Broken

The circle of friends. They were tight like nothing else. Weathering the storms of the ups and downs of college life. Loving to debate theology for hours on end and not always having the same opinion on such matters.

Incredible humor and the love fun characterized them. Siting at the round table in the cafeteria it was impossible to ignore them.

Slowly the class grew small as others left for other places and ambitions, but still the were the elusive circle that would not let each other go.

Fiercely they stood by one another in the thick and the thin.

One day they stood in a line of blue with diplomas in hand. Ready to be launched into life, but not ready to bid goodbye the company of each other

Goodbye they said and off they fled to all corners of the country.

The circle only grew wider, but it was not broken.

At random times they were together just for the love of being together.

Then one day those friends were standing in a circle with a casket being in the center. The circle that could not break had been broken. Death stopping life, before they were ready to say goodbye

One is gone, but the circle is not broken for one has only gone onto heaven before the rest

The circle is not broken its only widened. Hope of Christ is what has tightened this circle for all eternity.

Nothing will turn this circle into something broken for its bound by a shared love of Christ

Written for the class of 2010 who broke me in as young naive freshmen. Oh my they were the big brothers and sisters that made me feel so at home during my first year of college. 
 Just a few short weeks ago they said see you later to their classmate, Dustin, who died in the Prescott fire.


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Perfect Grace

I will never understand grace perfectly. 

I admitted this to myself. I had fought so hard the battle of performing for everyone I knew. I fought so hard to 

 perform for God.

I thought to myself I must understand grace better. I need to stop performing. I need to understand grace perfectly.

Suddenly my striving to understand grace became a performance issue just like everything else in my life.

I felt so guilty. Of course I wasn’t supposed to act like this. God didn’t want me to work for approval from him. He does not want me to work for approval from others.

God does not want us to think any less of his love and goodness because we do not understand grace.

Some days I try so hard and shun God’s love. God’s love I decide is reserved for the days when I have it all together.   

When I’m the good Christian girl…I’ll find you a chapter and verse for that little theory sometime, probably in the book of “Beth”.

Those days where “everything is all together” become fewer and fewer. Sliding down deeper into a cave where the daylight grows dim  and the darkness of works wraps around you. I pull the escape door of God’s love and grace shut with my own doing.

 Grace and love are after all for those who have at least done one thing to be worthy of such things is the lie that haunts me.

Sins creep in and its easier to do them without thinking. They pile up and add to the tremendous guilt of not being able to do anything right.

I’ve tried to hide in my cave of gloom, but God know the place of desperation  and reaches in with his love and grace.

Filthy and wretched sinner overtaken by the love of a perfect  God.

Understand grace one little bit at a time. Your not going to arrive over night. All God ever desires is for us to trust in His grace for every single little moment of our lives. Even those moments where I haven’t done one single thing to be worthy of God’s grace

Not done one thing to be worthy of grace. Interesting paradox eh? God’s grace does not require perfection to understand it.

Otherwise I, the unfaithful prodigal sinner, would not be here writing these words.

Because of His glorious grace I live each day. Each day I do things wrong I should do right, but in the end the its God's grace who takes the shambles and makes them glisten .  

Today God's grace is going to be ever abundant. How can I not want to serve this God who is so good to me?

A life well lived.

Usually I avoid the news and all of its many horrendous stories of hopelessness, but not this week. Not since Monday morning when I woke up to find my Facebook news feed flooded with news of a friend's death. Not since the news took such a personal spin for me.

Most of the world heard the news of the deadly Prescott wildfire and to them it was just more awfulness. They read the tiny bites of information the reporters give of the firefighters and grieve at such a loss, but all they will ever know of those firefighters is what then news tell them. A few short lines to summarize lives of men that were loved deeply by their family and friends.

All I will ever know about 18 of those firefighters is the portraits the news painted of them, but one of those fire fighters I will remember so much more of .

The one I went to college with.

 I the underling and he the upperclassmen. Still it was a small school and so we knew each other.

The news said he had a "dry sense of humor" and it was the truth. How many times did something happen that only Dustin would have dreamt up. Life at college is filled with jokes and randomness, yet some how Dustin added a dimension to college life that only he could produce.

Not sure I will forget the night Dustin was in exceptionally rare form and was mixing us up some brownies. I can't even remember what all was so funny. Maybe it was the "well I can't find a spoon so I'll just mix up this stuff with my hands" line, but it was just a simply hilarious "cooking show". Can't remember how the brownies tasted either, but obviously I don't remember them tasting terrible.

Dustin was a funny guy, but for every bit of humor there was just as much seriousness about His walk with God. Preaching the required sermons for homiletics in chapel and then filling the pulpit at the little country church which was not required, but he did it anyway.

I'm writing all this in the past tense which seems so horribly wrong. Just one sort week ago Dustin's older brother sat at our kitchen table and told us about the lives of all of his siblings.

Was it the last time he spoke of Dustin in the present tense?

Sudden and abruptly and without warning life changed that Sunday evening. So unexpectedly 19 lives were cut short.

"So teach us to number our days,
That we may present to You a heart of wisdom." Psalm 90:12

Dustin didn't know when he went to bed last Saturday night it would be his last night on this earth and that the next night would find him in the presence of his Savior. Dustin didn't need to know the number of days, so he could get his life right with God.

He knew who he served and he served that God every day.

The first time I met Dustin. He and his classmates were sitting around the wooden colored table in the dinning hall. They were consuming Subway sandwiches, because for obvious reasons leftovers from the week are not always desirable.

I was visiting the school to see if I wanted to go there.

The conversation was of random stuff. Gross EMT stories and stories of college craziness.

 Then those people, Dustin included, were talking about how to be a light for Christ to their coworkers. Seriousness enveloped the chatter and as I saw authentic faith. I knew I wanted to go school with people like this.

Dustin didn't just do a "good thing "like going to Bible school. He lived his faith

One horrible moment last Sunday night took Dustin's life. In the same awful moment complete joy was felt as Dustin completed his life on this earth and went to eternal glory

 

^"20 according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.

²¹ For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. " Phil 1:20-21

 Dustin is not in heaven tonight because he was a "good person". Dustin just like the rest of us struggled with a sin nature, but tonight because of the glorious grace of our Lord I can say without a doubt that Dustin is in heaven.

Dustin wanted his God to be known and by God's grace God is being glorfied in Dustin's life

Thankful to mourn with a hope. Thankful to remember a life well lived in Christ. Thankful to remember more then random memories, but to see God glorified even in sorrow.

That thing called power

 The benefits of electricity are just positivity endless, but I would dare to say the benefits of not having power are even more endless.

Without fail as soon as the lights go off you will suddenly be over come with a motivation to deep clean the house. Of course you will only want to clean things that involve using electricity. Even though the windows are well bathed in sunlight and you can actually see to clean them you will not want to clean the windows.

Instead you can comfortably lounge on the couch all day long reading your most favorite book. The to do list for the day was baking and cooking. While the sidewalk maybe hot enough to fry an egg baking a cake would be stupid, so why not take the day off.

Of course without lights putting on make up is an impossibility, so why not got out with streaks of black mascara all around your eyes?

 The haggard look has never been more vogue. You just may possibly though run into a friend whom you haven't seen since your teenage years.

 Unfortunately erasing the image of the teenage girl with bad make up and notoriously frizzy hair will not be a option, because that is exactly how you look.

Not having power is really the greatest diet plan because opening the fridge door would make all your food spoil, so you sit and look longingly at the door to the golden world of food and let the calories burn off of you.

Your not the person that lives off of caffeine, but suddenly you will be seized with the desire to drink a strong black cup of coffee. Sucking on coffee grounds never sounded so good.

You will drive by the nice hotel town in town and note all the power trucks in the parking lot. Resentment and bitterness will creep into your mind as you think how dare those power men get a lovely night's sleep in a air conditioned room.

 And how dare they be able to look at their teeth after brushing them. And how dare they be able to wear clean clothing because they could actually see what they were putting on. Do they even know how humiliating it is to show up to a social gathering in a t-shirt that is decorated with last week's supper?

All this will wash away when you arrive home after midnight to find your driveway blocked with 3 power trucks giving personal attention to your house.

 Most people would find it creepy to have strange men walking around on their back porch at 12:15 am. No those are not serial killers from America's Most Wanted those are superheros.

"Umm hey y'all superman was in our yard last night that's all." Avoid eye contact with people after this statement.

When the lights do come back on at 5:30 in the morning you will probably wish they were still off, because the light woke you up on a blissful Saturday morning.


Written by someone who may have personally experienced all these things and may have had to much time to think about a blog post. Sitting in the dark may just well be the best thing that has ever happened to writing since carbon copy paper

Of Monday Nights

Life disappoints.

Sometimes in the biggest of ways that scatters your life pieces across a dark forest and you can't see how to pick them up.

Sometimes life disappoints in the smallest of ways.

Why are the smallest disappointments the most bitter? You tell yourself this is silly. get over it. All it was just a looked forward to moment. Surely there will be another one.

Your girlfriends spontaneously decide to go out for ice cream. They leave in such a hurry of excitement and giddiness that they forget that maybe someone else wanted in on the party. And your trying not to feel left out and disappointed.

Rushing to the store you get there 2 minutes before closing and the lights are off and the door soundly locked. Why in the world? You needed that item and you wanted it now.

You wait for the phone call that never comes and the text you sent never gets answered.

Just so many little things, but when your feeling alone the littlest things are the biggest things.

I'm writing this on a Monday night. People do not feel alone on Monday nights. Maybe on a Friday night (check for me )

 maybe on a Saturday night ( oh yes ),

 maybe on a Sunday night (very true),

 but never on a Monday.

 

Mondays are for celebrating the fact you survived a Monday. Collapsing on the couch in sweet relief that you didn't make too many blunders and only needed 5 1/2 cups of coffee to get through the day. Ahem.

This Monday I looked forward to fellowship around the Word. Weeknight fellowship I hadn't had for so long and I craved desperately. Then someone who probably wanted to be very helpful locked up the office tight so that no one could go in and steal our keys to the office and car keys so we could go home.

Needless to say here I am alone in this dark house writing on my blog about loneliness and thinking. I know what a rare thing for me right? :)

Somewhere in a room someone sits in a room day after day. Able to do a few things but only if they are within reach. hardly doing much independently.

And they wait for someone to come and remember that they are there. Still very much a person, but so unable to participate in a "normal life".

 Its the story of many.

Tonight I write this post to anyone who has felt alone. Tasted the pain of disappointment. The one who is surrounded by so many, but is alone.

We are not alone. Only one of the thousands who feel alone and someone out there would love to trade our disappointment with their own.

Moments of disappointment are perhaps the greatest gift, because it is then we find the gift of knowing God provides for our needs.

 Finding God's grace sufficient is the most beautiful thing and the greatest hope in disappointment. Never for one moment will our God disappoint.

 

Never.  

Yes I did want to cry tonight. Yes I'm thankful to be writing all by myself.

Happy Monday night everyone and congrats on surviving the day.