to your eyes"

My walking days.

I walk almost every day. The practical reason for walking is to get exercise and to give the dogs an opportunity to exercise.

But, do I really do anything that is just practical? I like walking because it gives me an opportunity to create space in my life for God to move. I see things when I walk that I wouldn't normally see while I drive, or even ride my bike.

Some of things I have seen on my walks;
 A fox run across the road,
a sunset,
trees that touch the sky,
little children,

I see a lot of things on my walks. But, my walks are also ways where I get to talk with people. I see people around town that attend our church and I get to sit down and talk, or just wave and smile. In a way it is a slight reminder that says, hey, I am in this with you.

Today I was walking and I saw Margie on her front porch reading the newspaper. Margie is our 92 year old door greeter. Every Sunday I ask her how she is doing and she pulls me so that my ear is next to her mouth and tells me that she is mean as ever. On my first meeting of Margie I found out that she sews all her own clothes, she mows her own lawn, and she still drives. She also warned me not to go to the doctor, or to trust lawyers.

Well I have gotten to know Margie over the last month we have lived here and she is a foundation of the Gospel. I sat with her this morning and she gave me the wisdom of her age. She encouraged me to save my money, to settle my disagreements with my husband quickly, to always talk affectionately to my mama and pap.

I also found out today that Margie has lost four sisters, a set of parents, a husband, and a son. She is what our society calls a survivor. This women has experienced the pains and sorrows of life. She has lost much, but she gets out every day. She drives all over the place, visiting our Christian brothers and sisters in the faith who are shut it, hospitalized and reside in nursing homes. She visits with these people and she prays with them all. She is crass and earthy like our good old Anne Lamont, but she has the age to live it out.

I am not trying to romanticize Margie, I am just trying to show that it takes all kinds. Every person, young, and old are called to be faithful. At 92 Margie could have easily given up by now. She has lost almost everyone around her that she cared about. She could sit in her own self pity, but she is a light even now.

We are called to live out our conversion in every decision that we make. Even when we have lost everything. Even when we have gained everything.

Creating Space.

There is a house across the street from us that reminds me of a modern fairy tale. The house looks too modern to hold any old fairy tale, but I could definitely see a newer tale being spun around the atmosphere. It is a very tall house and it has a castle spiral at the top. The brick has been kept together for a long while. The house has a long fence around it that goes all around the house. There is a garage in the back of it and it has a jeep and a yellow corvette. The grounds of the house contain a very kept up yard with a spiral bush that has been manicured to look just right. The house is also a keeper of an underground pool. It is guarded by a fence, but at night the lights come on around it, and it looks to be very exciting and refreshing.

That is the funny thing about this house. I never see anyone out of the house during the day time. It is like no one actually lives there. However, when the sun comes down there is a family that seems to come out and play on the well kept yard. This is why I think it would be a place for a great tale. I am sure there could be a wonderful story that is kept with the house.

The atmosphere of the house truly cultivates the ground for a good story. For a story that is worth reading.

If the house was a ranch house, or a split level, or even a two story house the story wouldn’t match. Those simple houses are seen everywhere. There is no significance, and no uniqueness behind them. They cultivate good stories, but not stories that change your life. Not stories that refresh your soul.

The church has the ability to do the same thing. They have the ability to create an atmosphere that gives way to a life changing story. The church can truly, and I think has the command to create the atmosphere of life change, through prayer, through scripture, through community, and through story. However, if the church is not creating this atmosphere, the life changing story will get missed in the emotionally charged music, in the good intentions, in the scripture filled service. If we are not living out the story and creating an atmosphere in our own lives, creating space for the Holy Spirit to move, then we will never be able to communicate the life change. We as the church need to stop depending on our church service, we need to stop depending on the alter call to wrap people into the story. We need to individually create the atmosphere for the story to move.

The best way to make a cake is to make it with a small amount of love. That is actually the best way to make any baked good. Of course most baked goods taste absolutely amazing, but only those make with love have a lasting taste.

So, the next time you make a wonderful dish for someone special add add a little extra love.

Lack of courage.

Where has the courage gone in the local church? There is no courage or risk left in the local, small town church. All we have left are mirrored images of what was courage and strength. This mirrored image is shallow and it reflects a time that courage was needed for a certain culture. But, that culture has washed away and we are in a new time. A new place that needs a new, fresh, deep courage. This old mirrored courage is lost in the fifties, sixties, even the seventies, but it has no place for today. It has no place in a world where those past issues are past issues. So many people get lost in the issues.

They get lost in their dark passions in the streets and in the alley ways of caution. They would rather keep the individual happy rather than enhance community development. They would rather stink up the local church with despair and stagnancy than jump in the cleansing waters of risk.

These men don’t proclaim the courage they so long for. They do not capture the holiness that could be. They instead let time pass by with the sensitivity of a street whore. They grab you by the collar and tell you secrets, things that will change you if you give of yourself. Then you follow them into the sacred of places and you find cheap, quick, instant gratification. But, nothing that lasts. Nothing worth writing home about. Nothing really worth remembering. And after the short meaningless exchange you find yourself wandering about and wondering what else could be fulfilling, because what you just had was short and silly. You seek longevity. You seek something honorable and pure. Something that is worthy of your time. You seek a wedding night that is holy and worthwhile, unlike the sloppiness you find on the streets.

The church needs to stop losing itself on the streets of the world. The men need to stop throwing such grandiose words around about change and wonder, if all they do is talk. There is no courage in these men, there is no risk. They are short winded, sad tales of men who are mirrored images of what once was. And, when there time passes they will be giving the next generation a lesson of what once was. So, that the courage in these small towns will only be seen by the people who refuse to commit to this half hearted misery.

I have never experienced a transition like this before. I have always had a hard time with transitions.

Every new beginning, every new move, every new ending takes a toll on my soul. It is almost like I go through a week or two of despair.

I don't want to get out of bed, I become extremely fatalistic, and I basically become a troll loitering under my own bridge of self pity.

Then I get into a routine and I am fine.

But, this transition was very different. It seems to be that this transition has moved through our lives in such a smooth way.

It's actually quite bizarre.

However, I think i know what has happened.

I think many men and women who find themselves following Christ find themselves in the desert. They find themselves in a dry place, an arid place, a place that almost starves their soul to death.

But in this desert they seem to come across this contemplative peace. This world that is surrounded by inner understanding. Almost and inner rest. But, this rest does not come from any thing or anyone in particular. It comes from the loneliness that they entered into the desert. This loneliness leads them into the desert and it is turned into a contemplative spirit by the power of the Holy Spirit. They find that the loneliness they had for their friends, their families, their school, their old life, has been deserted. They no longer need those things because they have found the ultimate rest in the life of Christ. Even their greatest love is faint in comparison to their life found in Christ.

Everything and everyone seems almost dispensable.

Everyone and everything are Christ's too. That is the biggest comfort. That is where the soul rests. In the reality and the truth of Christ's sovereignty. The lonely person does not have to put her worth, her value, her comfort in the things or people around her, because they will all fade away in time. However, this world and all the people in it are created and formed by Christ and therefore, are His.

I do not have to worry, or lament, or wonder about the people I love, because they have Christ and Christ has them.

CHCH...what's missing? UR

I have come to realize that their are two existing realities in North America in regards to the church. The first reality is the church plant and the second reality is the small town church. I am choosing to ignore the stereotypes of both of these groups in this blog so that I might be able to connect the two in a healthy way.

When approaching a church planter we will find someone who is a risk taker. Someone who loves people and someone who sees a need in a certain city or town for Jesus to become renewed and relived out. We find the church planters work in teams so that they will be encouraged through the tough process. Often we have church planters who plant in towns where you could easily turn around and spit and hit another church. Church planters use technology and marketing to reach people.

When approaching a small town church we will often find earnest, seeking people who long for their friends, neighbors, and loved ones to get the big picture. We find the pastor who is a scripture teacher, a hospital visitor, and a lone ranger. Often the pastor is lonely and doesn't connect well with the congregation in regards to his own spiritual accountability. Small town churches have history with every church in the town and usually that history is not positive. The small town church is almost always behind the times in regards to technology and marketing.

So, how do we combine these two movements?

I think the reality is that church planting needs to look different in small towns. I think it is necessary and I truly believe if the church in small towns needs church planting or it will shrivel up and die. I also truly believe that the church planting world needs the small town churches or they will lose the humanity behind their movement.

I think we combine these movements by the church planting world recognizing it needs to transform into something different to meet the needs of the small church.

This needs to look like directed and intentional small groups. Small churches attract people from different towns and the church planter needs to capitalize these people and to train them to reproduce small groups in their own towns.

Through this small church have the potential to grow and church planting has the potential to attack a new challenge, and God has a chance to move.

The Move

My husband and I just moved to Christopher, Il. The church gave us a moving allowance so we decided to rent a Uhaul and buy some Uhaul boxes. My wonderful brother came down to help pack us up and on Monday, August 16th we moved.

When we showed up the previous tenants of the house we were going to rent were still living in the house. So, we stayed with a couple from the church. The next day we got the opportunity to move into our rental home. When we walked in the smell hit us first. It was a mixture of dirt, old cigarette smoke, and putridity. We walked around and noticed the 70's shag carpet, the pink toilet and bath tub and the completely dirty shower floor. Waylon saw it on my face. I was not looking forward to living in this house.

I decided to take my discouraged, disturbed spirit to WalMart to get cleaning supplies. I was cranky and my head hurt. I got the cleaning supplies and headed back to find an army of women and men from the church cleaning our house. What a blessing.

However, I was still hot, as we do not have air conditioning, so after the cleaning, the chemicals, and the unloading, I got sick. I laid on my bed in such a melo-dramatic state and lapped around in my self pity. Oh, poor me.

I made the choice to be thankful for this house. I made the choice to get up and unpack and to start making this house our transitional home.

I made the choice to put pictures on the semi clean walls, to put dishes in the semi clean cabinets, and to wear flip flops. I will not pity the blessing of a place to live.

But, I still had to make the choice, and since I have made the choice I can be content in our stinky house. My eyes have also been opened to the great blessings we have received in the last week.

First blessing; we had help cleaning and unloading our truck. We started at ten and we had the house clean and the truck unloaded by one thirty.

Second blessing; the church came together and bought us food to fill our cabinets.

Third blessing; we are receiving a washer and a dryer on Monday.

Fourth blessing; a wonderful women from the church came and took us out to dinner Tuesday night to the local pizza place.

Fifth blessing; the local pizza place.

Sixth blessing; We drove down the road for a while and found a quaint, Internet free, coffee shop. This is my recent blessing because I love coffee shops and I love coffee!

Seventh blessing; Waylon and I have gotten closer through this move.

Eighth blessing; The church.

So, all in all we have such a sense of peace and contentment in regards to where we are as a couple and as disciples of Christ. I have a hard time following Christ with Waylon, but I feel like God continues to shower us with his living water even when we are in the desert.

The freedom of discipline.

On my internship I found out that I am a crazed fundamentalist. This was a eye opener for me, but I guess when you think the Bible is holistic in it's message and every word of it is truth, you find yourself not only on the conservative side of life, but on the fundamentalist side of life. Wild right?

Since I hold the Bible to be holistic in it's teaching one thing that has become apparent to me the past couple of months is the need for discipline. A couple of weeks before my wedding I realized that it is radical to want to love your enemy. Most preachers would get up and say something like, 'God has called us to love our enemies. While we don't always have enemies that want to kill us, we do have people we do not like. We should show kindness to these people and go out of our way to care for them.'

While this sounds like it is a good application to this wild scripture, I think we are missing the depth behind what this radical life would actually look like if it was played out in creation. Being kind to people we don't like can get us to some pretty interesting places, but it also can cover up what we are really saying in our mind. We all know that often we say one thing and we are thinking what we would have said if we had either enough courage or enough meanness in our lives.

Kindness does not cover a multitude of sin. Love does.

But the question remains, where does loving your enemy and finding freedom in discipline collide?

I read the first five books of the Bible last year, and the consistent theme that I noticed was this statement; "Walk in the ways of the LORD". This command is fleshed out in Deuteronomy 6,
“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵ And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. ⁶ And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. ⁷ Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. ⁸ Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. ⁹ Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

God commands Israel to follow his commands and his decrees and to do it with a holistic life. Be disciplined in your love for your God. Be intentional with your children in this love. Be intentional in your community with this love.

As we know the Israelites had a hard time living this love out. They had a hard time walking in the ways of the Lord. God deals with them in his own way. This way leads to Jesus and we find ourselves in the middle of Jesus' ministry and in the middle of the sermon on the mount, Jesus' greatest sermon.

In the end of chapter five we see Jesus stating that if anyone asks of you give him extra and then he goes on to talk about loving your enemies, because of course you want to be as perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. Loving your enemies is allowing us the opportunity to become complete. It is allowing us to see the restored world that God first created in Genesis One. It is not about being perfect in the sense of worldly perfection, but it is about being complete. Being whole. However, I admit that I have an extremely hard time at being nice to my enemies. Actually I would rather avoid them, and on my worst days I want bad things to happen to them.

So how do I clean my heart of my dislike for the people who are shitting all over God's world? How do I find love for those closest to me who are crazed and mean? How do I find compassion for those who have committed injustice?

I think the reason for the Sermon on the Mount is to refocus the Israelites on Deuteronomy six. I think Jesus is seeing a world where the people in it follow the law without fault, but the heart is not being addressed. Jesus is telling this world what it looks like to love the Lord with everything. Jesus is telling the world what it looks like to walk with love, to talk to our children about this love and to nail it on our doors and gates. This love is about how we view the world, how our hearts and our souls and our emotions lead our physical.

To live in love with the God of the Bible, we are to do this with all aspects of our lives. This is where I believe discipline comes into our lives. However, I must implement that this discipline has to be partnered with the following of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit involved discipline is frivolous. However, when we decide to follow the Spirit in his active role we can grasp at this idea of discipline. There is freedom within this relationship because it allows us to make the choice. We know longer are enslaved to our impulses or even what we want, but we have the opportunity to make a choice that will benefit us in the end.

The world we live has been founded on instant gratification. If we want something we have it whether it is good for us or not. I truly believe this is where our emotional existence is as a church. We want what we feel, rather than disciplining our emotional existence . The artist in me fights against this idea of discipline, but the peace bringer in me finds it essential to all relationships. When we put our emotional existence under the love of Christ we can surrender our need to emotionally react to whatever comes into our world. We can follow the Holy Spirit and rather than lash out when we don't get our way we can have peace within our hearts. This discipline is needed if the church is going to be any sort of influence in this world. I truly believe when we put our emotional existence under the love of Christ we can love our enemies and we can see a world that is called to be complete. We can love our enemies because we can control our emotional impulses to try and run the world the way that we see fit. When our sense of injustice is put under the scrutiny of following the Holy Spirit and is no longer based off our emotional history and impulses we will be able to see the God of restoration more clearly in a world that is scattered and in chaos.

I have nothing else to say. I am without words. Or maybe the words are without me. The end and start of a new journey.

Waiting.

It seems to be a consistent theme in my life. Waiting for one thing to end and another to start. Waiting for the appointed time to be upon me. Waiting, counting the days, wondering what the future will be. There is a sense of that waiting within my soul, yet there is also a sense of slow motion. Seeing things, people, event and even words spoken in slow motion. Having the awareness that the decisions Waylon and I make determine our future relationship. Having the starving pride of knowing that I am a trained college graduate and I am unemployed. Sitting and waiting for something to happen while knowing nothing will.

I watch a lot of bad movies. I take the dog out. I clean. I read. I seldom write. I am not discontent. I am just here.

Waiting, patiently, waiting to seek out the happenings of glory in the world of Assumption.

Happy Endings.

I just finished a book called The Book of Lost Things. It is by an Irish writer with the last name of Connolly. I guess his main genre of writing is mystery thrillers, however, this book is focused on a young boy who goes through the season of turning into a man by being coerced to a secret land. The story starts off with his mother dying. His father remarries and has another child. During this whole process the boy is going through some interesting changes. He finds himself hearing the whispers of the books in his room and he is enticed into this magical world that is hidden in the sunken garden in the backyard. He finds himself trying to save his mother. Through his perilous journey in this strange land he meets people who come to his aid. These men have helped the boy with his jealousy and hatred, because as we all know childhood is not always sweet. We often as a society reminisce about our romantic childhood, but if we truly look at it with a skeptical eye we see hurt, pain, fear, even hatred. Through the book the young boy is tested in various ways and encounters the villain of the book.

The crooked man.

The young boy meets the crooked man and finds by the end of the book that the crooked man is evil. The intent of the crooked man is to get the young boy on the throne and to consume the heart of his younger brother. This is how the crooked man has stayed alive for so many years. At the climax of the book the crooked man is trying to persuade the man character to give him his younger brother.

The crooked man tells him that in the real world the main character will feel pain, sorrow, and grief. The people that the main character loves will die and leave him in his loneliness. The fantasy world is the place where the main character can be in control. In this world the young boy can have a happy ending.

The young boy does not relent. We often meet children like this. Those who have such courage and such integrity that nothing sways them from such virtue. These days, those children are far and few, but they still remain. The main character stands his ground. He goes back into the real world and he experiences everything that the crooked man proclaimed. He experiences the pain and sorrow of losing the ones he loves to sickness and to death. He experiences the pain of loneliness. However, at the end of his life he collects himself and he looks at his full life that he choose to lead. He finds that he did live a love of great love and a life of great pain, but he still lived.

For a happy ending filled with love cannot be without pain.

What else is there?

I haven't really cried in two weeks.

It is refreshing to not feel like my emotions are on high alert all the time. During my internship I encountered such sadness and such loneliness that I cried often. I would cry on my way to and from work. I would cry with Waylon. I would cry in the shower.

I was dealing with such emotional weight. Such despair. I was seeing men and women sick and I was seeing men and women at their final moments. Often I was paged to pray over men and women who were in there last day of life.

I was angry as well as sad. It didn't seem fair. I would sit and talk with hospice patients and it was like I was seeing everything in slow motion. I would think as I sat, how many more times will they sit here and talk about their week? How many more times will they eat their favorite meal? How many more times will they kiss their wife goodnight?

These questions would weigh so heavily on my heart. I would smile and continue to talk with them but on the inside I was grieving for them. I was mourning their shortened life. I saw everything through that lens. I so desperately tried to see every situation in a different light, but I still came back to the reality that each person I visit is going die within the next few weeks, if not sooner. I still came back to the reality that the family that so cherished this person is going to loose them.

And then my internship ended. I walked away on a Friday and I have not been back. It was all very anti climatic really. I started moving, I finished up my college classes, I continued to do things for my wedding. It was like the last four months had been a dream, and I suddenly woke up.

The three or four days after my internship I stayed in bed. I was exhausted. It had felt like I had just been in immense battle for the last four months. Like I had traveled by boat and fought through tenuous situations to come back home. I have never really felt that way.

I got my energy back up and started to live my life again. I went to Naperville to do some wedding stuff with my mom and some of the women who work with her kept asking if I was nervous for my wedding. One woman actually told me, "that I looked really put together" compared of course to my impending decision in two weeks to wed.

I didn't really say this then, but I wanted too. I wanted to say, after the last four months, after all the death, and the sorrow, and the sadness, after all the situations where you depend solely on what you have learned to get you through the hard questions. After the battle, a celebration seems easy. Yes there are nerves, and we want everything to go as planned, but it almost seems simple compared to the complexity of the dying.

I am excited to get married. I am thankful for those who have helped along the way, especially my mom, who has been absolutely wonderful. But, I know better. I know that this day is more about the celebration of two individuals joining together than it is about who gets to sit where at the reception.

Waylon is the man who will take care of me when I am in that final stage of life. I am that women who has made the commitment to do the same. Everyone should be loved until the end even if the sorrow is great and the sadness is overbearing. It seems ironic that my internship was full of sickness and death and my life is heading towards newness. Four months of sorrow and death in preparation for a new life. There is some kind of contrast that needs to be seen in all of this. Marriage is not a trivial life situation that one can get in and out of. It is a life long commitment that acquires a sense of understanding even in great sorrow.

I know better now, than to get caught up in the trivial pursuits of this life. I have seen and witnessed to the end and I will continue to live my life out in such a way that is a testimony to the eternal life compared to the passing one we all live. Movies, songs, and pictures do not capture death appropriately.

Death is not beautiful.

Don't mock life in such a way to say that death is beautiful. When we believe that we stain life with such hypocrisy. When we stop crying we forget the pain and the sorrow that reminds us life is different. Death happens once. Life happens every day that we are given. Do not throw mud at the life you are given. If you do than you are already dead.

Shrouded in Sadness.

There came a point in my internship when I stopped visiting 'sick' people and I started visiting people.

We are all in desperate straits.

People seem to avoid hospitals because they want to separate themselves from the reminder of sickness, of the decaying of the body, of the end of life. If they can segregate themselves from the sick, than they it will never happen to them. They will never get sick. They will never die.

I talked with a wife of a patient last week who told me that her husband had been struggling with different ailments for the last five years. He almost died the night before. Her doctor is doing everything for him. The man is living in a nursing home and wants to die. He is tired of the pain and the quantity of life versus the quality of live. He wants to go home but the doctor is fixed on curing versus caring.

We had another patient die in the hospital this week. Chaplains had been visiting her and her family all week. When I went to visit with her the family had me come up hold her hand and pray for an easing of her pain. She was in a tremendous pain. Her family didn't want to enter into hospice because they didn't want to deal with the reality that there family member was dying. She came in on a Monday and died on a Thursday.

Funeral homes usually will get the wake in around twelve, have the funeral service at two and have the body buried by three. In California they even have drive by wakes.

There is no acceptance of death in our society. Everyone wants to live forever.

People no longer accept the pain and death of the world. They are no longer shrouded in sadness for the moment, but rather regress the pain, ignore it, pass along by it.

Christians are called to carry their crosses and follow Jesus. This means picking up their pain, sorrow, their sadness and following Jesus.

They are not called to regress it, to ignore it, or pass along by it, they are called to pick their pain up and carry it into the presence of Jesus.

I stopped visiting sick people because I realized that there is no real difference between the person in the hospital bed and myself. We both are in desperate straits and we both need grace.

Human Documents, Living Death...

If you don't know where I am or what I am doing than this is a good blog for you to read. I started working at Decatur Memorial Hospital and Hospice on January 4th and my life has never been the same. I am the chaplain Intern.

Chaplains are constantly working in crisis ministry. My mentor, who is the lead Chaplain at the hospital and in hospice said, "You will experience and see more here in six months that working in the church for six years." This is a man who worked in the church as the pastor for twenty years and now has worked as a chaplain for twenty-two. He has shown me when to listen, when to talk, how to talk, and how to shine the love of Christ to people who are in all kinds of life situations.

The more I visit with people, the more I hear their stories. The more I try to encourage the more I see the need for Christ, the more I see the need for scripture, and the more I see the need for the active healthy church.

Psalm 14:1

"The fool says in his heart "There is no God."

This verse has been made apparent as I have worked with human documents. My job is to go visit men and women in the hospital and in hospice and offer spiritual support. I have visited all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. Some who have had all the cards stacked against them. Some who have family abuse, death, addiction. Some who have been in church all of their lives but are still not assured of their salvation. Some that don't want anything to do with God and are angered by the name Christian.

The men and women in the hospital are different than the men and women I visit in hospice. Hospital patients usually have a chance of leaving their hospital room and going home to live.

Hospice patients are in their dying days.

Visiting men and women who are dying has put a spin on my perception of life.

I want to live.

I don't want to be on my dying bed, at any age, and feel like I haven't done enough. The only way I can combat this thought is to find my security in Christ. The hope bringer.

When I visit men and women who are dying, all the shit that we think is important in our youth holds no importance. The stances we take in our opinions, in our important arguments, in our self righteous lifestyles doesn't hold water when we are in our dying days. "Generations come and generations go." Ecc. 1:2

We will not be remembered. Our relationships will be forgotten. Our names will be forgotten.

Unless we are under, around, and within Christ.

If we choose to be found within his life, death and resurrection then we can find enjoyment within our daily lives, because we will know that even though we live a momentary life, on our death beds we can say that we lived.

I visited a patient in hospice who wasn't done yet. She had more to do. She had a job, a family even a dog who needed her care. Who cried when my mentor and I walked in because she thought we were there to give her last rights. We assured her that we were there to visit and to offer support.

She died a week later.

We can either choose to be in a state of living death, where we find discontentment in every relationship, in every life situation, in every moment. Or we can find ourselves within Christ and we can be content with what we have and with who we are. We can find our security in the true life rather or we can deceive ourselves by trying to find life within our death.

4 Years

I started this blog in 2005 to record the different things that I would experience in college. As I look back on the different postings I have seen a huge change from where I was as an eighteen year old girl to who I am as a twenty one year old women.

I have seen, heard, tasted, and experienced things I never thought I would in four years. I have been across oceans, across borders, across cultural divides. I have tried to end my blog a dozen or so times in my effort to walk away from my self-reflective life, but I always learned something new that impacted my walk with Christ and so I needed to communicate it to someone.

In the last four years I have thought about giving up my faith, feeling that it was foolish and silly and based on myth, but the more I learn the less I feel like I know, and the less I know shows me that I am a small part of creation. This revelation has shown me that sometimes there is no good choice to choose, sometimes our human limitations keep us from God, sometimes sin allows for grace.

I have changed mentally along this way and last night was my last learning lesson of 2008. Waylon took me out to dinner and to a movie and we were driving back to Lincoln. We were talking about the many things that happened in 2008 and the many things that were going to continue to happen as we grow together.

It then hit me; our life is going to soon be over. Sure we have, hopefully another sixty, maybe seventy years left, but that's it. Then the trip is over. Waylon made a very insightful statement, "I think people realize that life is going to fly so they work as hard as they can, but I just want to snuggle and talk as many walks as I can." My fiance has faced death in the face on more than one occasion and has realized that life can be as simple as we make it.

So, this year I am going to make each moment count. I am going to take as many walks as I can, I am going to have as many conversations as I can, I am going to represent Jesus as much as I can through my actions. While, this may look like a 'resolution' it is more of a faith statement. I am going to stop being afraid of humanity and I am going to start trusting God.

Because life is just a myriad of different moments that could be linear or could be cyclical, but they are just that, a myriad of different moments.

Moments that contain a certain number of breaths, a certain number of looks, and a certain number of words.

"The ice is thin enough for walking, the rope is worn enough to climb, throat is dry enough for talking, the world is crumbling but I know why.

Storm is wild enough for sailing, bridge is weak enough to cross, spine is frail enough for fighting, I'm home enough to know I'm lost.

It's just enough to be strong, in the broken places, in the broken places. It's just enough to be strong, should the world rely on faith tonight?"

The land unfair enough for planting, barren enough to conceive, poor enough to gain the treasure, enough a cynic to believe, enough a cynic to believe.

It's just enough to be strong, in the broken places, in the broken places. It's just enough to be strong, should the world rely on faith tonight?

Confuse enough o know direction, sun eclipsed enough to shine, still enough to find me trouble, see enough to know I'm blind, see enough to know I'm blind.

Just enough to be strong in the broken places, in the broken places, Just enough to be strong should the world rely on faith tonight?

Should the world rely on faith tonight?"

Through my moments in the next four years, I long to be within Christ.