A few weeks ago, we had a very stirring message at our weekly FCF service. (If you are interested, you can buy the MP3 for $2.99 here. I think it is well-worth the money and the time.) Sean Malone, the director of Crisis Response International (CRI), shared and introduced his ministry, which is now becoming more officially connected with the International House of Prayer.

If you haven’t already heard of CRI, I strongly recommend checking out their website: www.criout.com

In summary, CRI is a disaster response ministry. Borrowing a sentence from their website: “Our vision is to train an army of end-time, prophetic, mercy missionaries, mobilized in the spirit of night and day prayer, to release great demonstrations of power, reach the harvest in crisis and rebuild cities on the Kingdom of God. “

Yes… that is a pretty loaded sentence. I am fluent in IHOP-ese and I STILL have a hard time keeping up with that sentence. Rather than unpacking each of those terms here, though, I seriously recommend listening to the message. He breaks it all down and gives a very clear summary of what CRI is all about. (And he tells stories. Who doesn’t love a good story?)

I had multiple people tell me that they were thinking of me during this message. And it makes sense that they were.

When I heard the message, what I experienced was more than being stirred by a great vision. When he cast the vision, it fully resonated with something that I have been carrying in my heart for years. It was an incredible moment. This thing that I have been weeping about for years was beginning to take shape. My own vision found greater clarity and I sensed the beginning stages of something I have carried in prayer finally coming to fruition.

In a few days, I will be heading into the woods with CRI to do a four-day training. I am more excited than I can articulate. I am also fairly nervous. It is a sober but hopeful expectation. I know that I am going to be REALLY stretched. But I feel the Lord in it and I trust His leadership. Please pray for me. The training will be taking place October 8-11.

I have more to say about all of this than I could fairly put in one post, so I will be writing a series of posts about CRI. If it’s any indication, I wrote 14 pages about this in my journal the other night. And training hasn’t even started yet.

If you are interested in hearing the message but don’t have the money (or feel sufficiently MP3-savvy), let me know. We might be able to work something out.

I find myself incapable of blogging, at the moment. The reason? I simply have too much to say.

We, the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, celebrated our 10th anniversary last weekend. 10 years of 24/7 worship and prayer seems like so much… and so little.

As part of the celebration, Mike took us back through the prophetic history. Mike simply shared stories from the last few decades about how the Lord was giving vision for this ministry (really, this movement) and beginning to ready the hearts of our leaders to keep a growing body of mostly 20-somethings centered in the Word and in the heart standards of Intercession, Holiness, Offerings to the Poor, and the Prophetic.

Every time I listen to the prophetic history, it stirs me. Never has it gripped me and shaken with the intensity of this last week. I also felt like I was getting a lot of correction from the Lord as we heard the stories and were given exhortations. Correction is always painful. However, I must also say that I am feeling the Lord’s kindness, in His correction, and that my heart is greatly encouraged.

At the end of the celebration, we committed ourselves to 24/7 works of justice to accompany our 24/7 prayers for justice. This means a much greater emphasis on evangelism and on serving our community. I am so grateful for this. It has been a growing longing within my heart, and I am overwhelmed to see it begin to come to fruition in our community. I have been weeping over this in a distinct way for about a year and a half.

No simple words exist to describe the major shift that is happening in my life right now. I feel like this is such a critical time for me. I can no longer live the way I was living before. I am feeling a greater weight of responsibility. I am also feeling a greater grace to walk in the risky things that the Lord has set before me.

Even in the last week, things have been happening to me in the place of prayer that I have experienced only rarely. And I am finding a boldness growing within me that I never imagined was possible, before.

My heart is full of hope. My heart is also very heavy, as the Lord has been sharing His emotions with me and causing me to feel the pain of injustice. In particular, there is an unsaved man that I have been carrying in my heart this week. Never have I felt such a “burden” of intercession.

I am also getting ready to do training with a ministry called Crisis Response International. I was originally planning on writing about three posts on this alone.

So, as I find time and language, I will begin to give expression to the many things that are shifting within me… and shifting around me. I could write pages about each of the above sentences.

I really encourage you to check out the videos and audio from our 10th anniversary celebration. I will post in more detail, recommending specific videos that are especially meaningful to me. But, if you want to go check it out, everything is available online at www.ihop.org.

More to come!

Bob Sorge spoke on Friday night. Incredible message. Wendy and I watched the archive of it on Saturday night (her sabbath; I love what that girl does with her free time).

I cried. A lot.

Bob talked about the letter to the church in Laodicea (Revelation 3). “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.” He also, as one might expect, talked a bit about Hebrews 12.

In short, I’m feeling loved. Very loved.

I really appreciate it when Bob speaks. It’s a rare event. Due to a vocal injury several (16-ish?) years ago, it is very painful for Bob to speak publicly. Very painful, and little more than the loudest whisper he can muster up. But I find that I am tremendously blessed by it every time he does speak.

It’s amazing what God will do with a heart that says yes to him in the midst of pain and hardship.

If you can, watch the archives of the message. I think we keep all the services archived for at least a week. If nothing else, check out one of Bob’s books. Good stuff. Really good stuff.

Sometimes I wonder if it will ever become difficult, truly difficult, for me to shut down emotionally. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be so alive that I can’t so easily deaden myself.

More specifically, I wondered tonight.

In our worship team briefing tonight, we talked a bit about solitude and silence. (Popular topic, considering our two months of voluntary 12am-6am silence as a community.) We talked about the way that, in the place of solitude, you encounter your anger and your grief.

Anger and greif… ick. Not tonight. Please, not tonight. I’m too tired for this.

Near the beginning of the set, I was talking to the Holy Spirit and I told Him I didn’t want to encounter my grief right then. I told Him I didn’t want to cry that night. I immediately started crying.

It was too much. I shut it down… as quickly as possible. I then proceeded to do everything I could to keep from ACTUALLY praying (i mean… actually talking to God… my friend, my Father, my comforter… the one I talk to every day). I really didn’t want to cry. I really didn’t want to feel pain.

It was an immensely boring (and frustrating) set. I tried reciting my Hebrews memorization for a while. I tried doing a lot of things… just to distract myself from accidentally talking to God again.

I realized a lot of things tonight. I’ll give you 10:

1. I don’t love Him when I don’t feel pain. I can’t. The only way I don’t feel pain is when I choose not to feel. All the words that I sing become empty… hollow. They mean nothing. I remember when they meant something, but they are just words. Gratitude is gone. I cannot love God when I shut my heart down.

2, Hiding from the Holy Spirit is freaking impossible!!!

3. Just whispering the words or barely forming the though of “I miss her” causes a surge of pain to rise up within me. I don’t understand it. But there is still so much pain there. It still hurts so much. I miss my mom.

4, I really do want to feel. I really do want to love God. I really do want to have an open and alive heart. No matter how desperately I may plead with God that I don’t want to feel. I always end up repenting and confessing truth, in the end.

5. It’s still really easy to fall back into my old “kill the emotion!” habits.

6. I’m really confused. I don’t know how not to be hypersensitive and still have a functioning and alive heart. When someone tells me that I AM hypersensitive, my first instinct (which I fall into even unconsciously) is to shut my heart down and not feel anything. I don’t know what it means to be healthy.

7. I’m scared. Really scared.

8. I always laugh harder after I’ve REALLY cried things out for a while. It feels good.

9. I kind of said this already, but I really miss my mom.

10. There are a lot of painful things in life. A lot of them.

So… it was an interesting night. I did (after much successful pursuit of distraction and lengthy avoidance of the prayer room and, especially, of prayer) eventually stop and talk to God. I felt. It hurt. I cried.

And there’s PLENTY more where that came from.

Our community is ever in a state of flux. Perpetual, significant change is just a norm. The intensity and the facets of the seasons of transition ebb and flow. Sometimes there are simple, gradual changes. Sometimes there are huge changes like death and birth, people leaving the country, people leaving the NightWatch.

We seem to have passed into another one of those high-intensity transitional times again.

First, we have the circumstances of change:

The NightWatch schedule is changing for the first time in several years. We almost shifted a few sets around, several months ago, but that very quickly popped back to exactly what it had been for the last several years. We’ve had worship leaders change. We’ve had complete teams disolve and new teams start. But this is the first time in a VERY long time that the whole schedule is being rearranged. And I’m actually really excited about this change.

Two of my closest friends are leaving the NightWatch. Two of my closest friends… who I love and enjoy and spend a great deal of time with. In the past, I might have joined in with those who grieve as if our friends are dying or leaving the country, to never return. I know that our relationships will change, but I know that they are not completely leaving my life. I have peace about the change.

Perhaps death is what has sobered me to the impermanence and potential good of people leaving the NightWatch. Nights to days ISN’T permanant and irreversible. And their lives will continue, as will mine, and the movements of our lives will not be completely without intersection. Not like the aching emptiness of a life that ends and will never dance in and out of my own life again… until the day when everything changes and is restored and made new.

Death has also weighed in a lot in the last month or so. The kind of change that is utterly beyond our control and jolts everything out of place. Change that is not temporary, except in a far broader scale. Sometimes, the comfort of the resurrection isn’t comfort enough. Sometimes the groan for His return and His justice on the earth become so consuming that it seems impossible to keep going. But the same Spirit that groans within me and continues that perpetual cry for Jesus’ return is the Spirit that quickens me to life… filling me with joy and strength and courage to keep living… living fully.

In the week where death had already thrown everything into question and I was deeply wrestling through the “HOW LONG?” dialog that also appears in many of the Psalms, more death seemed to be around every corner. A couple lost their baby. The beloved Dr. Null passed away. Grief and loss spattered my already doubtful, grasping, desperate, and questioning existence. But His leadership is perfect and He continued to lead me through those murky waters. My hope waned and shifted, and it took on a completely new form once it has passed through those refining fires, but hope endured (or perhaps died and reemerged from) those flames.

New life is also an element of change in our community right now. Several of my friends are pregnant. While we are still months away from meeting these babies, God is already shaping their whole selves. Talk to the Lord about a baby who is not yet born and you begin to understand how real and alive they are in the Lord’s eyes… how much He already has in His heart for them. It’s so moving, as He shares glimpses into those lives. Not to mention the constant physical changes that are happening in the baby and even the woman’s own body. (Just ask any pregnant woman… she is well acquainted with steady change.)

My personal schedule and staff designation are also changing… praise the Lord. My days of operations staff are ending and I am returning to a full-time staff designation. This means that I get to spend more time in the prayer room. The prayer room kind of shifts into a higher level of priority again. I am SO excited about this change.

Our government is also in the midst of significant transition. Approaching elections and the leadership shift that follows. Shifting economy and nationwide financial panic. Constantly changing international climate.

Even my relationship with Richard has recently seen significant transition. We’re still moving at a slow pace, but there are firsts in a relationship that naturally make things different after they have happened. Things like the first REAL fight (of a certain nature, at least)… where I was actually fully emotionally present in the midst of the conflict and the majority of our night off was consumed by tearful confrontation.

Let us not forget marriage. Tom and Natina are married, now. And I am going to three more weddings this month. Weddings are pretty significant transitions, if you ask me.

Also, beginning next week I will be teaching again. At least SORT OF teaching. I am partially teaching a class on the book of Daniel for a group of NightWatch Media Apprentices. We’ll meet for three hours, once a week, up until Christmas. I will be teaching about half of the material and facilitating discussion as we go through Allen Hood’s Daniel class. It’s exciting, but also drags me a bit out of my comfort zone again.

Too many things are shifting and changing right now to name them all. But you can surely see from the list that I have already given that there is a lot of transition in our community right now.

I am going to dedicate another post to my general feelings on change at this time.

As a NightWatch community, we are taking yet another step in consecrating our time of prayer before the Lord.

A year and a half ago, we did a thing that we called 90 Days of Consecration. The like-mindedness and eager participation of the entire NightWatch community, when our leadership called us to this consecration, was astonishing. And the 90 days had a profound, lasting impact on our community.

As a part of the 90 days of consecration, we removed all talking from the prayer room, with the exception of communication necessarily to run the prayer meeting.

Around the clock at IHOP, there is a general rule of limiting conversations to 30 seconds. While it’s a nice idea, these typically turn into a string of “30-second” conversations and you will see a lot of talking in the prayer room. (And it really is amazing how distracting a 30-second conversation can really be.)

After the 90 days had ended, we decided to permanently institute the no-talking rule. The truth was, we really liked what it did to the feel of the NightWatch. I truly am stunned by what this did to create a more sacred place for prayer… further enabling us to do what we are here to do.

For the next two months, we have been invited to a voluntary “Silent Siege”. From midnight to 6 AM, they have encouraged us to make it a time of silence, before the Lord. We still sing and pray in the prayer room, and communication necessary to lead the meeting will still happen. But what we are now working to eliminate are the conversations just outside of the prayer room, in the lobby, bathroom, and halls (and the groups of people that tend to gather in front of the building).

There are a lot of little phrases that we are holding as somewhat of a banner over this new consecration, but one of the simplest and clearest of them is: “Silent night, holy night.”

I believe that this consecration (or fast, which you could call it) is going to be a really significant season for our NightWatch community. As we consecrate our time of standing on the wall (all NightWatch staff are asked to keep 36 of their 48 service and prayer hours between midnight to 6 AM, 6 nights a week) we are focusing in on praying for the upcoming elections and the ending of abortion, among other things. (I am perhaps too tired right now to be blogging well about what it is that we are doing.)

When Stuart brought the idea before us, he asked those who wanted to commit to this silent siege to stand up. Virtually everyone in the room was standing. Again, I am overwhelmingly encouraged. We really do go further when we are acting as a community. Unity and like-mindedness are priceless.

The invitation came on Saturday night and we began the Silent Siege tonight. My general reaction to the change: this is a really good thing. I am excited and really do have a lot of anticipation concerning the next several weeks. Specific reaction to one aspect of the experience: riding in the car (from one prayer room to the other) with your boyfriend and a friend IN TOTAL SILENCE is VERY interesting.

Personally, I am both excited and frightened, as we head into this. On one hand, I’m borderline giddy, on the other, I’m terrified. I cannot argue that this thing is not divinely orchestrated. But that is not purely a comforting thought at this moment.

But THAT is a subject for another post.

The IHOP community has drawn a significant number of Houghton College graduates. As time goes on, my affection for this group continues to grow. I am realizing that they are truly among my favorite people.

If I were to give a generalized description, I would say that they are uniquely intelligent, love the Lord, and value prayer. What’s not to love?

My first encounter with Houghton college was in 2003, during my first track of FITN. I remember looking at one of the girls (a fellow intern) on stage with great bewilderment. She seemed adapt to the Harp and Bowl model with almost disturbing ease. It was baffling… until I learned that a group at her school had been doing harp and bowl worship and prayer for some time.

In addition to the Houghton girls in my first track of FITN, there were several Houghton people in my second track of FITN. I made the mistake of praying with them all during small group prayer one night. (I was in a calm, contemplative mood that night, and they… were not.)

Dating one of them in 2006 somewhat deepened my relationship with that group. Actually, breaking up with that individual had a strangely similar effect.

Two of them are fellow lovers of math (including this one). One of them is a worship leader on the team that I have been a part of since moving to KC… and he lets me help him with his FSM classes and his papers. Two led a morning prayer room team that I was briefly a part of. I am attempting to regularly have coffee/tea with one of them. I go to church with three of them. I have never actually met, but truly enjoy, one of them. And so on… and so on… and so on…

I’m sure that I wouldn’t have the same excessive enjoyment of everyone at Houghton. And perhaps I would not have loved them as dearly if I had known them in college. But, for now, I really appreciate the ones who have moved to our community and I am happy to call them my friends. They’re a great group.

(I stole the above term from someone else. I had to use it. Donething makes me ridiculously happy upon every utterance.)

It consumed the last two months of my life, but it has finally come to and end. Here are the things with which I am walking away from this onething conference:

~ Charleen Wells is one of the most fantastic people I have ever met. I don’t know how she does it. But she is incredible.

~ I love my boss. I now have an even deeper respect for that woman.

~ My job would have been much easier with a couple of trained pack-mules.

~ Quarters are important. Very important.

~ Money is filthy.

~ Conference delirium is really fun. I found myself happier and happier at the end of each “exhausperacting” night.

~ When you do what Char and I were doing… you’re just going to get stupid by day 2. That’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter how intelligent you are or how simple your task my seem… you WILL be stupid.

~ Lights that are run on a motion detector are OBNOXIOUS.

~ Vernon Willis is delightfully funny.

~ Jesse Wells is one of the funniest people I have ever met. Fantastic and Funny make a great pair.

~ Richard Liantonio really can be absurdly good at just about anything. I took a risk, but my confidence in him totally paid off.

~ Jen Brown and Jeff Howard are impressively thorough.

~ People are lazy. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Rather than walk just a few yards further, they consistently opted to WAIT in line.

~ Armed escorts can be pretty fun.

~ Kirk Bryson takes bookstore morale to a whole new level.

~ It really is possible to be sad about the ending of such an exhausting endeavor.

~ Our space in Bartle Hall was really big… and walking back and forth across the whole thing gets really old really fast.

~ Having a bagger really makes a difference.

~ When the Call starts at 12PM, there is going to be a REALLY big rush at 11AM. This should have been obvious to me from the beginning.

~ When relying heavily upon caffeine to compensate for a lack of sleep, it is very important to secure a steady stream of it. When you go for extended periods without continued consumption, you are sure to be doomed by really unpleasant caffeine-withdrawal headaches.

~ When you are convinced that number-pads would be extraordinarily helpful, it pays to get over your fear of asking and just say something. The people in charge REALLY do care about the cashiers.

~ I really don’t like money.

~ The amount of money I make in a year is remarkably miniscule.

~ Remarkably simple tasks can become stunningly difficult after two and a half hours of constant counting, error-fixing, and problem-solving.

~ Trying to bag for someone after such a counting and problem-identifying frenzy is just silly. You WILL forget what you are doing after each transaction and repeatedly find yourself staring off into space while the cashier reaches across you to grab a bag. Time after time after time after time. You might as well just sit there with the intent of doing absolutely nothing.

~ I have incredible friends. 

~ Lauren Shafer is willing to go out of her way to serve. And she really does have a pretty amazing memory.

~ Kirk will pay for getting that song stuck in my head. He really will pay. (This is not a lesson learned, but I walk away from the conference with this determination.)

~ Doing what I did twice in one day may not be a fantastically good idea for one person.

~ My job really will turn a brain to mush. 

~ Getting 7 hours of sleep when your body has adjusted to having much less can be deadly. I’m pretty sure that I died on the third morning of the conference. That’ll teach me to get a full night’s sleep.

~ Our evening cashiers are phenomenal. We asked a lot of them (and more of the weight of things fell upon them), but they continually rose to our challenges… and without complaint.

~ We really do have a great bunch of people in the bookstore. I have such a deep affection for them right now.

~ It is very difficult to appear sane when you are trying to talk with someone who cannot hear the other conversation that is happening in your ear.

~ David and I can pick ‘em. We did some great hiring these last few months.

~ The Lord really does hear and care and answer prayers. I say this with a very particular answer to prayer in mind, but I won’t give the details here. (Some would call it TMI.)

~ I like meat.

~ It’s actually quite normal to spend much of the conference wanting to curl up in the fetal position and cry. At least I hope that was normal. Well… not that I want that to be normal… but I want to not be that uniquely unstable.

~ Lotion is important when you have to constantly sanitize your hands.

~ “Sexual immoralitization”

~ It’s a little painful to walk through a room where you so tangibly feel the Lord doing something when you do not have the option to linger for a bit.

~ Earpieces are also obnoxious.

~ Paperclips disappear quickly.

~ A 14- to 17-hour shift won’t actually kill a person, but it is pretty exhausting.

~ The Lord really likes us.

~ Someone speaking simple words of affirmation and reminders that “we’re all in this together” are remarkably impacting. Though I heard him say it numerous times to each of us, Andrew nearly made me cry each time he said it. It seemed like it should have been humorous… but I really did almost cry. (Actually, there was moisture in my eyes when the whole thing happened, but that was a culmination of events and not entirely the result of his encouragement.)

~ The bookstore really could use A LOT of prayer coverage when onething comes around.

~ After the 6 days of insanity that were the conference for the bookstore, Cracker Barrel is a brilliant breakfast on morning 7. I think you could liken it to the way that the Lord rested on the 7th day.

~ Listening to The Messiah is a great way to recover from the conference. It’s very hope-ifying… and such.

Why am I calling my schedule a fruitcake? Well, it was the first really dense conglomeration of mushed-together stuff that I could think of. Actually, kind of the only one. One large substance made from a tighly packed collection of thematically related elements.

I am a human being, so there are a few basic scheduling necessities:
I sleep (though I’m working on trying to do more of that and in a more consistent way).
I eat (also working on more consistency with that one).
I hydrate (I consider myself to be quite skilled in this activity).

I am also an intercessory missionary, so we add a few more necessities:
I spent time in the prayer room (and I am not shifting these hours to fall between 10 PM and 2 AM each day).
I go to FCF each week.
I raise support.
I go to things like team briefings.
I have service hours (addressed below).

I am a manager at the Forerunner Bookstore, hence:
I work 36-40 hours each week (on paper; reality looks something more like 40-55 hours).
I get lots and lots of phone calls when I am not physically present in the bookstore (we’re working on the boundary thing).
I think about work a lot when I am not there.
I forget that I don’t live in the bookstore and wander in from time to time.
I dream about the bookstore with some regularity.

I am a high school teacher for the Daniel Academy, meaning:
I stand in front of class of 11 students and teach for two hours each week.
I drive to school early to prep for class each day.
I get a lot of chalk in my clothing and in my hair (not really a schedule-related element…)
I write lesson plans and determine homework assignments.
I write tests, quizzes, and warm-up activities.
I grade assignment and such and record grades.
I record attendance and monitor completion of homework.
I try to assess (from the information I have) how my students are doing and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
I fight with that lovely little program we call RenWeb.
I think a lot about my students and how to better serve them.
I lay awake sometimes thinking about how to handle specific student situations.
I address parent and school leadership concerns.
I get really mad at myself for not being a better teacher (we’re trying to cut down on this one).
I read lots and lots of TDA emails.

I love God and want to know Him more, so:
I am in a study group that is going through Oden’s Word of Life (2 hours of discussion time and lots of Christology reading).
I am in a study group that is going through Moltmann’s Spirit of Life (2 hours of meeting time and plenty of Pneumatology reading).
I read 5 Psalm and 1 chapter in Proverbs each day.
I am trying to reawaken the Hebrews memorization plan that halted at the time of my mother’s death.
I cry a lot.
I have other short-term Bible reading plans that I go through.
I try to talk to Him all day.

I am broken and want to be whole, which means that:
I spend 3 hours each week in a heart-wrenching meeting that I like to call “Happy Fun Time”.
I have a considerable amount of homework that, when taken very seriously, consumes a lot of time.
I cry a lot.

I care about my friends and value relationship, and so:
I spent time praying for my friends.
I try to squish time with friends into my increasingly limited free time.
I lose sleep over broken relationships.
I cry a lot.

I love writing and it helps me process, so, at least in theory:
I spend a significant amount of time journaling.
My emails get pretty long and take a while to write.
I blog fairly regularly (keep in mind… I said this was “theoretical”).

I think that Richard Liantonio has a lot to contribute to us (this community and the body of Christ), and this means that:
I read as many of his school papers as he gives me access to.
I intend to attend class each time it meets (at least for systematic theology 3hrs/night, 4 nights/week when it comes up again).
I read through his notes and make nitty-gritty detail editing remarks (you know… commas, word tenses, etc.).
I try to find ways to make his notes more accessible to the average not-a-pure-genius reader/listener.
I tell him that his sentences are too long or too complicated (… a lot).
I consistently argue for more structured ways of organizing his notes.
I write a lot of silly and completely unnecessary notes in the margins while I am editing.
I argue with Richard about commas, sentence length, organization, and presentation of an argument.
I accuse him of throwing pudding at people.
I believe and try to frequently remind him that he is an excellent communicator.
I try to think of ways that his communication could be improved and strengthened.
I seek to apply things to my life when he convinces me of them.
I try to give feedback on how significant I think a lot of the things he is saying are and the ways in which they have impacted my life.
I listen to Richard when he speaks.
I spent a lot of time talking to people about the things that he has made me really think about.
I agree to help with random little projects that will help with developing his class/classes, message, papers, etc.
I cry a lot.

I am an introvert to the max, and thus:
I need a fair amount of alone time to wind down at night.
I need to be alone for a while if I’ve spent too much time around people.
I can get caught up in reptitive, mindless activities that allow space for just thinking and dialoguing with God alone.

And now I must go and pursue that sleep thing a little further.

Clay and Sarah Edwards just bought a house. Talk about growing up–married… homeowners… baby on the way. Anyway, a bunch of people from the night watch (mostly Clay’s team) were over at the house to help them paint and clean yesterday (Thursday) after they closed on the house. 10 Hours of bug-sucking, window-scrubbing, wall-painting, and PB-watching.

While we painted, I kept thinking about how unusual our community really is. For one… there’s the simple fact that we were intentionally painting between 6pm and 4am. But the real usual thing is the conversations that were happening around the wet paint.

~ At one point in the night, I was standing on a ladder and making the straightest line I could (Clay doesn’t believe in tape) while Richard was reading to me from his most recent blog post. (I’m pretty sure most people don’t discuss 1 John while holding a paintbrush.)

~ Psalms 96 and 98 apparently popped up twice in the night. I brought them up and then learned that Richard and Jordan had already been discussing them earlier. (I’ve been singing these two Psalms during spontaneous singing for the last week or so.)

~ Amanda and I had this conversation contradicting the common saying, “All good things must come to an end,” while painting in a room that had no open windows. (Note, this wasn’t because the windows couldn’t be opened. We just… didn’t open them. That is, until Clay came in, seeming moderately concenred, and did something about it.)

~ We had some of those “So why are you at IHOP and what do you see yourself doing in … years?” conversations. People talking about valuing things like worship and fasting and prayer… spending their lives in the context of night and day prayer… gratitude for a community of likeminded people.

And these are just a few random samples. If I don’t step back and think about it, these are just typical conversations. The kind of stuff we talk about regularly. But then I pause for a moment and realize that this isn’t exactly normal. We truly are blessed to be in the midst of a community that talks about these kinds of things. Sometimes I take that for granted.

Don’t get me wrong… we had some “normal” conversations, too. There was the, “Do you girls want to get married someday?” chat. Jonathan Ramos and I got a fairly long spiel about energy-efficient lights. Sarcastic remarks abounded. (I had one brief exchange with Clay over which Amanda has declared that I won. That makes me happy. Very happy.) We talked about paint and brushes and cleaning supplies. We discussed someone’s clothing and hair styles. And the like. But we also talked about the Bible quite a bit.

Is it just me? Are these conversations really more normal than I realize? Or are we just really amazingly blessed to be in a community like this?