My dad is getting married on Sunday.
Courtney and I are leaving at noon (in NightWatch time, this is absurdly early) to drive to Indiana for the wedding.
Prayers are appreciated.
I would write more, but I need to pack and get to sleep… with a quickness.
Everything is changing. But nothing is changing.
Anyone who has really talked to me since I returned from training can bear witness to this fact: I have a lot to say about those four days.
My first impressions about CRI were correct. Sean Malone was articulating the vision that was actively abiding within my own heart. I was hearing an answer to questions I had been asking for years.
As it turns out, though… CRI was answering a lot more questions than I had initially perceived.
Two days in a row, my roommate and I have received unexpected packages from a delightful woman in Pennsylvania. So much fun!
It has made me think of what a huge impact those unexpected little things can have. It totally made my day… both days! (That, and the fact that I was finally beginning to recover from my cold. My brain works again and everything! Just need to get my throat, head, and weary body to fully catch up.)
I have been receiving far fewer surprise packages in the mail since my mom passed away. So it means A LOT to receive something in the mail “just because.”
I’m also realizing that several birthdays passed while I was busy being sick and fuzz-brained. Sadness. To everyone (I know and love) who has numerically aged in the last few days, I love you a lot and I am glad that you were born! I just got derailed by my colision with the sickness train. (I blame it on the schedule change and then four days of running around in the cold for CRI training. My immune system didn’t have a chance. Sleep is really important!)
Anyway… Mrs. I, yet again, you have brightened my life considerably. I am so blessed to have been introduced to you and your incredible heart via Blogland.
Speaking of meeting people from Blogland, I wanted to give a quick shout-out to Jim from CRI training. (I’m pretty sure I promised myself to never use that term, “shout-out,” when I first became acquainted with it. Sigh… I wonder what similar terms I may lose my resolve in resisting. This one doesn’t bother me now, but I know that it did at one time. I sincerely hope that I do not lose my distaste for some of the things that I presently refuse to say.) Random fact, you have the same name as my phone. Well, the Jim part, at least. I think I just assumed that my phone received my last name when it was adopted.
I think CRI training was the least unsettling place to meet a total stranger who has read many of my thoughts… who has seen some of the deep things of my heart. So… way to not be creepy. Sometimes I forget that there are real people who read this thing that I have never met. I like meeting the people who read my blog. (For example, Mrs. I was a total win. She’s even more delightful in person than she is in comment form.) But, truth be told, it would probably freak me out if a random person approached me outside the prayer room and knew my name… and my life.
Bearing gifts might help. I’ll see if I can get a list going to enable such gift-giving introductions. (OK, actual fact… I am creating a Christmas/birthday/everyday wish list. It will consist of all of the gear that I need to deploy with CRI, or to do further training. All I want for Christmas is the ability to easily leave town on short notice to love and serve people in the midst of crisis. Bonus to that Christmas wish: it might also enable the reintroduction of camping to my already-pretty-fantastic life. And that would be… awesome. In any case, that list might make it onto my blog… in case people are interested in being a part of my future work with CRI. We shall see.)
Oh, look at that! I still know how to ramble!
Well, hopefully, there are some (somewhat more coherent) blog posts coming in the near future about CRI. I have a lot to say about the training. The Lord had a lot to say during training. I just have to find the time to reign in all of those words.
I’m going to publish this without rereading it. Probably a mistake, since I have just been babbling on. And… since I have been typing the whole thing on my phone. But I’m just going to go with it. Freedom from perfectionism. That’s what we’ll call it.
Thanks again, Mrs. I!
Before I left for CRI training, I wrote this outline that was intended to turn into an actual post, when I had time to write it. I probably spent all of two minutes typing this list out, so there is probably some redundancy. It basically just lists out some of what I believed I could bring and be in the midst of crisis. So… here it is, the post that I never had time to write:
My first week in Texas was… rough. I was tired and overwhelmed. I felt my confidence completely deteriorating. And I found it unusually difficult to engage in a real way with the people I was giving time to be with.
Every time I opened my mouth and said something real that came from a place of any depth, I felt that I could, at any moment, completely fall apart. It didn’t matter where I was. It didn’t matter who I was with. If I dipped anywhere below the surface, I was sure to break down and begin bawling.
This was a problem. I did not want to burden my friends with my emotions. There was a lot of catching up to do. I didn’t feel like crying in public. I didn’t have time to go there. I didn’t really want to be that vulnerable.
So, quite naturally and with little thought, I suppressed my emotions. It took a lot of energy and an almost sub-conscious intentionality. But my once-perfected skill of shutting down my emotions kicked in and I was able to numb myself with very little conscious thought.
I stuck to the surface. If I felt myself about to crack, I would alter my course and steer away from the touchy things. I said relatively little. I felt very little.
There were two major consequences to responding to my emotions in this way. First, it became virtually impossible to relate to anyone in a real way, as I was setting apart significant time to meet with people. It’s hard to connect with a person with any depth when you are determined to stay at the surface. Simple contradiction. Second, I COULD NOT sleep.
Yes. I suppressed my emotions so thoroughly that it was keeping me up at night. It was exhausting.
After about a week of sleep deprivation, I finally realized what I was doing. So, Thursday morning, as I was failing again to fall asleep, the floodgates broke and I just started to cry.
From that point, I resolved not to shut down emotionally, for the rest of my time in Texas. Since then (the last three or four days)… I’ve cried A LOT.
One week to go. A lot of pain remains that I haven’t even touched. But the Holy Spirit, my Comforter, is with me. So I’m feeling pretty hopeful about the next seven days.
Have you ever been unquestionably aware of something that you had no way of articulating? You know that it is true, whatever it is; you just don’t know how to express it.
This has been true of the state of my heart… my livingness of life.
A lot of people have observed the change… or at least some of the outward manifestations of the change. And I KNOW things are different. But I have had no explanation for those who have inquired about the transformation. I have only been able to agree with them, very conscious of a reality that I could not express but that was so beyond argument that it was confirmed by the testimony of many witnesses.
Each person has observed it and articulated it in very different ways, but I know that they are talking about the same thing. I have become more expressive. My smile is brighter. I have come out of some sort of shell. I have a new boldness. My voice is different. And on and on and on. All of these statements are true, but none of them are particularly meaningful, independent of the greater reality from which they are flowing.
I am freer… more alive. And I don’t know how to explain it.
Fortunately, Jurgen Moltmann did.
I found this paragraph in The Source of Life, a phenomenal book about the Holy Spirit. Despite the fact that it is translated from another language, it is beautifully articulated. And it felt like a perfect explanation of the new life and freedom that I am continuously encountering.
So… here it is. Here is my Jurgen’s explanation for what has been happening:
If we are seized by the Spirit of the resurrection, we get up out of our sadness and apathy. We begin to flower and become fruitful again, like the plants and trees in the spring of the year. An undreamed-of love for life awakens in us; we drive out the sweet poison of resignation, and our painful remembrances of death are healed. We encounter life again like children, in eager expectancy.
Before I write my next post on John 13-17, I thought it would be helpful to give you an overview of my working definition of hope. This will just help us be on the same page as I try to explain how Jesus’ words in these chapters are a message of hope.
Most simply, I define hope as a confident and joyful expectation for the future. Hope is desire. Here are some definitions that Webster gives us… my concept of hope is expressed in each of these:
Biblical hope is birthed in the promises of God. Trusting His faithfulness and ability, we confidently expect and await the joyful fulfillment of those promises.
Psalm 37 is a beautiful hope Psalm. Again and again, David gives the exhortation to hope, articulating it from a slightly different angle each time. (Something we frequently find in the Psalms.) Rather than presenting a lengthy list of things that David thinks are a generally good idea, it further develops this uniting theme of hope or trust.
I see each of these phrases from Psalm 37 as an exhortation to hope:
I will not give a lengthy explanation of each of these and how they exhort us to hope, but I will happily clarify any of them if you ask.
My definition of hope actually came to life as my heart was resting in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews, as a whole, is all about hope. It, like Psalm 37, is a constant exhortation to hope, packed with beautiful articulations of the nature God. My time in Hebrews has resulted in the following conclusions (among other things):
And, most significantly, I pulled this really simplified definition of hope out of Hebrews 3:6 – Hope is essentially CONFIDENCE AND REJOICING.
My favorite apostolic prayer is Romans 15:13. It reinforces this basic definition (in a chapter that similarly addresses themes of believing, courage, and promise):
Now may the God of HOPE fill you with all JOY and PEACE in BELIVING, so that you will abound in HOPE by the power of the Holy Spirit.
(The Holy Spirit aspect of all of this is pretty exciting, too, but I’ll wait for that, until I actually start talking about John 13-17.)
Each of the terms I have mentioned throughout this post always evoke the idea of hope when I hear them. And my definition of hope is a glorious swirly pool of all of those terms and concepts.
Hope. I love it.
My heart is still moving like crazy in John 14-16. My enjoyment of that passage has pushed me out a bit, to the surrounding chapters. John 13 offers some essential context and of course I want to spend some time in the concluding prayer of John 17.
So… I just wanted to write a quick post to let you know that my love for the passage has not faded and I still have every intention of following through with my former commitment to blog about it.
In a little while…
I feel like I use the same core set of adjectives for everything. That bothers me.
I have a friend who constantly agitates this frustration with the apparent shrinking of my vocabulary. He is brilliant, thinks about his words, teaches English, and starts crazy things like fasts from crutch words. (For the record, I am grateful for such agitation.)
I don’t have an action plan for this right now. But I felt like verbalizing this continuing frustration.
I need to start reading again. I miss books. My vocabulary misses books.
