endure

This seems to be an emerged theme in my life the past couple of weeks. I keep feeling this beating inside of me, "Endure, Lauren. Endure." It is something that God is continually placing on my heart, so much so I'm sitting here writing my first legitimate blog in who knows how long?

Romans 5 says that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame. I see this as some sort of a timeline, as moments pass, we go from suffering to endurance to character to hope.

As I was talking to a friend the other day, attempting to explain this, I got this vision in my head of me standing in the midst of my kingdom.

There are stories and stories of brick buildings, maybe even castles. I've built them all myself and they loom over me and my satisfaction. I am very proud, because look. I've done this all by myself. My dreams are coming true, all my plans are in place, and I am set for life - there is nothing left to worry about.

All at once I feel the ground moaning underneath my feet in resistance, and in panic I see my castles begin to break apart. Pieces of brick and mortar begin to crumble down on me, leaving bruises and blood and wounds behind. And for a while all I can do is stay on my hands and knees in sorrow and despair as I am perpetually bombarded.

This is suffering.

But the next step is endurance. So I lift my head up. Then I lift the rest of myself up.

I start running.

Now, while I'm running, I feel this pain. And it stems from the fact that I have not escaped the falling debris. I'm still being chipped away. But it's different this time. Because even though my world has been turned upside down, I'm moving forward. I'm going.

And I can see it. Far off into the distance I can see the end of it. In Psalm 40:1 David writes "I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry." I get the feeling that "I waited" did not mean staying in one spot feeling sorry for himself while he waited. I think that in his waiting he endured. This was not a passive patience.

I endure because it is demanded of me. Why? Because God is glorious. And He calls His children to glorify Him. In our celebration - yes. But especially in our suffering.

So how do I endure? How do I move forward? In other words, how is God glorified in my suffering?

I think I have found an answer in Isaiah 58:10-11, "If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail."

God is glorified when there is ultimately nothing inside of me but a desire for Him. And when I am poured out into others and my flesh has been cast away so that I can love abundantly, He will pour back into my soul, and use me. I have no right to my own life - when Jesus died He staked His claim on my soul. So it is with joy that I say, "Here am I! Send me!"

What else can I do?

I love verse 6 in 2 Corinthians, "If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer." Paul was the ultimate example of this - dedicating his life to the Gospel so that others would know Christ. Others.

So how can I be self absorbed? How can I be so concerned about how I feel and how I look and how others perceive me? When all of this clogs my joy - it reaps nothing but despair and insecurity. John Piper put it well, "Periodic self-examination is needed and wise and biblical. But for the most part, mental health is the use of the mind to focus on worthy reality outside ourselves." There is such a deep significance in this outward-oriented self-forgetfulness.

And so, we endure. Because by enduring we glorify God, and to glorify God means a healthy ignorance of "self". I will endure because my feelings don't matter. My opinion doesn't matter.

Others matter. What lies ahead matters. God's glory matters.

cupcakes

I scratch my head and look at the tiles along the bottoms of the shelves. My hand twitches and I scratch the surface with my torn fingernails. It's like the dried toothpaste that crawls around the rim of your sink. Shuddering as I recoil my fingers, I continue to spin, and finally stop at what I'm looking for.

Cupcakes. It's a Martha Stewart book – filled with cupcakes. I flip through pages of pumpkin ginger, fourth of July, Crème Brule, and my mouth is watering.

I want a cupcake right this second.

I try not to think too hard. Focusing on the cupcakes should be easy enough. Wrappers, frosting, cake, melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Should I buy it?

It would probably just end up sitting on a shelf somewhere, like my other cookbooks.

The ceiling fan is still burring. So I zip up my jacket and frantically continue to search.

Maybe I would finally put my pots and pans to use. Maybe I would stop being lazy and apathetic and just start baking already.

The science/fantasy fiction is over my shoulder, and my eye catches an older man with brown, rumpled curls and a gray blazer. His glasses are crooked. I wonder if his wife makes him cupcakes. Suddenly his glance shifts towards me and my reflexes sink back into the sweet pages of confection. I feel pathetic.

The shoes on my feet are old and comfortable. They rock back and forth from heel to toe as I am pensive.

Twenty-five dollars. Cupcakes. Shelves and crusted toothpaste. I have no kitchen of my own. The only ones who would eat them would be my little brothers.

Maybe it isn't worth it. Maybe none of it is.

My heel hits the carpet and I spin.

When I leave the cupcakes I feel sad, like they were all friends. And when I keep walking through aisles and aisles of pages I don't want to be found. I want to hide with my friends forever. We'd cook and laugh and bake cupcakes together. Sometimes we'd cry but in the end we would find peace because we would know each other.

For some odd reason leaving the book has made the night melancholy. But I ignore my insides and continue for the exit.

The sliding doors opened and the cold got worse. I would rather be home by the fire with my cupcakes.

rebirth

For a good nineteen years of my life I have perpetually heard the phrase, "God grabbed hold of my life"…in some form or another. I guess time and time again those words began to chip away at me, to a point where I would hear it and immediately brush it off. In all honestly I had no idea what it meant. I've grown up in the ministry and am very familiar with the things you say in order to make people believe you are super spiritual, and in turn became immune to those lines that were actually sincere, and meant something.

I had no idea what God grabbing hold of my life would look like. It was just a weird visual for me. I see everything in my mind and for God to be reaching down to me and taking my life and doing something with it on his OWN terms just did not calculate. I suppose I always figured that it was a wonderful thing. Something wonderful that seemed, to me, unattainable.

But I was wrong. I had no idea or could ever define what it's like. Not in exact terms, anyway.

See…God grabbing hold of my life had been pretty bloody. A messy, ugly thing. If you are a visual person, let me offer you this – My chest had been torn open, and everything has been exposed. This huge interrogation light is now shining into my core. And everyone can see why I suck at life….how sinful I am. Especially – especially
me! I have no place to hide.

Looking back (not very far back, but in retrospect nonetheless), I don't see how I thought I could get away with doing things my own way. However, this all stems from the fact that I never really got God "grabbing hold" of something – much less, me. I underestimated his ability to pull the carpet from underneath my feet. Once that happened, I began to grieve. I grieved for my life, for my desires, for all of the things I had wanted and planned for my life. But as days went by, I began to grieve in a different way. I grieved for time wasted, relationships withering away, for my purity.

Paul writes in Romans 7:13, "Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful."

The good that I should have been doing isn't what hurts, it's sin exposed by the good…that's what kills me. As the Holy Spirit draws nearer, it reveals more and more how dirty I am.

I don't know what happens next. I don't know what God has for me. As of now my plans and ideas for my life are slowing being thrown into the fire, and it feels like the worst thing ever. I feel like I'm starting over. All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning how to do them again. But it's all part of this thing called God grabbing a hold on my life, I guess.

pocket dictionary

I randomly found this poem I wrote a long time ago...and I was surprised that I still think it's funny. Maybe it's just me and I have a terrible sense of humor. Haha.

I need a dictionary,
One that's small.
It needs to fit in my purse, I mean.
So when I want to impress someone,
The wit is convenient.

He was tall and dark-haired
At the party
With his cocktail (I hate alcohol)
But his curls made me tipsy
And the word kitsch left me.

Usually I know my words.
You know, and how to use them.
I'm smart, I mean.
But I often see attractive people,
So I must take precautions.

it was for this

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in His wonderful face

And the things of earth

Will grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace

These words have not spoken so strongly to me until this night.

people

I think a lot about how there are millions of things happening all over the world at this very moment. And how just for once I would want to get a glimpse at all of them at once. Wow.

I think about people a lot, and how there are so many of them. A lot of names, faces, personalities, and stories. Stories about what have made them who they are.

In Iowa at a writer's workshop I went to a couple of summers ago, one of our assignments was to venture out into downtown Iowa City, where a ton people would be sitting or walking about, and ask them personal questions about moments in their life that defined who they are today.

The prospect of this assignment made me nervous, because a lot of times you think of people as being very private, not wanting to stay and talk much so they can continue about their business. I thought we would be just another obstacle in their day.

But it turned out not as I expected - my partner and I interviewed an older woman - probably in her late forties or fifties - who had just recently met her father for the first time. And the woman beside her, from the time she was a little girl, had these "psychic visions" and supernatural occurrences happen to her. I was astounded that these ladies were actually opening up to us - complete strangers!

It just goes to show that people are looking for someone to reach out to them. They want to tell you their story...they want to be loved. I think about this as I think about the students at FOS that I am trying to minister to. And for me it's a challenge because a lot of the time you have to be real with them before they will be real with you.

People want to be known. Even though often times we get afraid to let someone come to close. I think that the human condition, overall, longs for intimacy. And we as Christians know that true intimacy comes from a relationship with Christ. But for now we must show the people around us our own feeble version of it so that, perhaps, they will search for something more and find Jesus.

red eyes

Monday Night Football is of the devil. Especially when it is preventing you from watching Chuck. A VERY crucial episode, I might add. Turns out Jill is a rogue CIA agent. Last we heard her and Chuck had run off somewhere together. If she does anything to hurt Chuck I'll kill her. No, seriously.

Bloggish might as well be a mood, because lately I have not been in it...if that makes any sense. In other words, I have not been feeling "bloggish". One of the tendencies I see in myself is shying away from whatever people start picking up on. After everyone got a blog - I got sick of mine. Also, I'm not a huge Mac fan, and I think that Twilight (the book, and probably the movie) is ridiculous. I'm taking one of my students to see it this weekend JUST so we can make fun of it. I don't HATE Mac's, and I don't HATE Twilight, and obviously I don't HATE blogging...it's just this thing that I do. I'm not a very opinionated person, really. You might even call me uncaring at times.

I'm also not really in to finishing this blog properly. Probably because I have an episode of Chuck waiting for me. And my eyes hurt.