2013

Question: What does a person do when it is the end of the year and she is immobile and cannot leave the house?

If you answered "Watch four episodes of Gilmore Girls," then you would be correct. But if you answered "Pray and reflect on the previous year," you would also be correct. Such is my post-knee injury life. But seriously, it's the end of 2013 and this has been a pretty intense year for me.

Here's a quick recap, in case you are at all interested:
I begin the year at Urbana, an missions conference for students that takes place every three years in Saint Louis, Missouri. It was a great experience and I actually made a commitment there to serve in overseas missions. At Urbana, I had been hoping that God would just kind of speak to me and tell me what I should do for the rest of my life. This did not happen, but actually I felt a lot of peace.

The winter of 2013 then happened, and this included tons of work on the big scary thesis, learning to drive a stick, buying my first car (woo hoo!), my first car breaking down, my first repair bill, my first insurance bill, etc....  But really, God blessed me with incredible friends, incredible student leadership and sweet sweet breakfast-and-worship sessions. Yes, there was a lot of stress. But there was also a lot of joy among the stress: playing with brand-new baby Ian. Introducing our prairie roommate to fresh lobster. Walks on the dykes followed by free samples at everyone's favourite grocery store, Pete's.

One of the few photos I have of my beloved car, Gertrude (taken at Three Pools)

And then suddenly, everything happened all at once. My thesis was due. We planned a huge end-of-the-year party for IVCF. I was planning and support-raising for my summer work. And then my grandmother passed away.

My Grammy Main had suffered from Alzheimer's for about six or seven years. It had been a few years since she even recognized me or since we could even have a coherent conversation. So, in a way, her death was a gift. The sooner it came, the fewer years we had of remembering her in this uncharacteristic state. Although we had been expecting Grammy to go for some time, it did not change the fact that it was very sad. I miss her. She was one of the biggest role models in my life.

It seemed that from that point, I never rested (until now, of course). First exams, then getting ready for the Halifax Urban Partnership and for my Wycliffe internship in Mozambique, then, well, the HUP, and smack in the middle of that, graduation.

I have been thinking a lot about the Halifax Urban Partnership (affectionately known as the HUP) and what God was doing through that. I think one of the biggest things I learned from that is to treat every day (every moment!) as an opportunity to listen to God and to serve him and others. I remember one day a few of us were walking back "home" from church. We had to stop by the grocery store to pick up some things for lunch, given a few dollars of "team cash" to use. Outside of the grocery store there was a young man begging. We felt compelled to chat with him and to get him some food. He really appreciated it, and it was a joy for us to be able to help him. But you see, that was not the task in front of us. The initial task was to buy ourselves a couple loaves of bread. Too often, I am so single-mindedly thinking of the thing I have to do that I forget to be open to the things God may have me do. Sometimes, things just seem to get in the way of what I am doing. It is an everyday thing to learn to be open to God leading. Like seriously. I have to relearn it every single day.

I liked this photo that I took during the HUP

I was at home for a day before heading over to Mozambique. I spent a lot of time on airplanes and in airports before finally looking out the plane window and seeing the coconut trees, tin roofs and red dusty streets of Nampula, Mozambique. It took so much prayer and support from all of you to get that far, and I was groggy and wide-eyed as I met the folks with whom I would spend the next three months. Those three months were times of learning humility, as I learned to deal with life in a different culture. I learned about taking risks and saw a beautiful sunset every single night. I had a ton of fun babysitting three of the most wonderful kids in the world. I learned how to slackline. I acted out a folk story about the sun and the North Wind.  I got to know people from Mozambique, the United States, Britain, Germany, and Sweden, to name a few spots. And my Old Testament professor would be proud to hear that I did a presentation on imprecatory Psalms.

 I thought I would share this photo of slacklining in Mozambique. I think it's a good metaphor of my time there. When you are slacklining, the best way to have good balance is to keep low and keep going. And from my limited experience, I am pretty sure that is the key to living and serving in a different context than what you're used to. I need to always remember to stay humble and to never give up.

A photo from the 24-hours of prayer we had at Acadia

After Mozambique, I came back to Canada with a lot more questions than I had when I left, especially about the direction my life should be going. I had hoped to have a little more time to spare this year in Wolfville, but somehow I managed to be just as busy as always. With a job as a server, a class at night-time, weekly potlucks, Bible studies and tutoring sessions, I was stretched thin. But God was very much present. Spontaneous worship and prayer is becoming a part of our little Christian student subculture and I am thrilled. One of the highlights of the past few months has been learning more about different spiritual gifts, including things I have been skeptical of like prophecy and healing. But I know God is much bigger than my skepticism. He will work how he will work.

Another big surprise of the year was winning a trip to Cameroon! I am still pretty much reeling from that.

So, my prayer for 2014 is this: I want to be more available to God. So much of my time and energy go into things that are not worshiping him.

I spent the first few moments of the year reading Habakkuk, of all books. I love love love Habakkuk's prayer in chapter 3. This, too, is my prayer:

O Lord, I have heard of your renown,
    and I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work.
In our own time revive it;   
 in our own time make it known. (verse 1)


Though the fig tree does not blossom,
    and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails,
    and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold,
    and there is no herd in the stalls,  
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will exult in the God of my salvation. 
 God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,    
 and makes me tread upon the heights. (verses 17-19)


 

The earth is filled with his glory (December thoughts)

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
    the whole earth is full of his glory.”
-Isaiah 6:3

I have a lot of thoughts. Everyone does, I suppose. Here is a collection of them.

Thought one: I need to intentionally create beautiful moments in my life.
The other day as I was at work, I peeked out the window and happened to notice the view. It was an incredible, peaceful crisp scene of the morning light over the Bay and Cape Blomidon. Just seeing the beauty of that panorama made my day a little bit better. It is easy for me to forget the beauty and glory in the world, on days when I am on my third cup of coffee, have sore feet and feel like the time I need to accomplish everything I need to do in the day exceeds the number of hours in the day.

But God has blessed me with some beautiful moments in this life lately, the sort of moments I am realizing I need to make sure I have more often. Like laying in a trailer in the old orchard, watching the stars with my sister. Like running with abandon through the new fresh snow. Like raising my voice to echo praises along with the grand piano and some good friends in a study hall (like a cathedral) in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes these moments just happen, but often they do not. And I want to make sure they happen, because they help remind me of God's beauty and glory, which the whole earth is full of. 

Just a beautiful moment

Next thought: Worship is all over
You may have noticed, I really like worship music. I listen to it all the time and I love the sweet times that my friends and family spend in musical worship. We do it whenever we can: in my living room at home, with my dad on the guitar and my brother on the piano, or maybe in the woods behind the university, or perhaps just in various friends' rental units.  I love to raise my weak, occasionally off-key voice to join the instruments and the others singing. Someone plays the guitar, usually, and someone the keyboard if there is one, and the percussion, and once in a while there is a violin or something as well. But I do not know how to play any instruments (except for the bagpipes, sort of, but that's another story). And my voice is not really anything to write home about. So I wonder my place in all of it. But then I realized this wonderful truth: God is really big. And he is really good and really creative. And he created music and music is awesome and I love it. But he also created other things. Like language. And I think I can use language to worship him. Oh, you may have a guitar, or a drum with which you worship. Me, I have a pen. Worship to God is not limited to only music. It is so much more expansive than that. 

That being said, let's all just appreciate this song.

Penultimate thought: Rejoicing in hope
I have sung the song "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" every Advent season basically since forever. The chorus goes as follows: "Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel/Shall come to thee, O Israel."
I was singing that and then I noticed something interesting: they are rejoicing before Emmanuel (the Messiah) even comes! It is an expectant rejoicing. 
And I had to ask myself: do I rejoice in expectation? Do I praise God for things he has promised but that have not yet occurred?

Final thought: Thirst

As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God. 
 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?
-Psalm 42:1-2

Last night I was thirsty and then I drank some water and then I was amazed by the miracle of the satisfaction of thirst. Because when I am thirsty, all I want is water. Yes, I like coffee and wine and pineapple Fanta but nothing satisfies thirst like water does. It is precisely what I need and when I am thirsty, my favourite food is water. And then I was chatting with a friend about how cool it is that Jesus said he gave water that will cause us to never thirst. 

Nothing satisfies our soul-thirst quite like Jesus. There are things that come close (the pineapple Fantas of spirituality?) but they still leave us with thirst. Jesus satisfies our souls the way water satisfies our tongues. Do you think God specifically created things in the world to be analogies for eternity? Maybe everything is an analogy.

So, here is another song.

Freedom

And I heard the sound
of a great engine pounding
in the air, and a voice asking:
"Change or slavery?
Hardship or slavery?"
and voices answering:
"Slavery! Slavery!"
And I was afraid, loving
what I knew would be lost. 
-From "Song in a Year of Catastrophe" by Wendell Berry

A couple of weeks ago was Anti-Slavery Week at Acadia. Students raised money and awareness about modern-day slavery through various events, one of which was the showing of a film called Nefarious. This documentary is an honest, harrowing account of human trafficking all over the world. In one scene of the film, a man tells the story of three young girls who were rescued from prostitution in Cambodia. They were promised a safe home, an education, and a good future. You would choose this instead of a horrific life of being raped every night, wouldn't you? But they had to ask their parents for permission. Even when the parents were promised a microloan and job training so that they could have another source of income besides selling their children, they still refused. In the film, the man who is telling the story has tears on his cheeks as he tells of how he had to drive the children back to the place they were enslaved.

That was an extreme example. But how many times in our life do we choose slavery over freedom? How many times do we choose what is known over what is unknown, even when the unknown has the potential to be awesome?

As I think about what is next in my life, I need to remind myself to be ready to say "yes" to God, even if it is to something that is absolutely unknown. There are so many things that enslave me, things that I will choose even when presented with a better life. I am enslaved by money and by my ideas of what my future should be. I am enslaved in wondering what other people think of me. But Galatians 5:1 says "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

When given the choice between slavery and freedom, I pray that I will choose freedom.