Life on the High Road

Excerpts from Psalms 73

1 Truly God is good to Israel,

    to those who are pure in heart.

2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,

    my steps had nearly slipped.

3 For I was envious of the arrogant

    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

16 But when I thought how to understand this,

    it seemed to me a wearisome task,

17 until I went into the sanctuary of God;

    then I discerned their end.

18 Truly you set them in slippery places;

    you make them fall to ruin.

21 When my soul was embittered,

    when I was pricked in heart,

22 I was brutish and ignorant;

    I was like a beast toward you.

23 Nevertheless, I am continually with you;

    you hold my right hand.

24 You guide me with your counsel,

    and afterward you will receive me to glory.

25 Whom have I in heaven but you?

    And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

26 My flesh and my heart may fail,

    but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I grew up a church kid.

Not the "But I had a double life" kind of church kid.

I truly WAS the church kid...the kid who loved doing the right thing, who truly wanted to know God more, and the kid who enjoyed the safe, good, loving nature of the church every week.

With that, "taking the high road" in social situations was fairly easy for me. I cleaned up my side of the street in conflict, I chose my friends and romantic relationships slowly and wisely, and I said sorry the moment I realized I was wrong about something. People would tell me I was a rarity, that I was a blessing, that I was changing people's lives in how healthily I treated others.

That was the big word. Healthy. I've been called healthy my whole life. Whole. Entire. Life. I haven't been perfect, but I've recovered pretty gracefully when I have fallen, and I always have an admiring audience who can't wait to tell me how healthy my choices are.

This was all easy for me to do for about ten years, then it got more difficult about two years ago. It didn't get more difficult to know how to be healthy, it got more difficult to want to be healthy.

I started seeing too many crappy people get great opportunities in their lives, too many spoiled brats continue to get everything handed to them on a silver platter, too much sorrow for the humble and God-fearing people around me, too much pleasure given to the greedy, too much authority given to the prideful, too much "good" given to the bad and too much "bad" given to the good.

I started seeing and experiencing what I considered to be an overwhelming amount of emotional and situational injustice.

So began the long and subtle road down which my soul slipped, cultivating the resentment I've written about before, growing the infuriating question that I shouted in the darkness with rage:

What's the point of living the "right" way if good things are given to the cheats, the deceivers, the arrogant?

I struggled with this for a long time. I chose not to take the high road for, in my mind, a long time. I relished the injustice, in the wrongs done to me personally. I felt a savage survival instinct surface in me, willing and ready to wound anyone who tried to take what was rightfully mine. That bitterness and hate was mine, what I protected, even from the hand of the Lord.

I've been graciously lifted out of that mindset through a long and painful process, but still did not know what to do with all the injustice I still experienced until I read Psalms 73 this morning. I finally felt free of it.

Logic leads me to perceive injustice. The sanctuary of God leads me to perceive an all-consuming justice that misses nothing.

After this long journey, through all that I have overcome and have been overcome by, I can assuredly count these words as true:

My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever

How Now Shall I Live?

This has been an abundant November. Full of wonderful, full of terrible. Simply full.

It began with an incredible College Weekend at Lost Canyon. Turns out I'm a lot better at being in relational ministry when it isn't my job, haha. I had some pretty raw conversations with my cabin and had the pleasure of baptizing one of my girls in the freezing lake. The Lord moved, and He let me feel some of that beautiful breeze.

Only a week later, Friday November 9th, 2012, I experienced the worst day of my life thus far. I witnessed a three-year-old girl pass away unexpectedly. Not just any three-year-old girl, but the granddaughter of the couple I work for. Not only was she their granddaughter, but the daughter of two of my dearest friends, who have loved me better than most who have known me longer. She was their only child, and they waited fifteen years into their marriage before having her.

I may as well have watched all four of them burn alive in front of me with my hands tied behind my back, helpless and useless.

But November 9th was only Day One of their agony and sorrow. I still work in the grandparents' household, still witness the nightmare becoming a daily...hourly...reality.

If you are the praying type, I ask you to stop reading, stop whatever you're doing and lift them up to their Father right now. They all love the Lord, they are all changing my life in how beautifully they are entering into this darkness. But they are all exhausted, and only have enough energy to cling to the cross. Keep them in your thoughts, let their tragedy sober you up to see what really matters in life. For privacy's sake I'm not using their names, ask me in person if you wish to know.

The combination of these two meaningful moments in my life have given my thought trails an interesting color scheme as of late.

College Weekend thoughts: I am a leader, there's no denying. That is a waste of gifting if I am not trained, and I should not give up on training due to past failures. Whether I step into that calling or not, I am looked up to and reminded of that on an almost daily basis. How now shall I live?

November 9th thoughts: I am not protected from life's greatest sorrows by following the Lord. That is not His promise to me. Pain is not so avoidable as doing all the right things. I am entitled to no good thing on this earth, any and all good things are gifts to me that have a time limit. Who do I want to brave those storms with? Who do I want to go through the potential loss of a precious child with? How now shall I live?

I've also been thinking through how my "marriage" with Christ has looked in the twelve years that I have chosen to be bound to Him. We went around as a cabin at College Weekend and described briefly what our story with Him has looked like and where we are at with Christ now. My story at the time ended with me describing how different circumstances had led to me burning out spiritually and feeling more resentment toward God than I had ever felt six months prior, and I was at a place where I wanted to fall in love with Christ in the ways I had before. I wanted to rekindle what I had neglected, and lose my fear of investing in our relationship.

Then November 9th happened, and Christ was my only constant in the terrifying darkness. He remains my only warmth in the cold, sad days that have followed. He is the only air that satisfies my lungs, that calms my heart. In the depths of my despair, His soft and simple song keeps me willing to move forward. I could not have faced that day, these current times, without His Spirit alive in me.

I wrote this next part two years ago after a painful but healthy break-up, and it is more true today than ever: If you haven't caught on already, I am flat-on-my-back in love with Jesus. He is all that keeps me from becoming undone. He brings me to life. He turns my heart of cold stone into a hot pulsing muscle that has a significant purpose, that feels what must be felt even when I can barely breathe from the pain. He makes me beautiful. He puts nothing to waste. He redeems the violent, the cruel, the wretched. He calls the silent to speak, the shy to sing, the somber to dance. He calls everything inside of me to come forth, to be free, to either be pruned or to be used.

During the most peculiar of times, within the most unexpected of circumstances, I am regaining the courage to step back into the body of Christ and be used as needed for His purpose, all while keenly aware of my utter dependence on His presence. I hope to soak up this vivid season while it lasts, for I know one day I will feel burnt out and indifferent like I have before. I'll forget how hopeless His absence is, and take His presence for granted. I'll resent the shortcomings in my peers and become less and less vulnerable about mine. I will do all of these things if I do not learn from where I have been, and where I am now.

The path is set before me. And once again I ask...

How now shall I live?

"But we'll live a long life."

If I could pick the song that gives me the most peace, hope, and resounding joy to slow-dance with Jesus to right now, it'd be this one. This is my worship:

I listen to it every night before going to sleep. It helps me start breathing deeper and letting go of the day's distractions.

This is a weird season for me.

I am more relational now then ever. Which is ironic, given that this is the first time in five years when I'm not directly leading/working for an established relational ministry (Younglife). I think that's the catalyst for this change though, because now it's my choice to be relational rather than my duty or obligation. I am also delving deeper into the Christian community outside my Younglife circles, learning even more about myself and about what the rest of the body of Christ in Phoenix has been up to while I've been in Younglife Land.

I'm getting to know some very healthy people, and that is more refreshing than I can even describe.

But it is also insightful in some bittersweet ways. Turns out that I am still a pretty young person with some growing to do. I have not graduated from some of the early-twenties social scenes and conversation topics. There are still some aspects of my life where I choose to pull the "I'm just a kid" card so that I don't have to rise to the adult level of responsibility. I have some character flaws that need some maturing and purposeful inspection. That's been a tough realization for me, but that awareness is the necessary first step to growth.

For the most part, these new friends of mine continue to feed my soul and show me different facets of Christ I've never experienced before, which makes them invaluable treasures and gifts of "good" on this earth I do not deserve. Thank you Jesus, you are too kind to me.

Here's another song that is close to my heart right now. I feel like I would sing this song to "life" about my niece Maddy, and whenever I think about how I love Maddy I am always reminded how Jesus loves me, with a fierce passion, protection, and adoration. And in an odd way, I feel like I need to feel loved like this by a man before I give him a hefty piece of my heart. I'm done with settling for less. With all that, this song makes me feel cherished and adored by Him, and gives me hope in the future for being loved like this by a Godly man:

Sleeping at Last - "Wilderness"


I think that's where I'll end things for now. God bless, lovely people.

Waking Up.

I have plenty to write, but not enough time at the moment! So this will probably be a short one as a prequel to a more detailed post later to come.

The last two weeks have healed me, have given me life, and have given me unexpected joy. I have the strength not just to move forward, but to do so with excellence and energy.

To be frank, this summer sucked. It was a horrible time not to have my Younglife community around as often and no classes to focus on. I felt like I was emotionally bleeding out, searching frantically for some relief and resolution. I didn't write much, didn't sing much, didn't laugh much, didn't do too much of anything. Thank Jesus I have the best roommates in the world that kept me from going to such a potentially worse place mentally.

It was the lowest I'd been in awhile.

But in this messed up world, that's where Jesus can do the most work...when our own structures and kingdoms and concepts have all fallen away and He can start from scratch within us, make us new, replace the lost with the redeemed new. Some of what He fills me with is foundational truth I've already heard and known, but some of His new creation in me is brand new and eye-opening, like when you learn how to breathe with the deeper part of your lungs. It offers deeper life. It gives every experience a fuller perspective. It makes life, and really ME, more beautiful and more enjoyable to be around.

To put simply, it feels like I'm sobering up from an incredibly sensory chapter of my life. I'm learning what is real, what is true, what never changes, what I can rely on and what I should ALWAYS take with a grain of salt without exception. As I "wake up" I am also becoming aware of how sensory-dependent our entire generation inherently is...

And that's where I'll leave you for now. ;)

"I believe there is another world waiting for us, Sixsmith. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there."

This movie haunts me before I have even seen it. I watch this trailer at least twice a day. The music makes my eyes water. Even if this fails in the box office, this is one of the best movie trailers I've ever seen.

Yep. Cannot wait.

Well, here's something worth announcing. I was talking to my counselor about different places I've been researching to possibly move to for graduate school. About four options were on the table. After several exchanges, my counselor said offhandedly, "Well when it comes down to it, I hope you choose where you go most of all because of the program itself."

And that's when I realized I've had my priorities a little shaky. Like the iPhone apps get when you delete or move them. ;)

I've been focusing on where I want to settle down, using grad school as a reason to move there. Well there are pros and cons to every city, and the thing that will get me through the cons of where I live will have to be the reason I moved there in the first place: my grad program. I need to love that, then move from there.

So I started revisiting my options without any regard to where they were located. Within an hour, we had a winner. And the winner is an ironic one, since it is the first choice I had four years ago when I started thinking about grad school at all:

Whose Graduate Program Center resides in...

So that's the goal, the plan, and the pursuit. This will be super embarrassing if I don't get in, haha. All the more reason to make it happen! I may apply to more than one for a safety net, mind you.

Sometimes I feel like my mind, without my permission, does routine maintenance down memory lane. It's as if it makes sure it still has as much information stored as possible for a particular setting. I'll walk into a room I've walked into thousands of times and distinctly remember something that happened in it years ago as if it happened yesterday. I walked into the Starbucks by my house yesterday and immediately remembered the night I was fourteen and met my youth pastor and a guy friend there to talk about something I can't remember. That was the first night that particular friend drove me home, the first of many to come and the beginning of our more-than-friendship days. I've had so many memories there since that night nine years ago, more intense and meaningful memories at that, and yet it replayed in my head as if it were only one memory of a dozen to choose from. I was sitting in my living room one afternoon after work and remembered my first time walking into this house four years ago with Missy to meet Cathy, wishing so badly I could live in a house like this one day with roommates. My counselor's office is in the same complex as Mike and Rhonda's used to be, and I remembered getting breakfast there with my youth group after our 30-hour famine weekend. French toast never tasted so good.

It feels like my life is lazily flashing before my eyes, grounding me in this moment on the spectrum of time, reminding me this is not the only moment that has ever existed in this place and it will not be the last. Not all of the memories I've recently experienced have been pleasant ones. That same Starbucks where my more-than-friendship started was the same Starbucks where that more-than-friendship ended three years later, and I remember that just as clearly as the previous one. My living room where I dreamed it would be mine is also the living room I've cried my eyes out in for one reason or another. Life happens. Soak up the joys and breathe through the sorrows. Even at the unripe old age of 23, I can confidently say that I have lived a good life on this Earth. My fondest and most painful memories both remind me, in the same ways, that I have lived.

...and I plan on doing a bit more living, so let's not be so conclusive about my life yet, haha.

Bed time.

Progress, my own and in general

This has been such a season of growth for me, there is no way I could dictate everything I've been mentally chewing on lately. It's crazy how the humility produced by brokenness is the very key to progress in life, because it is the death of the self. I'm beginning to think that Jesus didn't teach people how to live, He taught them how life/humanity works whether we approve of it or not. I see no other option for progress from brokenness than through humility. Doesn't matter how I feel about it.

I recently went to Michigan with Beasley and her family to their incredible lake house in Pentwater. It was the most beautiful marriage between woods and seashore that I've ever experienced, and I'm hoping that won't be my only time visiting. All the natural beauty led to mental stimulation of epic proportions! I read two books and wrote three front-and-back pages worth of journaling, plus finished a song I'd been writing.

This is the very edge of the pier in Pentwater with the other Caitlin in the clan, Beasley's cousin. This is in the middle of a great conversation the three of us were having. How can you NOT have a great conversation with that view and waves crashing all around you?! It was the perfect vacation I needed, and with all that mental stimulation I realized a few things floating around in my subconscious that, when brought into the light, change the game. Progress progress progress.

Though it took a week away to an oasis to figure out a few specific nuggets of truth, one treasure plopped into my head one night as I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep a few nights ago. Suddenly, as if teaching myself this truth, I said aloud:

"I will not experience every 'good' available in this lifetime."

And then, as if that truth implies another one, I said:

"I am entitled to no 'good' available in this lifetime."

Oh man. Talk about a game changer. A sport changer, to stretch the analogy further. If I am guaranteed nothing in particular, but am promised good and prosperity by God at the end of whatever may come, how much freedom there is to be had! Life becomes less about looking for good things and trying to make them mine, trying to choose what God may bless me with. It becomes more about what God has for me, come what may.

I just came out of a season of what seemed to be irrational resentment toward God. With the help of Timothy Keller's book Prodigal God, I realized that I'd been treating the last year of my life like the older brother treated his work in Jesus's prodigal son parable. I embraced my serving opportunities with rolled eyes and the thought of "Well if God wants me to, I guess it's the right thing to do" with the hidden assumption that I'll be awarded for such self-sacrificing behavior. If I jumped through the hoops and followed the rules, I would get the good things I want. I was already doing the good things HE wanted of me, and because of this I deserved my personal desires on my own terms. Like vacation days accumulated in the work place (not a vacation from good, but a vacation from God's terms for good).

This didn't end well, as you can imagine. But all I was consciously aware of was an anger toward God that I'd never experienced before. So I unraveled it, cried a lot, and those two nuggets of truth I shared felt like the nails in the coffin of that ugly phase of our relationship. I will not experience every good available in this lifetime, and I am entitled to no good available in this lifetime. If that sounds like pessimism or a poor self-esteem to you, I assure you t'is not. :)

So with freedom fresh in my lungs and big decisions on my horizons, life is good. A good I did not earn, a good that is a gift.

Until next time! 

Francois Fenelon and Younglife songs

Tracey has our small group reading a small little book called Let Go, which is a compilation of short letters written by spiritual advisor Francois Fenelon to those he was pastoring in the Court of Louis XIV. His words cut deep, bringing my fears into reality, and at the same time giving me hope for a door out of this carnival Fun House of distorted mirrors I feel like I'm in.

"You need not expect Him to attack those gross and wicked desires that you renounced forever when you gave yourself to Him. Nevertheless, He will perhaps test you by destroying your liberty of soul and by depriving you of your most spiritual consolations [....] Do you fear that He alone may not be able to supply to you that human-based comfort that He takes away? And why does He take it away, except to supply it from Himself? And to purify you by the painful lesson? I see that every exit is closed. God intends to accomplish His work in you by cutting off every human resource. He is a jealous God. He is not willing that you should owe to any other that which He is about to perform in you."

During these times when everything seems to exhaust me, when I feel empty of worth and identity, when I feel dry of life and joy, I get this hopeful image in my mind, one that I experienced on one of the last days of my internship:

A cold Grand Canyon at sunrise, everything dark slowly being brought into a gentle light. I am alone, gazing out into this natural wonder, and feel as if I am looking at myself; an endless maze of caves and mountains that I will never fully understand, something that seems too vast and too complicated to fully satisfy in any way, something that could never be 100% known. Then I am reminded that this canyon is only a glimpse, a glimpse of a fleeting thought, of the depth of my God. And I hear echoing young voices, all arm-in-arm in a Younglife camp club room somewhere, swaying back and forth, all singing a simple song that I've always secretly cherished. As I gaze at this canyon that seems to reflect me, I listen to the words of this song and begin to understand how this canyon reflects Christ:

Your love is deep, Your love is high

Your love is long, Your love is wide

Your love is deep, Your love is high

Your love is long, Your love is wide

Your love is deeper than my view of faith

Higher than this worldly place

Longer than this road I've traveled

Wider than the gap You filled

Your love is deep

That which despairs me seems always to be that which Christ has created in me to use most profoundly.  The things about myself I wish to change seem always to be those which God put intentionally inside of me to grow.

His love is deeper than our view of faith, higher than this worldly place, longer than the roads we've traveled, wider than the gap He filled.

It is with this knowledge that I now begin to find peace.

Cold is the water that freezes your already cold mind.

Looooooooooooooong time, no see! Well hey again. :)

I may be writing in here more in the following days. I have been given the gift of time, time to myself. Less noise. Less bustle. Less responsibility of others. Silence. Options. Choices.

It's been a rough nine months, to be frank. I wasn't sure why for awhile, but a resentment toward God had been creeping into my conscious thoughts, and I eventually realized I'd been fostering a bitterness toward Him since coming home from my internship in August. He and I are now wrestling with why that is.

So this will once again become my space to "verbally" process and share my stories. Honestly, I haven't written anything in all this time because I felt like there was nothing to share. I was producing nothing of substance. That is all my doing (or really UNdoing) and I have to process through that as well.

Thankfully I have positive voices in my life, and friends who freely give me grace to stumble my way through this dark time. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, but I feel its warmth and its encouragement to move forward.

His cross is my gain. I have understood this my whole life as "Christ dying on the cross has given me a new life." But lately I'm feeling a deep resonation with the truth that His cross is my gain when I am carrying it. When I am suffering on His behalf. When I am led to do something difficult that I deem to be "beneath me." I truly, deeply, wholeheartedly benefit from the weight, agony, and endurance of bearing His cross and doing His work.

This does not help the suffering feel better, only deepens my trust in Christ's steadfast determination to give me life to the fullest, without a drop of blood/sweat/tears wasted. Without this trust, I slip into the assumption that I am simply a pawn in His divine schemes to use as He pleases. It is, in fact, that very lie that I am attempting to untangle myself from now.

That's all for now. I want to squeeze a nap into my lunch break!

Adios, it's good to be back. :)