Stuff that’s happened lately…
Girls nite…Limo all night (except for slight abandonment at the resturant, but he made up for it)
Got our pictures taken
And had yummy food.
Very cheezy
Anna had a lovely baby shower by Mrs.Embry
with yummy food
And a whole new set of girls from the youth center came over to my house. My word, they grow up quick.
And we made yummy food
Notice the connection?
“What is the secret to great living? Entire separation to Christ and devotion to Him. Thus speaks every man and woman whose life has made more than a passing flicker in the spiritual realm. It is the life that has no time for trifling that counts.”
“We often ask the question, “what is the harm of it?” about reading certain books, following certain pursuits, taking our recreation in certain ways…We spend a precious hour by deliberate choice over something not worthwhile. We long to live life to the uttermost, to touch souls to eternal issues. Entire separation to Christ and devotion to Him is required. There is no other path to reach our goal? There is not. Ours should not be the love that asks, “How little?” but “how much?” the love that pours out its all and revels in the joy of having anything to pour on the feet of its Beloved. The question “what is the harm?” falls from us and is forgotten when we see Calvary, the Crucified, the risen-again Rabboni of our souls.” –Amy Carmichael
Seven women joined Amy Carmichael serving in India. They signed these principles:
My vow–Whatsoever Thou sayest unto me, by Thy grace I will do it
My constraint–Thy love, o Christ, my Lord
My confidence–Thou art able to keep that which I have committed unto Thee
My joy–To do Thy will, O God
My discipline–That which I would not choose, but which Thy love appoints
My prayer–Conform my will to Thine
My motto–Love to live; live to love
My portion–The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance
So I get it. You get older, and there comes this line in life where you step over it and BOOM, you realize you are not getting younger. And that not all those ideas and dreams buzzing around your head are going to come true. And that you should hurry and wake up, figure out which ones you are really going to work to make happen–and then do it.
Perhaps this is called becoming an adult.
And you can call this post “Rachel needs a Man” if you want…but that isn’t what it is. I read “Bravehearted Gospel” and it explained some things to me. Yeah, I saw a pretty good picture of the kinda guy I would like (someday), but more than that, it showed me ME.
The book puts it like this: there is a feminine side and a masculine side in Christianity. Like men and women, they are not better than the other, but both are equally important, and both are needed for balance.
Feminine side:
Emphasis on mercy, forgiveness, beauty, allure, relationship, unity, acceptance, embracing, feeling, intuition
Masculine side:
Emphasis on holiness, righteousness, conquering, achiving practical goals, repairing what is broken, accuracy of truth, preservation of sound doctrine, just need to wage war for the right, to uproot the wrong.
*
I am doing pretty good on the feminine side (Knock on wood), but I need a better balance. God has taken me on journeys of his mercy and forgiveness, so that I can show it to others…but what about standing for holiness and righteousness? I am thrilled and stop to see the beauty and allure that draws me to God with the strongest power I have ever felt–but what about conquering and achiving practical goals? What about actually DOING it?
Unity and acceptance–God has given special people to teach me these, but have I dropped the accuracy of truth and repairing what is broken–not willing that anyone should stay in the mud that catches us all so easily?
On September 11 I cried for those who lost their lives, but I also cried that the only people willing to die for what they believe in are terrorists. I hate fighting–I see it every day–I hate war and killing and the sorrow it brings so many, the criplied lives that have to continue on. But I wept for the beauty that I saw on “The Last Samurai.” Because there is something so achingly beautiful and necessary in waging war for the right, and uprooting the wrong–something that I hide from, because I am afraid of the pain, the inconvienience, the rejection.
No more, dear God, no more. Pick me up when I fall.
The fine line in the middle is there, but I spend more time falling into one ditch or the other…or climbing back out. Not too much time walking the line. But I have been there. And it is a good place to be. And I want to go back–or go forward–or however the best way is to get there. THERE–right next to the heart of God. Inside God’s presence.
I have been all over fanatical Christianity…or however you want to label it…conservative, fundamental…I have also dabbed my toes in ideas and experiements and liberal views and reactions and emergent and popular Christianity…or however you want to label that. I have gotten fed up with all of it and wondered if I could just keep God and get rid of everything else. Most often, I have just been lazy and went with whatever happened to be close and convenient and easy at the time, with the population I was with–and that fit in my ever present conscience and guilt issues.
I have been reading some good books lately. So I share them with you. Sometimes I don’t like these books. Sometimes I feel like they are impossible, and the authors just got really lucky and are now shoving it in my face. Or that I have already messed up too much and can’t have the ideals I used to hold to when i was late teens/early twenties. Or that I know too much now, and my bliss is forever shattered by reality.
But most of the time I love them. They call out to something in me which will not be silent. Something that calls me on, no matter the cost. It calls me to remember moments that I consecrate as the dearest to my heart–the moments when I am the real me. The me that I want to be–the me that is a part of something BIGGER.
I don’t want to lose that while I walk to philosophy class that holds an overwhelming majority of agnostics. I don’t want to lose that while I break up a fight between kids who know no other way of solving their problems. I don’t want to lose that while training with successful American 20somethings in California. My life is moving so quickly, and the little Christian bubble I had when I was younger is gone. I am the minority, and it is a great big beautiful and terrible world out there. The beautiful part is harder to deal with than the terrible.
And…I don’t have numbered points on what I need to do. The older I get, the less things seemed to be organized, durn it. But I can call out to God and ask at any moment. That is even better.
Eric and Leslie Ludy are the authors. They have websites too. Top books I’ve read recently by them:
Meet Mr.Smith
Set-Apart Femininity
Answering the Guy Questions
The Bravehearted Gospel
First month with a cell phone:
Lost: not yet
Forgotten: only once (today)
Minutes: 629 (out of 1000)
Texts: 246 (out of 1000)
Internet: .2 (out of 30 mb) (I just figured out how yesterday)
Signature: “Lil Ray” (Key’aunna put it on there. I don’t know how to change it)
Unexpected: laziness. I used my phone (downstairs) to call my mom (upstairs)
Benefit: Keeping in better touch with the girls from the youth center
I feel like I have connected with some people more than i would have otherwise. While my phone use is up, my e-mail response time down.
I feel powerful and affluent when they say “please turn down your cell phones” and it means me.
I really like surprise calls/texts that say “Hey, just thinking about you.”
I am a bad txter. slllllllooooooow. I normally just give up and just call the person.
Driving and talking. hmmm. I like the speaker phone thing, but forgetting to turn it off results in earaches.
Walking to class gives me time to call random people instead of complain about the long walk from the parking lot to class.
Overall: It was time to get a cell. I enjoy it. call me sometime:)
…or something close to it.
Another fight at the youth center tonight. This one, thank goodness, was not involving many of our “usual” kids, and had to do with issues outside the center (as well as taking place outside the gate). But it still doesn’t make it any better a mess to deal with.
Someone had jumped someone and so someone called someone who then called up his friends…
As we get ready to take the kids home in the bus, coats and hoodies come flying off and all i see is some light skinned guy getting banged in the middle. I made sure all the lil kids were on the bus and that there were no girls involved. Then i grabbed hoodies. you can keep a safe distance and pick off the outter guys, grabbing their hoodies and holding tight until the fight moves off to another spot.
My instant reaction is to start preaching to the kid or something. Kayla laughs “You always tell them they need to get God in them when they fight.”
i normally don’t remember what i say. i guess it just falls into whatever i know best. i know God is the answer.
I picked up all the hoodies and began delivering them to their owners–i thought the fight was over. But they didn’t think so. The gang who showed up in a big white van decided they were going to run over kids with the van. in the alley. The kids got out of the way quick enough. I happened to be the closest one, trying to give a kid back his coat. I jumped behind a car to get away, then realized it was MY car that i jumped behind.
So i jumped back up and started yelling “hey! that’s my car!”
they stopped inches from my bumper, and my legs. i really should think before i do things.
The police came and everyone was gone. Scattered whispers on the bus ride home told me bits and pieces of what happened. I don’t know about the van load of guys, but we had a bloody lip and swollen eye on the bus. The biggest news was how Mz.Rachel almost got hit.
*
Please pray for the fighting spirit that is permeated the kids. It seems to be all they think about, talk about, and the little kids feel it the most. They are little, so normally i just grab one and haul them away, but still. They don’t stay little forever. It just seems like a cycle that drags everything and everyone into it.
Praise the Lord, and pray for Corey, who gave his heart to Jesus today. After we prayed together, i went out and told his older brother, Curtis. Curtis thought he was in trouble for something, but when i told him his little brother had gotten saved, he got teary eyed. Curtis, Corey, and I shared a big hug and i said “we all family now.”
10 things i have learned about love. in honor of (past) valentine’s day:
1. What you want–you really want–you go after until you get it or you realize it wasn’t what you really wanted
2. Everyone thinks of something different when they hear the word “Love.” We are constantly growing into and from our definition of love
3. Love makes anything it touches beautiful. It should be included everywhere.
4. I am not a good student of my heart. I always let it surprise me: “You are in love with WHO???”
5. I have never regretted loving, even when it brings pain. It is ALWAYS worth it.
6. I want to be a student of love. It is something i will always be learning about–smashing my old expectations about–all my life.
7. I love drowning in God’s love. It is a beautiful death.
8. You can’t kill, force, or control love. You can submit it. give it back. And at least for me, a huge part of love is LETTING GO. of my expectations. of the person. of my personal rights and desires.
9. Love is never wasted. It transforms the average into the best.
10. Love is something that both happens to you and you choose. the mixture of which is which that is changing, fluid, and fluctuates.
11. Love is not attached to actions. I don’t love BECAUSE of what you do. If i did, then you could do something i didn’t like and i could stop loving you. But at the same time, love will lead to actions, because that is what love is. (This nice little paradox is sorta like faith and works in the book of James.)
*
ok. i lied. it was 11 things. oh well. I went out with God on Valentine’s day. We had an amazing time. God likes picnics with plums, hummas, and pita. I looked for God’s favorite flower, but i couldn’t find it. then i realized why: because God’s favorite is palm trees.
and i realized something. God is not my interum date until i find “the one.” He is my date. Forever and always. It’s the guy that makes it a threesome. hmm. that’s a new way of looking at things…
This is butch. Butch is a piranha, also known as the little fish with big teeth. Butch and I have a lot in common. We both recently got back from Brazil. I think I made it in better shape than he did. We are also both misunderstood.
Piranha are not crazy man eaters. Neither am I. in fact, piranha are often vegetarians. I am trying out the whole vegetarian thing myself. How did they end up such a bad rep?
Brazilians love a good show. I should know, after living there for three years. If you want to see a good example, watch some shows on Carnival, their big Marti graw party coming up in a couple weeks.
When Teddy Roosevelt went to Brazil, they made a good show by blockading off bunches of piranha in a small area, starving them, and then throwing in a cut-up cow. It was reduced to bones in seconds, and forming rumors about piranha that continue today. The truth is, they are timid, not attracted by blood, often eat veggies, and travel together because they are scared.
I am a timid fish with big teeth myself, in a way. I work at a youth center in inner city Indianapolis, running the tutorial program and planning the girls program and activities. I was talking to one young man in my stern voice. His little friend behind him says softly “you better listen to her man, she a thug!” and I managed to keep my stern face on a couple more minutes.
Somewhere in there, I got a bad rep. a funny one to imagine–a little suburban girl, homeschooled and carefully sheltered by caring parents–Now she’s a thug.
Integrity, one of the keys of excellence, is being authentic. Whole. When what I say matches what I do and who I am–no matter who is around. While butch and I might have some things in common, he is stuffed, and I am not. He will be stuck with his bad reputation, and I am not. My little friend at the youth center and I laugh about me being a thug, as well as do the rest of my friends and family, when I tell the story.
Integrity has taken me many places, on many adventures, and I am always better off for it. “Put your money where your mouth is” as one friend put it: if you think something should change in the world, then you be that change (says Gandhi). From working with juvenile delinquents to going to Brazil and rocking a deaf street child to sleep, I have wanted to be true to where my heart is, and live out the highest values that I hold: helping others, giving others the opportunities that I have been so blessed with. That is integrity, and what I want to keep living out the rest of my life.
Butch is the tough guy, and he will keep his rough reputation for awhile, but I like where integrity has taken me instead. I like knowing that there is a group of Brazilian children waiting for me to return. I like teasing my little friend at the youth center about being a thug, and so he “better” listen to me. I like wondering where tomorrow will take me.
*
That is how the speech was supposed to go. It didn’t turn out like this. There was stumbling and embarrassment and 20-something successful Americans scare the crud outta me. And then came the reply: The perfect words of what I should have said that came to my head two minutes too late. The perfect words that will never be said because the time has past.
I went to Chicago a couple weeks ago for a day long job interview with Supercamp. I am glad I did it. I stepped outside my box, and I was a little wobbly, but I did not fall. I did not give up, I did not hide. I tilt my head to the side and think “hmm. I could make it if I tried hard enough. If I really wanted that.”
I did it, it is over, and tomorrow is another day of school. Life goes on.
and I got it. Next month, they fly me to California for more training, then South Carolina in July for a month of camps. I come back with a lot of new experiences and a pretty nice paycheck. grin.
The short drive down
New York Street
Takes me from
The university
To the youth center
In ten minutes
Ten minutes is not
Long enough
To adjust my view
From student
To supervisor
Downtown stands tall
In the middle
The windows gleaming
From their high rise
To the dirty snow
Lining Washington and Rural
The transition
From discussing philosophy
To arguing over ‘hoods
From statistics in psychology
To living statistics of the street
From writing papers
To teaching how to write
Ten minutes is not
Long enough
To adjust
I used to think
Counter-culture shock
Was worse than
Culture shock
Now I think the hardest part
Is making the switch
I used to think
Third-world country
Versus United States
Now I find it
In the ten minute drive
Down New York StreetI am reading old school xanga. 2006. dang.
happy thoughts. sad thoughts. life moves onnnnnnnn.
who are those lovely ladies?
Carina–did you straighten your hair?!?
i have on the same scarf and coat today. but new gloves and rubber galoshes.
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