In a recent post, I talked a little about my migraine headaches and shared a testimony of the Lord healing me in the midst of an especially ferocious migraine.

Well… I wanted to share a quick update on that.

It has now been five weeks, and I have not had a single migraine since the one that was healed. Given the frequency of those wretched headaches in the months before then… that’s really good for me.

I have had several really bad headaches, but they were definitely different from a migraine. I’m still praying for an end to those… but I am grateful for what has happened.

Still living in the hope that I will never have another migraine…

Yesterday, I began getting a headache in the evening. Assuming I must be dehydrated, I kept sucking down the water.

Earlier in the day, I had spent some time in the sun. It was 99 degrees outside, so I was pretty sweaty and gross. Since I was so gross, I decided the best follow-up activity would be sweating some more at the gym. Anyone who gets a lot of headaches has probably been told plenty of times that they just need to drink more water. Truth be told, this is the reason that I drink more water than anyone I know. I spend a large percentage of my day swallowing water or using the restroom. (We can safely assume that dehydration is rarely the actual cause of my headaches.) But, I’ve heard it enough that I still assumed my headache that began forming in the evening was due to a drinking failure.

As the night went on and my headache progressed, I realized how much water I had taken in, the frequency with which I needed to empty my bladder, and the reality of how great I felt when I got back from the gym and was in the kitchen, baking. If anything, I might have overdone the water intake for the day.

11:00/midnight rolled around and I started my prayer time, logging into to the blessed prayer room webstream… a lifeline for extended times away. Rose (a beloved part of the extended IHOP-KC family) had surgery coming up within a few hours and there was a lot of emphasis on prayer for healing. And there was A LOT of life on the prayers. I was definitely feeling it, from my little prayer room extension… my bedroom.

Around 1:20, Emily Russell prayed. And that was it. I don’t know what happened, but it was like she cracked something open. I sat weeping on my bed for the next 30 minutes.

Now, crying tends to make my bad headaches worse. (Probably no more than refusing to cry, though.) So it wasn’t looking too good for me and my headache. But I was really dialoguing with the Lord about His desire to heal, His promises to our community, and the promises of scripture. He IS a God who heals.

This might sound weird, but in all of my investigation and searching for my migraine triggers, there is one thing I have noticed that has been terribly consistent (well, kind of two, but I won’t go into the second). You won’t find this trigger listed anywhere that talks about migraine headaches. My “trigger”? Prayer.

The more I have broken my agreement with consistent headaches in my life, the more I have woken up from my place of resigning to it, the more I have asked God to heal me, and the more others have partnered with me in praying for healing… the worse and more frequent they have gotten. Every time I stand for healing prayer in the prayer room or sit in the back row for healing prayer, I am almost guaranteed noticeable backlash in the very near future.

So, as I sat there joining my heart with the prayers of my community and asking the Lord to do what He longs to do, I couldn’t help but laugh at the rapid worsening of my headache.

I don’t understand why it is like that. I definitely don’t fully understand warfare. I’m not OK with the fact that prayer, in essense, seems to make my headaches worse. But I am taking it as evidence that the Lord has finally awakened me to the real battle for my physical healing. He is able to heal me. And I believe that He will. And the “backlash” has given me hope that sickness is desperately fighting against me… grasping on as it ultimately looses its grip on me. I also take it as a sign of hope in my once apathetic and numbed heart. As Moltmann has said: as freedom gets closer, the chains begin to hurt.

By 3 AM, my headache had landed and settled in to its usual loction, right behind my eye. Definitely a migraine.

It was pretty miserable, but not bad enough yet that I couldn’t sleep. It was well after four before I managed to be unconscious, but I did, happily, get a little sleep. A little. Until I finally reached the point where that was impossible.

I spent most of that morning (when I should have been sleeping) pleading with the Lord, trying desperately not to move, and in far too much pain to have any hope of being unconscious. You wouldn’t believe how long I resisted my miserable trip to the bathroom before the desire to NOT wet myself won out. I probably should have let myself throw up at that time. It took a lot of restraint not to. And I might have felt a little better if I had. But I despise vomitting. (As helpful as it sometimes is.)

I returned to my bed, updated my status to ask for prayer, and continued to lay there, pleading with the Lord to do something about the pain.

After some time, sleep came. That in itself felt like a miracle.

I woke up a couple of times to find that I wasn’t in excruciating pain anymore. I would thank the Lord, roll over, and go back to sleep. Such joy!

I finally got out of bed at 2:30. And my head didn’t hurt at all. No, really… not at all. I know migraine headaches can be as short as a few hours, but I can’t say I’ve ever been that fortunate.

I’m usually pretty dizzy and nauseated, with a low-level headache for the day or two after a migraine. But…

I continued through the rest of the day feeling wonderful. As if I hadn’t just suffered through one of my most horrendous migraine headaches. In fact, it didn’t even feel like the day after a migraine. I think twice in the entire day, I felt a little sick/dizzy. But it passed almost immediately and may have been a food thing.

I have never had that happen before. I have never had a headache of that intensity so quickly and completely disappear.

So… my conclusion: prayer works. Thank You, Lord!

As far as I know, that’s the last one. And until I know otherwise, I will continue to live in the hope and possibility that it is.

That’s the tension of waiting for healing. True hope causes you to live every day in the possibility that maybe that’s your day. (Thank you, Leah Morgan, for reminding me of that and helping give me the courage to continue hoping as the circumstances overwhelmed me.) Hope is dangerous. It opens you up to pain (and joy). Because hope deferred truly does make the heart sick. Disappointed hopes are painful because hope is the stubborn resistance to the temptation to be unfeeling and indifferent. Hope like that is only possible by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are too weary, without His strength, to continue in the vibrant life that hope awakens.

So, I am still choosing the life of hope. I am leaning on the Holy Spirit, daily being renewed by His life within me. And the God of Hope is filling me with all joy and peace in believing, causing me to abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:13).

And I am grateful for His healing power, manifesting itself in the world, in my life.

John 14-16 is presently one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Jesus’ words. He speaks a great deal about three of my favorite topics: Holy Spirit, hope, and love.

Actually, now that I think of it, the Holy Spirit and hope are THE two topics that I am actually highlighting in my current Bible. And love is something I have been seriously focusing on for the last 5 months. No wonder I love this passage so much!

Throughout His dialogue, Jesus elaborates several times on the immanent sending of the Holy Spirit and how this person of the Trinity would serve and help us. (Ah! God’s humility!) I love it when one person of the Trinity talks about another person of the Trinity. They actually do it quite a bit. It’s beautiful! If anyone knows about God and has something to say about God… it’s God.

The hope topic isn’t necessarily evident in a quick scan of the passage. This is primarily because he uses the language of peace, joy, and believing.

And then we have love. Jesus keeps coming back to this theme. And He especially focuses on defining love as obedience.

This post was originally going to be about obedience. I was having one of those really good conversations with the Holy Spirit that felt like it needed to overflow into verbal expression. But then, as I sat down to write… I realized that I wanted to talk about a lot of things from this passage. And that I was so enamored with the other two subjects that I could not leave them alone in order to maintain some level of focus for this post.

So we have, instead, an introduction. I have decided, in my failed attempt to stay on the one topic, to start a tiny series of posts on John 14-16.

I’m not looking at the passage right now. In fact, I haven’t for a few days. So right now I am simply talking from what has stuck with me in the last few months as I have been looking at it and talking to the Lord about it.

From those recollections of the things that have most struck me, I would say that these three topics are essentially the three main themes of this passage. If I sat down and looked at it more analytically, I might change my stance a bit. But, my study of the Bible happens in the context of relationship and primarily exists as dialogue with God about God. (Let us all remember, prayer and love are literally my primary occupation. Sigh… I love life as an intercessory missionary. Apart from being at the core of my job description, though, these are truly what we are called to as Christians.)

So, as I talk about this passage, I will be emphasizing the things that have been the highlights of these “conversations” with God. So, whether hope, Holy Spirit, and love=obedience are the three main themes of this passage or not… I can almost guarantee that they will be the three main themes of this little series.

I’m not going to make any promises about how quickly these posts will be written. I am simply going to state my intent to write them and follow through with that at whatever pace my schedule allows.

I also cannot make any guarantees concerning the length of the series. I anticipate that there will probably be three posts, one for each topic. But… then again… I anticipated, upon sitting down to blog, that I was writing one post about obedience. And now… here I am, introducing a series. So who knows what this will look like when all is said and done.

In any case, I am excited about it. This is the stuff that is moving my heart. I love to talk about the things that move my heart. (Now that I have a heart that moves and all. Thank You, God, for reviving the heart that I spent so many years trying to numb and deaden!)

Yay fun!

So, I’m really in love with the Holy Spirit right now.

Fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit is one of the wisest things Mike has ever told me to do (from the platform). Fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit is one of the wisest things I have listened to Mike about and done. The Holy Spirit is so easy to talk to.

Most of my childhood, I struggled with anxieties related to abandonment and neglect. (…Despite that fact that I was the only child of two fantastic, godly people. They weren’t PERFECT, and the accuser is all about working fear in our hearts.) The Holy Spirit never leaves. He is ALWAYS with us. He will be forever. His presence is inescapable.

It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we abound in hope. As many of you have surely realized by now, hope has become one of my big things… the things that I think about and talk about and pray about all the time. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives me joy and peace. He is the one who teaches me and reminds me of the promises of God and causes my heart to come alive in waiting for those things.

John 14-17 is my current obsession in the Bible. Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit quite a bit in those little chapters. And it’s beautiful. I love it when one of the persons of the Trinity speaks about another person of the Trinity. Few things are as beautiful as one person’s description of another that they love and know perfectly.

The Holy Spirit serves me all the time. What humility! God lives in me. God serves me. (How much do we ask for the ministry of the Holy Spirit.)

The Holy Spirit is my Comforter. When you stop numbing pain and running from it, a Comforter is a pretty handy thing to have.

He is the Spirit of Truth. I am becoming a lover of truth. He is making me a lover of truth.

He is the Spirit of Life. He has awakened my dull, deadened heart and made me alive. He has made me love life. He is renewing me. He is renewing the earth. He is preparing a bride for the worthy Bridegroom.

He leads me into all truth. I want to pursue the knowledge of God and all that He would reveal to me with all that I am.

He gives me strength and grace to overcome. He empowers me to love.

He reveals Jesus. Jesus reveals the Father. I know God by talking to God. And He delights in giving revelation as I hunger and search.

He makes me love Jesus. He makes me love the Father.

He leads me perfectly.

I LOVE the Holy Spirit. He is my friend. He is  my companion. He is God… WITH me.

Holy Spirit = WOW. (Like, hours and hours and hours of WOW… in tears and joy and wonder and love and all of the richest of emotions.)

As I mentioned in my last post, I am meeting this Silent Siege with excitement AND a little trepidation. (And it’s funny how similar excitement and trepidation can be.)

On one hand, I am in the middle of reading this REALLY obnoxious book called “Invitation to Silence and Solitude”. The book is actually quite phenomenal, it just stings a lot. As I am reading the book and seeking to develop these disciplines, I take the corporate invitation to silence as a welcome gift.

On the other hand, I am presently wrestling through some very intense things. Being alone in the silence with nothing but God, the accusations that are arising against Him, my own tossed-about emotions, and the deep wells of pain that I am stumbling upon is actually quite terrifying.

Something in me longs for distraction, anything that I might hide behind. Idle chatter… anything. Yet I know that I need to just press into this and fight it out until I come out fully surrendered and leaning on God. God seems pretty determined to work these things out in me… and I’m feeling rather hedged in at the moment. This Silent Siege being a pretty significant part of that hedging.

On top of that… we have the season of heightened grieving that I have recently found myself in. And, as it so happens, my mom died during the 90 Days of Consecration that I mentioned in my last post. I actually missed the first days of the consecration because I was home visiting my family. It was the last time that I saw my mom.

So… here I am… in a room full of people… in silence… in solitude… alone in my grief. Unsure about the things that are of utmost importance, unsure about God. Encountering pain that I cannot put into words. Crying a lot… in the silence… by myself.

I can’t stop talking to the Holy Spirit. I am so desperate for His counsel… His comfort… His instruction… His tangible nearness. I need to know what He knows… I need the knowledge of God, the fear of the Lord. I need Him to teach me what only He can teach me… I need him to communicate the love of God to me in a way that I can believe it, despite all of my doubt and confusion right now… despite the accusation that the world heaps against God. I need to know that He loves me like a mother. I need to know that I am not forsaken. I need to know that He hates death and hates wickedness. I need to know that Jesus REALLY is coming back and He REALLY is going to bring justice on the earth. I need to know that it’s true.

I have all of the ideas in my head. My experience of God cannot disprove those facts. But the accusation still persists.

I’ve believed before. You might even say that I believe it right now. But I certainly didn’t believe it (not really) several hours ago.

On top of that… we received some really terrible news tonight. More death… more loss. And there the news follows us… into the silence. Here I am… speachless and silent on the outside… but full of tumult, a violently raging storm on the inside. As if I wasn’t already struggling to believe truth about God.

I didn’t sing much tonight. All of the words felt like a lie. So I really did sit there in silence. Save for the time I spent weeping.

All of the things I have been proclaiming and declaring as my hope for the last year… my testimony of the Lord, it’s like it has been turned into a weapon against me. Few phrases have moved my heart like “Your name is Faithful and True” in the last 18 months. But tonight, those words drove me from the room… angry and confused… and desperate to believe the truth. I reached the outside of the little Justice prayer room and immediately was overcome by my emotions. I sat alone, in the cold… gasping for air as I sobbed.

Most of my dialogue with the Lord in these last few days is too personal to take outside of that relationship. God has heard and I have heard. And the conversation isn’t leaving that place. At least right now, it isn’t. But His leadership is perfect and He is violently uprooting areas of offense in my heart. It feels like a contradiction to say that I trust Him as He does it. Since this whole question of trusting Him is really the issue right now anyway.

I know the truth. At least right now I do. But I know that I’m not done wrestling. I don’t fully believe it yet. There are still more questions that I need to keep asking. There is still more honesty to be reached in that place that is only shared by God and myself.

Silence is terrifying. There wait all of the lies. There wait all of my emotions. There wait my fears. There waits the truth. There waits God.

But I have nowhere else to be. So, for the next 2 months, here I go… into the silence.

Shortly after my mom died, I remember several people telling me (if I was even remotely OK at the time they saw me) that I was in shock and it was all going to hit me later.

In case there is any question in this matter, this certainly did nothing to encourage me. It did nothing to help me in the grieving process. It just made me really mad. …REALLY mad.

I was feeling A LOT of pain. I was encountering a deeper loss than I had ever known, and I was exercising that newly-learned skill of NOT shutting down emotionally. I was frustrated by the fact that me being able to rest in the Lord’s goodness and faithfulness (and stop crying for just a few minutes together) necessarily meant that I had a whole heap of deeper pain and sorrow lurking around the corner somewhere.

So, I was annoyed and did my best to ignore them, continuing to keep my heart open and meet the Lord in the midst of the most painful loss I had ever experienced.

And then the last week started up… and I realized that I was entering into another intense season of grieving my mother’s death.

It’s difficult to explain. In fact, I don’t even know how to begin to try. But I know that I am encountering deep wells of pain. I know that I am asking the hard questions (Why didn’t You heal my mom?) and crying a lot.

Right after my mom died, God’s goodness was so inescapable. He was good… He was faithful… I could trust Him. And I knew it beyond a shadow of doubt. I opened my heart up to feel and experienced some of the most horrifying, awful feelings I had ever encountered. But God was so close, so present through all of it.

What I knew about God at that time was certain. I could not question it… I KNEW it. Sometimes, the only thing I could pray (as it felt like everything around me was being completely shattered) was “I trust you.” I would just sit there, between floods of tears, and whisper, “I trust you. Help me.”

But I am presently encountering a doubt and uncertainty within my heart that I cannot ignore. The other night, I was pleading with God, “I need to know why I trusted You. I need to remember why I thought You were good. I need to remember why I thought you were faithful.” Because those realities felt so far from me.

I can’t imagine many things more frightening than realizing that I don’t trust God. I mean… really… if I don’t believe His promises and I don’t believe that He is on my side… that He is the Lord God gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness… then I am completely without hope. If those things are not true of Him, then surely he is going to play sick and torturous games with me, for some twisted sense of amusement, and then crush me like an insect. If I can’t trust God, then I have no hope. Then things will never be better than they are.

During our 2 AM set on Friday, I was experiencing a moment of profound honesty… in my own heart and before the Lord. The team was singing, “I trust You. I cast my cares on You. You have not withheld any good thing from me. Why should I be anxious for anything? I trust you.” But this was not the declaration of my own heart. I sat there, screaming internally, “I don’t trust You! You have withheld good things! Of course I’m anxious!”

Fortunately, God is confident enough in who He is that the acknowledgment of those realities couldn’t shake Him or drive Him away from me.

At church Sunday morning, I completely lost it. I was lightly crying or on the verge of tears through much of the service. But it was after the prayer at the end that the dam broke. “God… who loves you like a mother.” Ouch. I don’t really believe that right now, do I? (Oh… and our closing song was Joyful, Joyful. Certainly not the emotion of the moment, for me. But, more than that, there were all of these piercing lines in the song that were hitting on areas of accusation and unbelief within my heart.

I know His leadership is perfect. Ultimately, I think I still trust Him. I’ve had brief respites where I am declaring that trust with confidence before God, where I am singing with all of my heart that I trust Him, His leadership. But then the uncertainty and the questions arise.

I have a fair degree of confidence concerning how this whole thing is going to end. But I know that I am really wrestling with truth right now. I am really fighting to believe those things that are most central to my being. I am struggling for the faith that carries my hope. I am encountering the questions that arise out of situations like this. We are working this thing out… until the truth is residing deep within my soul… where I am living and breathing out of that place of trusting God and knowing who He is. When I rest again in Him.

Is this what they’re talking about when they call something a crisis of faith?

The mess of 2007 is gone. I don’t live in it anymore.

Now, when I say the mess of 2007 in this instance, I mean the disaster that my living space became as my emotional chaos began to manifest itself in large-scale physical realities.

When I lost my mom, I couldn’t “keep it together” anymore. In some ways, I think that was actually a good thing for me to finally lose control. I encountered the realities of my weakness. I became utterly dependent upon the Lord and the incredible community that He put me in. I found the freedom to let go… to breathe… to live.

Of course, things did get a little out of hand. And the mess I had made was quite overwhelming as I began to fight my way out of it.

Adding to the state of “Hold on! STOP!!!!!!!!!!!! Can we keep it at maybe just 10 things that are rushing at me all at once???”… I was beginning to take my first steps out of the prison that I had been living in, that I had willfully walked into. The silencing of my own voice. The concealment of my own self. The resignation and dissipation of what God had created. The relinquishing of the life and joy that God had set before me.

Cleaning my room was an emotional task. The whole process was VERY tied to my mom. It involved a lot of sitting and crying.

Without Richard’s unrelenting “encouragement” (or, shall we say, prodding and threats) to clean my room, it would have taken a lot longer before I gave that any real attention. It was such a daunting task.

There’s one thing about that Richard: He harasses me. He assails me–he goads, prods, pokes, nudges, urges, and spurs me–with uncompromising persistence. He agitates me out of my resignation. He disrupts my “blissful” friendship with the status quo. He provokes me to press into freedom. He calls out realities and disturbs my “contented” delusions. He exposes the hideous truth behind the apparent utopia that I am subscribing to. He alerts me to the actual. He sobers and awakens me, setting the truth before me in such a way that I CANNOT linger in my groggy, intoxicated state. He challenges my cowardly acquiescence to “the way it is”.

He’s a little bit like hope, in that way (per Jurgen Moltmann’s remarkable explanation of what hope is and does, as articulated in his Theology of Hope). It’s actually rather annoying. An annoyance that I am extraordinarily grateful for.

So, disillusioned and newly incapable of being “content” with chaos, I began to clean. I made significant progress in the task. I had to… or Richard was going to help me do it (an idea that I was decidedly against).

It was a mess like none I had ever created before. But I was beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel–my room was beginning to approach clean. I had only two remaining sections to complete… my bookcases and my kitchen things.

And then my sudden constant-out-of-town-ness happened. And it’s REALLY hard to keep things clean when you are in a continuous state of coming and going. Constant travel is not particularly conducive to maintaining a clean room. Especially when you are emotionally and physically exhausted because you are so incredibly busy. I lost a significant portion of the progress I had made.

But, at least, it has ended.

It is done. My room is clean. And I cannot describe how amazing it feels.

My room (actually a new room, which I will explain some other time) is clean… organized… peaceful… calm… and blue. I walk into it and my heart swells with that inexplicable light, and free feeling. It has become a sanctuary. It has become a place of rest and meeting.

I can’t wait to get back home… to that beautiful symbol of my gradual coming-out-of-the-muck-and-mire. I can’t wait to step into that space again and just breathe.

Cassie sang an old Misty song during her 4AM set tonight. Of course, when I say “old”, I mean that my primary memories of the song happened at least two years ago. Two years isn’t exactly a long time… but when you consider how many songs Misty has written since then… you can arguably call the song “old”.

Anyway… the strong struck me in a new way tonight. Well, it wasn’t exactly new. But it found synthesis with this whole other body of thought that has been a significant part of my life for the last couple of years. So I’m blogging about it.

Here are the words:

Happy am I to live a hungry life
And blessed am I to thirst
Disillusionment, it is my gift within
I am blessed, I am blessed among men

Happy am I to live a hungry life
Blessed am I to thirst
My desire for You, it is my gift within
I am blessed, I am blessed among men

It may seem a little twisted (like so many other amazing songs that Misty has written)… but it’s truth.

These words describe the life of hope in this fallen, broken world. Hope awakens a dissatisfaction with the way things are… so far from what they should be. Sin and death are reigning in the earth. Living in hope, we believe God’s promises of life, to make all things new and to bring righteousness on the earth. We believe it with joyful confidence. And believing that the world can and WILL be restored like this necessarily agitates those subtle places where have reconciled with the mess that we’re in. We lose the illusion that everything is OK… that things aren’t so bad. When we know what we are missing, we aren’t so happy with what we have. Disillusionment is a gift!

True hope allows us to live in reality without being utterly devestated by the injustice all around us. Rather than convince ourselves that things are OK, we are able to look at the world around us with sober eyes. We can come to terms with the fact that creation has a reason to be groaning right now and still keep moving forward. Because there is something different for us in the future. Delusion and resignation aren’t our only answers. We can see things as they are and long for the day when they WILL be made right. It’s impossible for God to lie and He said He’s going to do it.

Jurgen Moltmann articulated this stuff far better than I can in his “Theology of Hope”. It’s a pretty intense book, but I strongly recommend reading its introduction. It’s beautiful… and it has been changing my life.

Jesus is coming back. He’s going to fix everything. He’s going to make everything right… because it ISN’T right now. It’s a mess! This is not how God wants it! This is not how He is going to leave it! He has not altogether forsaken us and He will not forget us forever.

The Spirit and the bride say come!!! (Also in the song… but, more importantly, concluding the hopeful message of the book of Revelation.) God has good things for us. We have the first-fruits of those things now… but He has yet to bring the fullness.

Rightly do we long and groan and hunger and thirst for that day when all things will be made right. Blessed are we who hunger and thirst for righteousness! Jesus said it, Himself, those words of life and hope: we WILL be filled!

Come, Lord Jesus!

As any sleep-forsaking group of church-lovers would do… we stuck around for the first of their two normal Easter Sunday services. Well, 5 of us stuck around. Our other visitors from the night watch (a total of about 7 additional people) decided not to embrace insanity and went home to sleep.

Because it was Easter, the church was quite crowded. And Richard and I were a little slow in making it back to the room. (A small group of us had followed Mother Anne back to her office where she invited us to share a baked treat that someone had brought her.) When we sat down, we realized that our little space on the pew was rather crowded. So Richard decided we should just go for it… we sat in the very first row (which, big shock, was still WIDE open).

I actually really enjoyed the experience from the first row. Primary reason? The tulips. The front row allowed for much easier viewing and appreciation of what I think just may be God’s most beautiful flower. Just a few feet in front of us is where the tulips and easter lilies were generously spread in celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

I also enjoyed the experience of really being up in there and a part of everything that was happening. It was really cool. (And it was perhaps the first time that I would have actually been comfortable with being so near all of the people who actually knew what was going on the whole time.) But… I mostly just stared at the flowers… thanking Jesus for the gift of their presence that Easter morning.

I think there was a huge grin on my face through about 95% of this entire service. I was just happy… inexplicably happy. (Even the growing ache in my face, from excessive happy-facing, did not dim my elation.)

The biggest highlight of the whole service took place near the beginning. We actually sang the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. (What a beautiful piece of music!) Of course… I didn’t sing much of it. I just stood there with my eyes closed and a huge smile on my face, enjoying God and enjoying His people.

We also sang “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” in both services. I was singing it all day on Easter Sunday and the thing is still stuck in my head! Praise the Lord… He is risen indeed.

Another highlight of Easter Sunday – trumpets. I enjoyed them… when I wasn’t singing. (They were great during the musical pieces when no one was singing… and I even thought they were a nice touch during the hallelujah chorus. But a few wrong notes and my general distaste for trumpets made them really throw me off the rest of the time. But I still had that crazy joyful smile plastered on my face. Even trumpets couldn’t take the joy of Easter Sunday away from me.)

All of Sunday morning was amazing. Until the final fulfillment of all God’s promises… until the trumpet (which I’m sure I’ll appreciate) sounds and the whole church gathers together to meet Him in the sky, I don’t know if any church experience will ever quite compare to the celebration of Easter. (But, by all means, Lord… bring it on! Surprise me!)

Oh what a beautiful day that will be. He is, after all, only the firstborn from the dead. That’s what makes all of this so exciting. Praise the Lord!

Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

I have to say that the Easter Sunday services were the most incredible church experience I have ever had. By the time we left, my face actually hurt from smiling so much.

The first service we attended was the 6:30 sunrise service… the Easter Vigil. The service began in darkness with the lighting of the Paschal candle. They brought the candle in with the proclamation of “The light of Christ” and we all lit our own little candles from this same fire.

My first experience with the little candles was the Christmas Eve Service. Those little guys sure do give off a lot of heat! I learned my lesson and made a point of holding the candle a good distance from my face this time. (I am proud to say that it made quite a difference. No sweat emanating from my pores, this time!)

Mother Anne gave the sermon during that service. And her message was PHENOMENAL. Seriously. As she spoke, it felt like she has been reading parts of my journal. It’s one of the best messages I have heard in a long time.

Two children were baptized and received into the community at the Easter Vigil. I have to admit that these baptisms did not move me as profoundly as other baptism services that I have attended. There’s something about the picture that is presented by watching someone go under the water and then rise again into life in Christ. Still, there was something that was really cool about the way we all participated with them, as a community. How we joined them in renewing our baptismal vows (which pretty much boils down to reciting the creed, in chunks, and answering a handful of questions with “I will, with God’s help.”) How we welcomed them into the community of believers, exhorting them to join us in the life of hope and obedience and committing to stand with them. “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ? — We will.”

After the baptisms, the clergy even sprinkled the entire congregation with holy water as they left the building. I was conveniently (or not so conveniently) located in the aisle seat, so I got good and wet. No matter how much you brace yourself for something like that, there’s no way to really be prepared for a sudden shower of water, making a swift, horizontal journey to your face.

A few seconds after this, Christina (who was sitting beside me) lost all ability to contain her laughter. Unfortunately, I was not very helpful in this matter. She had to sit down twice and try to pull herself together. It was quite amusing.

The second half of the service began with “Alleluia, the Lord is risen,” and the response, “The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.” And then… the “Holy Noise.”

I have to admit that the Holy Noise caught me a little off guard… but it swept me into ecstatic reality. I was struck with how profound that moment in history was… the moment that we were all gathered to remember and celebrate. The in-breaking of the age to come… the initial glow of the dawning new day, the day whose light we look to and whose fullness we await. When the firstborn from the dead rose again to life, demonstrating the power of God, the power of the resurrection… the power that is available for us and will be fully exercised in us when we are raised to new life with Him. The assurance of our hope. God’s yes to the groans of His anguishing creation.

The whole service was so beautiful. The irregular elements that marked our Easter celebration and the standard components of a regular service alike.

Oh… and I got my tulips. The whole front of the church was beautifully decorated with fresh Easter lilies and tulips. It was wonderful! (I don’t think I have ever become so engaged in looking around and taking everything in when approaching the altar rail to receive communion. It was almost too much. I loved it! All of those delicate little tulips… brought in to participate in the celebration of Jesus’ victory over the powers of death.)

By the time the service ended, the sun had fully risen. What a transition, from darkness into light.