Thankful Thursdays

1. Manicures and Pedicures with your best friend on a particularly rough day. Naturally I got french and she got barbie pink. No shock here, people.

2. THE POOL.  THE POOL.  THE POOL!

3. TEXAS VACATION THIS WEEK, and naturally this awesome t-shirt that Kristin sent me via snail mail.

4. These two idiots, and hammocks in the backyard. 

5. The great city of Denver which I am so extremely blessed to call home.

6. Sunset walks at Wash Park.

7. Spending some quality time with this hott mama this weekend. 

 

8.  Pretending we still live in the same town, and loving on my little clone of a BFF in Dallas.

9.  Savoring some ACTUAL Tex-Mex.
10.  My last day of work at the full time job.....TODAY.  Praising the Lord for the past 2 years at this job and for the opportunity to move on!


SO VERY THANKFUL THIS WEEK!!!!!

Plane Crash

I loved having my brothers and sister here. It’s like a little piece of home showing up in the mountains, wrapped in movie quotes and exceptional senses of humor. But upon the closing of my car door as I departed from the airport, the quiet engulfed me like a warm blanket. I reflected on the weekend and relayed details to the parents, reminiscing on all the laughter and idiocy of our time together. 

After a week full of 90 miles per hour, I am exceedingly ready for an afternoon in my hammock dozing off in the sunshine. I need solitude, and some one on one time with Jesus. Just to think. To rest. To sleep. I find this need more apparent in myself as I get older. Maybe I am going to end up turning into my mother after all. 

There is something about paying attention, about prayer, about being present to the world in every moment. This weekend I abandoned my phone and my computer (for the most part) and just lived mostly outside. I think it’s what we were created for despite the fact that everyone knows I am a complete technology whore.  But, there is a way of choosing to live in the now, whatever it might look like. There is something about preserving my sense of wonder, presence, and attentiveness to the beauty of the world that God has placed me in.

And stopping to breathe, it heals me. I need my days to be punctuated by moments of rest and awe in the beauty of my God and the beauty of his creation. Because the beauty and wonder and awe, they are always there just waiting for me to pause and look around. Here is some photo documentation of the weekend:

Some Advice, Maybe

Life is funny. Everyone lives this completely different reality and none of them can really ever coincide. I can never get someone to FULLY understand how I feel and what I think. Probably because not even I know how I feel and what I think most days. Don’t get me wrong; one of the biggest blessings in this world is to be able to walk alongside others through the ups and downs and twists and turns of life. To love and be loved. However, we are each living our own story – I can’t have yours and you can’t have mine, and sometimes the story includes the same people over and over again and sometimes it moves you across the country to walk (or snowboard) with people you’ve never met. 

Some of the greatest people I know live in Texas, some live in Colorado or Florida or Tennessee. Even Louisana which is baffling. Futher, one actually lives in New York…which is a phenomenon because there can probably only be one good person in New York at a time. New York is the anti of everything I value in life (sweatpants/nature&outdoors/naps/etc.) Some of my friends are terribly happy, some frustrated, some mad as hell, some wondering what’s next, and some exhausted to the point that it manifests in what appears as drunkenness. 

Everyone’s problem is how we are going to spend this one odd and precious life that we have been issued. Whether we are going to push, and stress, and fight to the top trying to achieve whatever goal it is that we think will quiet the throbbing ache and anxiety inside us. Or whether we are going to stop, rest, taste and smell life, enjoy it, and figure out who we really are as opposed to who we think we are supposed to be. 

Some advice, maybe:

I don’t know where you are right now, if you are hurting or crying or laughing or dancing or doing drugs in the girls bathroom, but I do know that you are not the sum of whatever it is that you think defines you. Unless of course, you think that God defines you…in which case you would be spot on correct and you should immediately consider stopping the drugs. In the end we are all exactly as God says we are, despite every achievement and every rejection or failure. And God says we are fiercely loved. And, while it’s extremely hard to believe during these hard times of the mundane 8-5 schedule, we are free. We are here to love and be loved, freely. 

I don’t know about you but I think sometimes I get caught up running the rat wheel.  And lately, I’ve remembered that life isn’t about being famous or making money or gaining respect from people who actually could care less because, for me, I feel best when I’m not doing much. When I’m in nature preferably by a campfire with beloved other souls, or very quiet, or paradoxically, listening to music. That’s when I can sit back and remember that I am here for a purpose, and that purpose is not to become “the best version of myself.” I am here to love and be loved, and to glorify the One who created me for exactly that. 

Can we all agree that nothing feeds the spirit like a sense of humor? Maybe we just try to laugh a lot - at everything, and travel…and rest. Lay in a hammock outside under a big tree and read a book. Calm down. Pray alot. And when things are hard, we are free to cry hard, pressing into suffering in hopes that there is a future glory where pain doesn’t exist. And maybe let’s do something for people who need help, because the day is coming where you are that person. Be thankful. And maybe let’s stop being so asthmatic with anxiety because that just culminates in us wasting this gift that is life.

If you hear nothing else: Get to know Jesus. He is infinitely and eternally worth it. Read the bible and just find out about Him.  Ask Him about himself. Ask him what he thinks about you. He is crazy beyond comprehension, and amazing, and perfect, and worthy of our worship. Jesus is the only thing that makes our human existence REALLY mean something; it is only through him that we are able to enter into something of significance that is much, much bigger than ourselves. 

The Weight of Glory

Lately, I find myself itching for something. Rather, aching for something. Something beyond me and something that is more than just flesh and bones. Some kind of unquenchable thirst for something that satisfies everything I want and need. The fact that I long for it led C.S. Lewis to believe that it exists. He says that the longings for satisfaction and contentment and eternity come because such a thing exists that will fully meet all those longings.

I long for a place, or maybe a person who is utterly and wholly ‘other.’ I am unable to put my finger on exactly what I am looking for, but I know I need it.

Colorado was a glimpse of this. I remember wanting BEAUTY, a place where I could get lost in creation, where I could breathe fresh air and completely slip away from the hustle and bustle of life; in a word, a place of peace. The Rocky Mountains gave me the sense of that for a fleeting instant, and yet even in the middle of the great outdoors…something is still missing. I am unable to fully articulate it, and my listeners are much less able to understand and feel it with me fully. The gap. The ever expanding gap in the space between. My heart seems to know exactly what I am looking for, but is keeping it a secret from my head. I long for something that is just outside of my experience, but it seems that my soul knows it’s there. Just beyond my grasp. My longing propels me to search, with the hope that when I arrive at the destination, my heart will exclaim “Yes! This is exactly what I was looking for.”

Today I am forever tied with C.S. Lewis, to heaven. The idea of being fully content and fully satisfied and wholly rid of this skin that makes me unable to experience any of it. Today I feel the eternity that was set in my heart by my beloved Jesus.

“If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy. …The secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.

These things – the beauty, the memory of our own past – are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

We remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy.…For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance.

The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last. Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being “noticed” by God.”
-C.S. Lewis

Psalm 91

Some days, and I take great lengths to remember and drink deeply of the joys of life, I feel like dancing and singing and shouting. I twirl and laugh for no reason. I drive with the windows down. I feel happiness to an infinite degree and everything is beautiful and magnificent and life seems breezy. Days when the sun is out, it's warm and I am eating fresh pineapple. Days when things seem right and good in the world. Like a sunset at the park. Or a night with old friends playing games around a fire.

And then, gravity sometimes sets in and some days feel more like life has woken you up abruptly and you are frazzled and your hair looks a hot mess. And you're always late. Days when you are sick and tired and outside in the cold with inadequate clothing. Times when nothing seems worth it and everyone is against you. When you feel attacked or threatened or like you are being pulled in a million directions for a million reasons when all you want is solitude or to be in your bed. And yet we drink deeply of these too. The fight. The dark night of the soul.

One minute it’s sunny, and the next minute it’s hailing.

I want to confess that I have been wrestling. I have been blatantly disobedient to the call and stirrings of Christ and I have felt guilt and shame over it, and even still a resistance remains in my heart towards the things of God. Why? I know truth after truth about the goodness and mercy of God. And yet my fleshly heart is against Him. There is a resounding terror in the idea of my surrender to Christ, of being out of control. Of being led to a place of discomfort by a God who (in my head) is ready to crush me.

I have seen my struggle and these lies I believe accidently spill into other relationships and rear their heads as anything from insecurity to jealousy. Amidst my wrestle with God, I have let myself be covered in lies. And worse, I believe them. Isn’t that how it goes? We get away from our life source in Christ, and we just start making our messes messier. Lately, I have been all kinds of crazy and two shades of irritable. I think the key to my distress is my lack of intimacy with Christ. My very skewed version of who God really is, and what he thinks of me. And so, with eyes to the ground, tear stained cheeks, and feeble/wobbly knees I am taking steps back towards what is true.

And true is this:

"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty...He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge, His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart...a thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you. If you make the Most High your dwelling--even the LORD, who is my refuge then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." -Psalm 91

"The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” -Zephaniah 3:17

There are a lot of things that I want to be. That I think I am. Things that define me and things that are true of me. I could make a long list of words that I think define me or at least the ones that I want to define me. And my motivation behind having this definition, this persona that is all that I am and all that I want to be, is at some deep level I need to feel wanted. Against all my rational and known truths, I believe that I must perform a certain way in order that God will actually want me.

Despite my best attempts at fierce independence and nonchalance, I honestly want approval. I want to know that I am doing okay, that I am on track, that I am going in the right direction. I want justification and affirmation and acceptance. I think it’s the result of my human nature, a fallen world and the burden that all of us (at some level) bear. And so at the depths of my very fragile heart, my life is constantly being set beside a measuring stick. Am I funny? Am I pretty? Am I good? Am I right? Am I okay? Am I wanted?

In this single moment, though, I am met with the challenge to stop trying so hard to be the girl I think I am supposed to be. To instead, “dwell in the shelter of the Most High, and find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” To yield to the God unseen, and to just be. To just exist in the sweet surrender of breathing in the breath that He has given me for this one hour. It’s a bitter pill for my pride to swallow to give up any and all expectations that I have set for myself.

Still, I feel begged, right now, to just be Ally. Nothing more, nothing less. Defined by nothing other than Christ’s love for me. Maybe today I could just sit in the magnitude of His adoration for me. Maybe I could just revel in how He recklessly loves me. To the depths of my soul. Without any performance from me. He wants me. Adores me. And this love drenches me when I am not funny. When I am disobedient. When I am clumsy and emotional and frustrated and wildly out of control crazy. It is then that he whispers “You are mine.” He knows me more fully than I know myself, the depths and the heights of every crevice of my soul and he responds “I want you.”

And in that, my weary soul finds rest.

In Christ Alone

Banking my decisions, fears, hopes, dreams, and life on this truth:

"In Christ alone my hope is found.
He is my light, my strength, my song;
this Cornerstone, this solid Ground,
firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace.
when fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My Comforter, my All in All,
here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, who took on flesh
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones he came to save;
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied -
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain.
Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave he rose again!
And as He stands in victory
Sin's curse has lost its grip on me.
For I am His and He is mine -
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death.
This is the power of Christ in me;
From life's first cry to final breath.
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man;
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I'll stand."

Reason for the Season

I love Christmas season. And I love that the reason is exists is because Jesus Christ was born. Hallelujah! Matt Chandler and the Village Church are doing an Advent campaign to “get underneath the meaning of Christmas” instead of getting caught up in all of the presents and shopping and stress and binge eating. Which is difficult assuming that we live consumer driven America. But I am going to join them in their feat.

God has been teaching me a lot of things lately and the most resounding theme goes under the title of: I CANNOT FIX MYSELF. What a crazy easy thing to believe in my head, but my heart is so very reluctant. I mean seriously. I honestly think that if I try hard enough, I will be able to fix myself. I can be better. I can stop this, or start that and STICK WITH IT. I can decide today that I want to be a certain thing, and succeed. I think I can take control and make myself into the person that I want to be. The sad truth is that I cannot. I absolutely and positively cannot. I am hopeless and sick and in need of a Savior.

We are all guilty of the same thing: rebellion against God. And whether it manifests itself in an obvious manner or whether we are living in pride or secret sin, the point remains. We are all guilty. There is not one who is good, by nature. We are by our nature objects of God’s wrath. We are actually incapable of righteousness. CUE: THE GOSPEL. 

The gospel, if anything, is a story about remarkably wicked people who cannot fix themselves, and how God—in his never ending love and mercy—answers to our problem. It’s the most marvelous story of all time, and the best news to those of us who are failing miserably at “being better.” I despise not being in control, but the beauty of the gospel is that I don’t have to be, because God is.

God is all about God being glorified, which translates into God being about our joy. His provision, care, and love for me is NOT because I am spectacular but because HE is spectacular. God is glorified by his coming to save sinners. Jesus came to save and heal what could not save or heal itself.

So for those of us who are tired of trying to be better, forgiveness is here. We can let go of our clenched fists over the control of our life because Jesus Christ was born. God has made a way. And that is something to celebrate, people. In the highest degree.