One of my Favorite Places

After many deep-thinking posts, I thought it was time to do something a little fun. This past weekend some friends and I went to Monterey. I have to confess that I am in love with this town - Cannery Row, especially. I had gone previously with my family and was enchanted by the gentle sea breeze and beach houses. I couldn't wait to return.

Cannery Row is a waterfront street - unfortunately the last cannery closed in 1973, but they kept the name anyway :)

We ate at a small, cordial restaurant called McFly's. I must admit I was skeptical at first, but their fish and chips were incredible. Soaked in malt vinegar, lemon, and dipped in tartar sauce, there are few other things that will make your mouth sing so sweetly. Becca let me have some of her clam chowder too...wow.

After eating we skipped down to the end of the street, excited to buy our tickets for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, only to find that admission was thirty dollars, and no one was willing to pay that amount. It was a bummer.

As we meandered back up the street, we stopped at a few specialty stores and souvenir shops. Now, this picture has a pretty funny story to go with it. I took the picture silently and immediately continued walking down the street, leaving her there with her eyes still tightly shut. It wasn't for another good minute when I finally heard her realize what I'd done. "LAAAAAAUREN!!!" were her exact words, I believe.

After looking at a huge candy store, searching for vintage Star Wars posters, and buying specialty root beer (in a bottle), we decided it was time to go to the beach. It was a cool sixty-five degrees outside, and with the ocean wind blowing it was more than enough to keep our sweaters on.

Becca set off on a search to find treasure among the sand - and she did!

At first, it was a charming little rock. Nothing much, really - but soon a collection started to form.

The beach was (and still is!) beautiful.

And you can't go to the beach without someone getting buried. Obviously...

All in all, it was a day of refreshing. A chance to escape for a while on the cool sands of Monterey while enjoying the company of good friends. Life isn't always so serious, ya know. It's good to lighten things up every so often :)

The "HA!" Game.

Ever heard of it? :)

You have searched me and known me!

The syntax of my life had come into deep questioning these past two months of living in Fresno. I spent many nights staring up at the ceiling, wondering if splashing myself with icy water would startle me out of this surreal dream.

Every day had me in heaps, it seemed. I would write out a list of errands and things to get done for the day, and then plug in certain locations into my GPS so I could find my way around. It would then proceed to lead me on a wild goose chase through every nook and crevice of the Central Valley. Multiple times did I find myself bloodying my hands on the dashboard, upon the realization that I had been driving in circles.

(disclaimer: there was actually no blood involved.)

The point I'm trying to make is that even the simplest things in life left me in confusion.

I mentioned in a previous blog that I had been discouraged since coming here. For about a year the Lord has taken me through a series of odd, painful, sometimes heartbreaking, trials. I say trials, not tests, because I'm pretty sure given the opportunity I wouldn't have been able to pass any "test" - God had to pry certain things out of my hands. And it hurt.

Coming here seemed like it would be some sort of salve - a place to run off to so I could lick my wounds and start over. It turned out to be the exact opposite - God took me by the shoulders and turned me around to face deep, deep hurt. Things I thought I could escape by coming here. He reached down and started replacing lightbulbs in my spirit - ones I had let burn out so that parts of me could remain dim and untouched. I thought I could forget - but what I didn't consider is that God wouldn't forget. Even when I was least expecting it it was at the forefront of His mind. It was time for Him to deal with me.

After experiencing God's wrath in my life (wrath being defined as living without Him and His guidance), I have come to know and deeply revel in the weight of grace He has placed on my mantle. It brings tears to my eyes to think about it. Being able to see firsthand His marvelous work in your life through His divine intervention makes me feel ultimately privileged.

Two days ago I felt God bring me to the other side. He helped me finally close the door on one season of my life. For the first time I had no questions. I had no excuses or reasons why. It was just surrender. Complete surrender. That same day I received a call from Golden1 Credit Union, offering me a job starting on Monday. This interview process was one I had completely given up on (it started on June 11 - the last day of my job in Olympia), but now I see His timing. Wow....wow. I remember such laughter bubbling up from my insides. I cannot explain to you how grateful I am to Him. Grateful that He would choose to show His mercy on me. What have I done?

I hope when you read this you will rejoice with me, because we serve a good God. He is sovereign. His ways are not my ways! His thoughts are not my thoughts! Thank you Jesus :)

"O LORD, you have searched me and known me!

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down

and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,"
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them."

Psalm 139:1-16

let this be my heart, Lord.

"Every morning
I lay out the pieces of my life
on your altar
and watch for fire to descend."

Psalm 5:3
(The Message)

For This Reason

Since there had been a seven month gap between my last two posts, I thought, "HEY, why not post AGAIN?" Can you tell it's almost two in the morning and I can't sleep? Isn't it such an exasperating feeling when your physical body is so exhausted, but your mind won't shut down? Maybe it's a defense mechanism because my subconscious knows that someone is wanted to break into my dreams to steal my secrets....or maybe I've seen Inception one two many times.

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God," Ephesians 3:14-19.

Sometimes when I'm sitting in a service or gathering within the church body, I get frustrated. That may seem a bit vague, but it really is a pretty general statement. Every once in a while this urge flickers inside of me that wants to destroy everything - every tradition, every song, every building set up for a Sunday morning. Don't get freaked out, now...I only said once in a while :)

Most of this frustration comes from finding myself participating religiously in these "churchy" things, for the sake of being "churchy"...for lack of a better word. I want to function in the church body because I have a desire to have a real connection with the Holy Spirit, and for the passionate love of Jesus. I want to pray Paul's prayer to the Ephesians (and other churches, technically) for myself and for other Christians that sometimes get trapped in doing the right things, for the sake of doing the right things. When Paul writes "for this reason," he's referring back to what he talked about in chapter two, "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ," (verse 13).

Lord forgive me if I have ever taken the blood of Christ with a light heart! How can that not affect me, deeply, so deeply that I work and struggle to drop everything hindering me from his sweet presence? Last night I was praying, asking God (for the umpteenth time) why I'm here. It would be so easy, so comfortable to be back in Washington. And then I started to read the beginning of chapter two, "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of our body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."

.....He rescued me from death. And here I am, looking back at what my life once was. Longing for it. How can I, when I have laid out before me a hope and a future? How can I when Christ, being rich in mercy, called me out from a place of temptation into a place where I can trust in him fully, not knowing what tomorrow holds?

This kind of went in a separate direction than I had planned, just in trying to examine my own heart soberly (while half asleep). I pray for my church body, that they would seek Christ earnestly and wholeheartedly, that they would want to know him, but I still see so many dead branches in me that I need to let God prune and throw into the fire. I guess I'm human just like everyone else. I would have liked to think more highly of myself....but I guess not :)

"Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen," (3:20-21).

God's Fields

Imagine with me, if you will, a very large town....

A city, to be specific, located in California, USA, founded in 1872. As of 2010, the population was estimated 505,479, making it the fifth largest city in California, the largest inland city in California, and the 35th largest in the nation. It is smack dab in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, which is in the central part of the state. This is where we retrieve our beloved nickname "The Central Valley."

There are many places to eat in this city. Any place you could think of, really. And (GET THIS) there are Starbucks stores everywhere - and that is saying a lot coming from someone who has grown up an hour away from Seattle, Washington.

One of the more important things to remember is that when the month of June rolls around....it gets hot. And boy do I mean hot. You know you are starting to get used to inhumane conditions when a forecast of 95 degrees brings a sigh of relief! Literally, this thought went through my head, "Oh good, it's going to be cooler today."

This is the place I am tentatively calling "home." Although that hardly seems to be the correct term for it. Nothing here is familiar, and I am getting accustomed to a never ending state of being out of my comfort zone. Imagine going to a Sunday morning service and only knowing 5% of the people who go there.

Do you have some sort of vision stuck in your head of what this might look like? Well, now I will give you a name for it. They call it "Fresno"....in Spanish, "Ash Tree."



Since coming here I have been discouraged. And before I write anything else, I will preface it by saying that this is all part of my adjusting. So please don't think I'm throwing a little pity party here. But needless to say this move has been surreal. Leaving Olympia was a long and arduous process, something I wouldn't want to relive. Maybe it would be comparable to having bamboo chutes shoved up your fingernails (I am currently debating on whether or not to redact that last statement....but no one is probably going to read this anyway....). Anyway, after three long months of having to say goodbye I wouldn't say that moving here brought any sort of reprieve from that pain. Not that I have been depressed or melancholy, but if any of you have left behind relationships that had been a part of your core for so long you might understand.

The discouragement came from wondering if anything I did while I was in Olympia made any difference, especially since I was leaving it all behind. There were a lot of relationships I invested so much of myself into - so what was supposed to happen now that I had no way of maintaining that? How do I start all over again in a community that has essentially grown up together? How do I perpetually meet people and expect to form those deep bonds I had in Washington?

Goodness, I feel like I'm just rambling now. It's been so long since I've written anything of value. After having multiple conversations on this subject, I began to realize how arrogant it has been of me to think that all of my efforts and my accomplishments would be going to waste - since it was God who had been calling me to do all of it in the first place! Does that make sense? All along it was only an effort in trying to be obedient to the Lord, not to earn some sort of high standing in the church. I will admit that at times I did certain things for self-glorifying reasons (which is a whole other blog in itself) but overall, I was just trying to love other people. If God had been the one calling me to pour into these relationships then why would me moving away affect God's call in any way? Why would he let any of that go to waste? Okay, okay. Still rambling. Here's a verse that I have been encouraged by, "I (Paul) planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building." 1 Corinthians 3:6-9.

So in my mind I had my own field. I worked hard, and I produced my own fruit. And in my mind, God was rewarding my fruit. It didn't matter how hard or little I worked, as long as the fruit was there. Needless to say, I was wrong. God calls us to work hard, to labor for his kingdom. To break our backs for the Gospel. He rewards us for that labor, because we are laboring in obedience. If God rewarded us based on how many people got saved through our ministry, think of how miserable Jeremiah's existence would have been! No one listened to him! He became a laughingstock from declaring words that the Lord had given him.

If there is one thing I've learned over the past year, it's that God is in control, and there's not much I can do about it. For so long I was formless clay telling my potter how to form and mold me. Ridiculous. Though sometimes I get discouraged here, I get lonely, ultimately I have joy in my precious Savior. He rescued me. And I know that by being here I am being obedient to him. I may have this lofty idea in my head of the Woman of God I aspire to be one day - but I can't just get there. Every single day I have to give control to God. Every single morning I have to wipe my eyes and say, "Your will be done." And it will be - and if I continue to let God have a hold on my life day to day, then everything else falls into place. I don't have to worry about tomorrow!

Ah....I think I wrote this more for myself than anything else. God has been good to me.

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.