A light in the darkness...

I opened my Bible just now and my eyes rested on a gem of scripture that I know God wants me to understand in my situation. Today is the first day being headache-free in a long time and I was comforted by the letter of a friend. I've been under the weight of a lot of stress lately but, today, I think I'm seeing a bit of light.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like a weaned child.
O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time on and forevermore.
Psalm 131

To me this passage speaks about contentment in the darkness. It is the prayer of David. In humility, he recognizes he is in a weak place in which he doesn't have the power or the wisdom or the strength to push through. But despite the need he feels, David finds contentment in being childlike, in being small, in being without comprehension, without knowledge. David is able to rest in the mother heart of God and be at peace because he trusts God's power, God's wisdom and God's strength and his knowledge. The hope that David holds in his heart is one that he longs for all his people to understand.

I told Jesus I needed to hear his voice and he answered me. He's saying I need to rest and trust in the security that he is for me. I cannot save myself...he must be the one that comes through in my situation. Tonight I feel like I believe that again.

Thanks Jesus.

Questions in the dark...

I've been struggling with a lot of life questions lately. Questions are good, I think, when they challenge a person to understand fully their situation. But until you find answers or some sort of contentment about the matter, questions can be doors into dark places.
That's how I feel. I can't see what's in front of me. I remember a while back, I saw the path of my life lit up and it led me here, I knew it would. But now that I've come this far I can't see what's further down the road. I feel lost because I don't understand the purpose behind why I'm here. How can I live without drive or meaning? I want to know where all this is going.
I'm asking God to help me remember...I think he told me once but those words have faded from my mind. I remember learning to trust him through so many other circumstances and he always came through for me, it should be no different this time, right?
I never really considered myself as a needy person before. I've always had Jesus...He's always been enough. I don't feel like I have meaningful relationships with people here and that has left me feeling empty. Jesus taught me to need people in addition to needing him. It was a hard thing for me to grasp but my present situation confirms to me that I get it now. It's strange for me to feel need. I'm feeling a lot of need. I need to have a place to contribute my passions. I need to grow spiritually with someone here. I need to express myself with someone watching. I need to give someone something to help meet their needs. I want mutual exchange. I want to exchange brutal honesty. I want to cry with someone. I want to laugh with someone. I want to live in community again.
I don't see it. Somehow I think there should be a way to apply myself in this context. There should be a way for me to establish a sense of community. There should be a way to stop feeling like this. But I just don't see it.

Far away thoughts I can't quite capture

I've been typing and pressing backspace in cycles for the last hour. I don't know what to say today. I don't know how to express the memories I have or what they mean to me. I don't know how to invite you into this feeling I have right now.
I want to tell you about walking the slums in Thailand and about a dog named Dan. I want to tell you about the time I let myself just feel pain, emotionally I mean, consciously for perhaps for the first time. If I could, I'd tell you about what God has revealed about my future. I would tell you about the hopelessness I remember when I thought God stopped speaking to me. Wouldn't you love to hear about how God taught me that I need people and I finally got it right? I feel like writing poetry which is what I always do when narrative falls short. But verse without inspiration is rather awkward and so questions and silence is all I have.
Come and sit with me and ponder those far away thoughts that you can't express either. What are those experiences that define who you are so completely that no one else could understand?
At the very least, it's good to remember.

The world would be a better place if...

This is me and my friend Sherry. Sometimes I think Sherry sees through every single twist and turn on the way to my heart. She knows me so well she can put into words what I'm feeling even when I can't. I don't think I could hide from her even if I wanted to, that's how well she knows and understands me. I met her in March 2007, but we were emailing back and forth a little before that. When we realized we struggled with similar things, we decided to pray and fast together once a week so that we could understand God's heart in the midst of our situations. Our intentionality was so key to the growth we have both experienced in our lives in the last four years. 

I remember this one time...we had just finished having a talk with tea, when it started to pour rain outside. Without any hesitation at all, we ran outside and splashed in all the puddles and twirled under the streetlamp in the parking lot. I remember how the rain looked in the orange light and I remember laughing hysterically for a good long time. When we went back inside, we were soaked...I think Sherry might have even ruined those shoes for good. It was a moment of being completely true and honest with ourselves and carefree enough to express what we were feeling. There was something incredibly liberating about that night.

We have lots of memories together, and LOTS of laughing, always. One time I dragged Sherry through the hallway and down the stairs after she made a comment about being able to take me....that'll be the day :)

The thing I love the most about Sherry is that when I'm with her I feel comfortable being me...it's more than that though, I feel like I can't help but be me. She brings the Lory in me out like no one else.

The world would be a better place if everyone had a Sherry.

A little promise

I think I could listen to John Mayer sing "Heart of Life" over and over for hours. I'm listening to him now and it brings back a million memories. I shared this song with a friend of mine and everytime we needed to run to town to get the mail or go to the bank or something, we would play it in the car on repeat. Then, when we turned onto the road leading home, I would slow the car down to like 20km/h just so we could listen to it longer. It goes like this:

I hate to see you cry
Lying there in that position
There's things you need to hear
So turn off your tears
And listen

Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won't all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good

You know, it's nothing new
Bad news never had good timing
Then, circle of your friends
Will defend the silver lining

Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won't all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good

Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
Fear is a friend who's misunderstood
But I know the heart of life is good
I know it's good

I think I just like the perspective in the song...life is good with your friends, when you share it with someone. People come and go, good things happen, bad things happen, it's all life and as long as you can share those experiences with someone who you love, it's all good. I have kind of an obsession with writing essays about life and how it is ALL of our experiences, no matter how painful or full of joy they are, that make our journey on earth what it is. So this song sums it up for me.
I used to live in community. It's easy to get to know people and let people know you when you live so close together. I'm finding it more difficult to be myself without having people always around who are familiar, I with them and them with me. Life is just better when you can share it. But living in community, I still had to learn how to live transparent and open with people. It took me a couple years to really get it right, I experienced the fruit of thse lessons for a time and then I packed my bags and moved here. I'm starting over again and it's hard sometimes but I know from my past experience, that it's worth fighting for to have relationships with people you can really talk with.
So here's a little promise to myself, that when it gets really hard, I'll push through and step out of my comfort zone and instead of hiding, I'll make an effort to talk to someone, ask them questions and be genuinely interested in their life.

Random thoughts on today...

It's Saturday. I woke up at 7:30 with a strange inkling to cut my toe nails. Strange indeed. But I did just that and somehow the day already feels productive. After being sick and not accomplishing much...it's nice to know at 7:40am, something has already been achieved; this is how I know I am feeling better.
After that I put on Blue Like Jazz on CD and listened to the wit and brilliance of Donald Miller for an hour before my mom made the trek downstairs to my room and asked me if she needed to wake me up. I thought it was evident that I was already up since Don was talking about his hippy friends that he spent a month with in the bush, but I guess having my head on the pillow and lying in the fetal position threw her off a bit.
The snow has fallen and at last it feels like winter is here. I thought I wanted the snow to stay away as long as possible, but now that it's here, it makes the atmosphere happy. The dullness of brown dead leaves and branches has been covered with the bright newness of sparkly snow. I like it and it makes me want to play my music loudly and dance around the kitchen or bake cookies and deliver them to someone. Isn't it hard to believe that some places don't have snow for Christmas. Australian tradition, so I have heard, is a BBQ on the beach. I can't imagine wearing a bathing suit on Christmas morning but I suppose if that's what you are used to, it could have its charm.
Last year on Christmas morning, I woke up in an orphanage in Thailand with 6 other girls away from home. We found cinnamon sticks at the market so we tried grinding them and then made "cinnamon buns" with white sliced bread and brown sugar. It was a far cry from what my mom usually makes but we pretended it was the greatest thing ever. I remember later that day cooking hot chili peppers over a little fire stove to make a sauce for the Christmas dinner we would have later that evening. The Shan orphan girls sat with me and showed me when to turn the peppers over before they popped and squirted firey juice into the air. Who knew I traded turkey dinner for corragulated blood and chunks of white fat in a bowl of broth. I ate the meal awkwardly with my team, all of us trying to be appreciative. The children who were a family in and of themselves, laughed and ran around and were as joyful as ever. After the meal, they put on a Christmas program for the whole village. Though their situation was more bleak than ours, they had such joy and wanted to share it. Looking back it shames me to remember how hard it was for me. I come from fortunate circumstance and I have God's grace. Some only live with God's grace.
It opened my eyes to see the privilege of a Canadian Christmas and a family to share it with. I'm overjoyed to be home this year in this white wonderland.

My head in an airtight container

You know that feeling when your head feels like it's in an airtight container and your arms weigh a million pounds and no matter which way you lie in bed, it still kinda hurts. That's me this week with the very contagious common cold (* Cheers * to you if this explanation makes perfect sense).
I don't know what it is about being sick but somehow the smallest tasks seem so impossible. I was in the middle of making coffee before supper when I just stopped, stood still and stared into space for a good 20 seconds. Then I came back to earth and wondered what the heck I was doing when I left and it took another minute before I filled the carafe with water and dumped it into the coffee machine.
But part of me kind of likes being sick. I like taking it easy and drinking sleepy time tea and not rushing about like a mad woman trying to get a million things done. Not to say this is usually the way I am, but sometimes it is. Maybe I just like feeling pathetic.
One time me and my friend were both going through a rough time and wanted to express ourselves. We maybe got a little too Biblical (is that even possible?!) but we sat on the ground and rubbed dirt all over our heads and clothes...we entertained the thought of ripping our shirts but when you are a female living in community and you don't have a lot of money to spend on new clothes, this isn't the greatest idea. Needless to say we didn't rip our shirts.
You know what I think it is for me--why part of me likes being sick, I mean--I think it's because there are ways to find comfort. A hot bath, lotiony tissues, cough medicine, extended sleep, endless cups of tea, hot water bottle, chicken noodle soup, a little TLC from mom...the list goes on. It's nice to have a comforting solution to the problem in front of you right? But sometimes life is messy and the things that comfort are not solutions and you wonder if there is an easy way out. But there isn't always a way out and sometimes, even if there is, it would be a better thing, a healthier thing, not to give up and to fight it out (comfort or no comfort). I didn't realize this was where I was going when I first started writing about being sick (once again * cheers * to you if this explanation makes perfect sense); leave it to the writer in me to turn anything into a metaphor. But there it is.
Does anyone really have an easy life though? Isn't there always something hard or difficult that we go through, whether we face up to it or not, it's still there. Or maybe this is a cynical thought based on my current situation in life. Maybe its like when I have this cold and some things seem impossibe. Maybe from my current experience right now, feeling like things are all okay just seems impossible. I don't say this to invoke pity on my behalf or even to relish in the pathetic. I just want to express honestly how I feel, because when life goes down this way, perhaps the healthiest and most comforting way to deal with it, is to express it.

Think on that while I grab a tissue for my runny nose...