create.
deep breaths.
hope on the horizon.
live life to the fullest.
discover what you were created for.
breathe.
play! sing! make music!
do something artistic: get messy.
feel. move. expand.
be HIS. go all out. hold nothing of yourself back.
this is the time. the year of jubilee!
Seize the Day!!
pour yourself out…
…yet find your rest in Him.
His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
breathe deep.
what a heavy day this has been. and it’s only halfway finished.
hang on, let me back up and state: God is good. no matter what else is going on, He is always, always GOOD. (sorry, i haven’t written in a while. i should catch you up on all the wonderful things going on: new friendships, new direction/insights on life, lots of community stuff, another new car, house-looking, travels to see friends, etc. etc.) but, for a second, let me explain.
daniel and i have realized we are supposed to stick around here in cincinnati. and not just temporarily. no, we need to plug in, put some roots down, be Jesus for our neighbors, etc. so, here we are, discovering ways to do that. i’m at the corner bloc coffeeshop, daniel comes to hang out with me in the evenings and we’re finding ways to build relationships with the regulars– be they kids, adults, whatever. daniel’s also working for our coffee roaster “la terza artisan roasterie“, which has been fulfilling, challenging, and rewarding. we’re loving this new world of coffee, learning more about the artist’s side of it, the farmers who grow it and make a living providing us with the caffeine we americans run on, etc. for me, it’s not the drinking of it that i love (i can only handle about one drink a day, if that!), but this whole culture, and the feel of a coffeeshop–making it inviting, having a third space for people to go, etc. etc. (this is a very short version of so many other posts i’ve meant to write ,but haven’t had time!)
third space: people have home and they have work or school, but they need a third place to call their own, to get away from the pressures or work, or the responsibilities of home, or take a break from life in general, and enter a new, safe, familiar place to call their own. thus, coffeeshop. 
maybe you work from home and need a change of scenery; try your local coffeeshop! maybe you’d like to meet people in the community? a coffeeshop is full of fun characters and great for conversations to brew! perhaps you’d like to get more involved; come to the corner bloc and sit for half an hour, and i promise you’ll have rubbed shoulders with a diverse and interesting crowd.
anyway, heavy day. some of my little regulars came in today to have a safe, warm place to be while mom’s away, and school hasn’t started yet. we played games and talked, they asked me if i could be their mom, even though i’d make them eat vegetables, and some friends of mine helped buy them lunch (and dinner, should they need to stay that long!). it was a good day, but at the end of my shift, i was emotionally exhausted from praying my heart out for my little friends. we were closed a couple days for Christmas and new year’s, and i thought,we are quite possibly the only family some of these kids know. how could we desert them for a few frivolous days of our own, to spend time with our families, and the people who love us? isn’t that what the pagans do? (see matt. 5, where He talks about the birds and the flowers and loving your enemies) *sigh* my heart hurts now for them, wondering what they’ll go home to tonight. and what’s in store for them in the future? they are God’s children, His dear, sweet, little girls, and He cares about them so much! Father to the fatherless, the Defender of widows and orphans, Warrior God, Almighty Protector,… that is my God. and i hope they get to know Him, too. i hope they see Him in me. i hope i am loving like He loves.
i hope….
God has been SO good to us!
don’t know if you heard, but our road trip car (aka: my everyday car) died in a freak flash flood in the middle of the university of tennessee’s campus while we were there for a conference called CHIC (covenant high in Christ). ask for the details. it’s pretty hilarious now! it was then, too, but we went through a bit of a grieving period in between then and now. well, CHIC paid for a rental car for us to get home (since we had all the coffee stuff with us–more on that later!), and they bought the car from us for $4000. we both took that as God’s way of how He was going to allow us to buy a new car. but then daniel was worried about it, and spent a lot of time looking at craig’s list for great deals, praying about it, and wondering how God would provide. i had pretty much taken it on faith that God would give us a car when we needed one. i didn’t have a job or anything specific that required me to have one, so i figured it just wasn’t time yet. so, after reminding daniel how God has continually provided for us, and He wouldn’t drop us or forget about us, he finally gave it up to God and stopped looking. he put a final message on facebook, asking for prayer for a car, and within the day, God left us a message about a car, via a close friend of His (and my family!)! it was amazing! she knew of a guy whose ministry it is to find people cars who need them, and can’t afford nice, new cars. she asked him to find us a nicer car, and he knew of just the one. it’s now sitting in our driveway, freshly cleaned, and with new seatbelts for the back seat on the way! it is so exciting and so encouraging and heart-warming to know how much God loves us and wants to take care of us!!
also, with the CHIC conference, we walked away with a new sense of purpose and calling. together, we realized that community really is where we are heading, and that community is already happening here in cincinnati. thus, we need to stay and get plugged in, which doesn’t sounds as adventurous as traveling overseas, so it was hard to adjust our brains to this new idea of “staying”. but, it’s totally good, and actually incredibly amazing and well-timed (as always!)!
part of my own personal insight/realization/epiphany (or apostrophe, if you’re smee from the movie “hook”!) was that i love the coffee world! i like to make it, i like to be around it, i like to be around other people who enjoy it and truly care about it and want to make an excellent cup a’ joe. that led to me to BLOC coffee shop, thinking i would just volunteer, but they were actually hiring! so here i am, in my second week of working for them, and absolutely loving it! we shall see what other adventures God has in store for all of that now, too, along with community living, and christopher being back in town, and all the possibilities that await us! yay!!!
life is good, my friends. revel in it! soak it up! God has created us for this!
well, we’re back from CiY sooner than we thought we’d be. but it’s been a good week. reconnecting with friends, taking some time to recover, pondering/praying about the future… good stuff. i kinda wish it could continue like this, but i’m sure we need to be more productive with our days/time here on earth.
we had a wonderful day yesterday of gap outlet shopping, indian food, watching “away we go” at the esquire, then hitting up the library on the way home (running into some friends there and then at the grocery store!) and picking out a random selection of movies: “chocolat”, “autumn spring”, “seven brides for seven brothers”, and some bollywood film i can’t remember the name of right now! we watched the first two last night, and it was so much fun to sit in bed, eating blueberries and mango and banana bread and the remains of a chocolate bar, (complelemented our random movie selections), and just be together. we needed it. since we got back, we filled our time with friends and family so much that we didn’t have time for just us. so that was good.
today we’re on to a family cookout, where the smyths are coming to join the reads yet again (this is working out pretty wonderfully! we did it for easter and it was pretty fantastic. i like having our family all together like this!). daniel and i are bringing “gourmet” toppings for burgers as our contribution–we’ll see how that goes. (we reads have never been known for our exotic tastebuds!) from there, we nave no plans, which is always fun to see what adventures comes upon us!
p.s. daniel made sweet potato fries from a 1-pound sweet potato we got from findlay market on sunday. they were delicious!! i love my man! he’s so crazy talented at so many things!
“daring princess camp” was amazing!! so much fun, so challenging in a million different ways. we had a lot of homesick girls this week which made things tough, but there were also so many intriguing questions, and girls in need of someone to really listen to them and love them that it made up for all the rough patches. also, so many of the talks seemed geared just for me–it’s great the way God works that out, you know? even just the stuff that was asked/required of me was challenging: get my guitar out again and play/lead for campfire, dance again, jump in and lead a small group halfway through the week, have some theological conversations with 10-year-olds and try to explain the mystery of the Incarnation,… talk about tough. so, all in all, when friday night came i was ready for a night in my own bed. but that didn’t last long.
deryck and anna and i left at 6a.m. for our trek down to milligan college in tenn. to meet up with daniel after he’d been there for the first week of 7 doing CiY. we went hiking to this beautiful waterfall (which will soon be visible on daniel’s blog, i’m sure), but about 15 minutes after being there and soaking our feet in some icy cold water, it started pouring down rain. we had planned on camping, but all four of us decided it wasn’t worth being wet and miserable the rest of our trip, so we came back to milligan and showered and camped out in the two bedroom apt. we’re staying in for the next two weeks. so, that was fun. and we can go camping next week perhaps. (almost two years of marriage, and we still haven’t gone… and that was one of our plans for our honeymoon even! funny how life doesn’t go the way you think it will… you can plan and plan, but it usually doesn’t even matter in the end.)
so, here we are, week 2 of CiY starts today. i’m so glad to be here, with daniel, finding a spot to help out i’m sure, but maybe also just using the time to relax and catch up on some reading and whatnot. we’ll see how all of this goes. there will be a lot of seeking God, i know, too, and Him reaching in and stirring up the pot and bringing new things to the surface, as He always does.
“so hold on, lover, and hold on, friend, it’s a reckless world we’re living in… yet if i am to be held by you, you held by me, we can close our eyes and still we see the bond of truth: a cord of three…”
well, well, well. here we are, on this lovely, drizzly, chilly day in june (69 today, 90 two days ago!).
to fill you in a bit: i’m working for Jesus now, and part time for my dad, doing odds and ends-type projects for him that he doesn’t have time for, or helping him with putting new videos of classes on youtube. kinda fun, kinda out of my comfort zone (really, anything to do with computers is out of my comfort zone!), but it’s been good. and helpful.
in a little over a week, i leave for “daring princess camp”. that should be good. i’m the story-teller for the week. need to get to work on that… i’ve got some great ideas, but they won’t happen without some actual planning and whatnot.
then, deryck and anna and i head down to meet up and go camping with daniel down in tenn., where he will have completed week one of the tenn. CiYs at milligan. daniel is running sound for them for 7 weeks, and i get to tag along, just to hang out! i mean, i’m sure i won’t just “hang out”–how can i kick back and relax when there are so many cool folks to meet, youth groups to hang out with, and helping daniel or the other CiYers wherever i can. i am going to take a few books with me, though, just in case i wear out my welcome or something like that, or get bored, or whatever. we’ll see how this goes…
i’m most likely coming back for a week somewhere in the middle of the summer to help one of my good friends get married to my brother, and see another great friend back from thailand, and spend some more quality time with my best friend who might be moving to chicago sooner than i’d like. *sigh* so much change… so little time…
we’re talking about cultivating a community here in price hill once we get back from the summer! christopher will be home, and has promised his unswerving devotion to us, so we’re jumping into who knows what with him and whoever else is interested. we’ll see where God takes this. maybe a house-rehabbing? definitely being more intentional with our time/money/resources? hopefully a garden? perhaps lots of discipleship and learning from each other? possibly who know what?? the future is wide open!
well, that’s the basic jist of where we’re at and where we’re headed, as far as we know. God may have other plans, but this is what we think He’s said, so we’re going for it, and should He care to lead us elsewhere, then so be it. we just want to be loving Him with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and whatever that looks like, however that takes shape in our everyday lives, that is what it will be. “wherever you go, there you are”, as the saying goes. (perhaps it started as a dr. seuss quote, perhaps plato said it way before him–who knows? but it’s true. so we’ll go with it.)
peace to you, my friend.
“Oh, You did not have a home
There were places You visited frequently
You took off Your shoes and scratched Your feet
‘Cause you knew that the whole world belongs to the meek
But You did not have a home
No, You did not have a home
And You did not take a wife
There were pretty maids all in a row
Who lined up to touch the hem of Your robe
But You had no place to take them, so
You did not take a wife
No, You did not take a wife
Birds have nests, foxes have dens
But the hope of the whole world rests
On the shoulders of a homeless man
You had the shoulders of a homeless man
No, You did not have a home
Well you had no stones to throw
You came without an ax to grind
You did not tow the party line
No wonder sight came to the blind
You had no stones to throw
You had no stones to throw
And You rode and ass’ foal
They spread their coats and cut down palms
For You and Your donkey to walk upon
But the world won’t find what it thinks it wants
On the back of an ass’ foal
So I guess You had to get sold
‘Cause the world can’t stand what it can’t own
And it can’t own You
‘Cause You did not have a home
Birds have nests, foxes have dens
But the hope of the whole world rests
On the shoulders of a homeless man
You had the shoulders of a homeless man
No, You did not have a
Birds have nests, foxes have dens
But the hope of the whole world rests
On the shoulders of a homeless man
You had the shoulders of a homeless man
And the world can’t stand what it can’t own
And it can’t own You
‘Cause You did not have a home” ~ rich mullins
and we’re off!
i get to start traveling with daniel the week after next, for just a couple weeks of CiY, and then what? i’m not sure. but there is a trip to philly/new york tentatively in the works, and then heading off to CiY “move” for most of the summer. i think it’ll be fun, whatever is coming next…
maybe some time to try my hand at creating some art? (oh, such a scary thought! but, if other people can be brave enough to share their passions, perhaps i can too?)
maybe volunteering my time at a homeless shelter?
maybe babysitting?
or at temp job for a month or two?
maybe one of the jobs i’ve already applied for will want me for a couple months? or the ones i’m going to talk to: coffee shops nearby, etc.?
or, maybe we’ll just see what God does here! i’m excited for whatever it is!
well, life is a bit up in the air right now. it’s exciting and scary and pleasant and nerve-wracking and exhilerating and terrifying–all at once!
today i turned in my two weeks’ notice to HQ, and now the rest is up to God. i know He’s got something He’s been brewing, preparing us for the next step, but i have no idea what it will be. i know it will be good, and i can trust Him for that. so, it’s reassuring to know He’s got a plan, and He will take us where we need to be.
in the meantime, i get to travel a bit with daniel and CiY in a couple weeks (the week after i’m finishe at hq, actually), which is swell. and then for the summer, they’re letting me tag along for the high school conferences in tennessee, where daniel will be running sound. so, that part of life is kinda figured out. now, what will He do with me in between now and then? and what about when we get back? that part feels even more up in the air, although there are some very promising possibilities that have “fun” and “excitement” written all over them! i guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
“taste and see that the Lord is GOOD!” His mercies are new every morning, He sings over us in our sleep, He grants sleep to those He loves, He loves us so much He gave His one and only Son to die for us, He wants us, we are His children, His beloved, His bride, His sheep, His friends, His chosen ones, His servants, His anointed, … and He is our Salvation, our Light, our Guide, our Path, our Forever Faithful One, our Confidence, our Shield and Strength, our Wisdom, our Ever-Present Help in times of danger, our Father, our Provider, our Magnificent King, … our— (keep it going!)
things are looking up, my friends! can’t divulge anything yet, but, in the words of fanny j. crosby,…
“blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O, what a foretaste of glory divine!
heir of salvation, purchase of God
born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.
this is my story, this is my song
praising my Savior, all the day long!
this is my story, this is my song
praising my Savior, all the day long!
perfect submission, perfect delight,
vision of rapture now burst on my sight;
angels, descending, bring from above
echoes of mercy, whispers of love
perfect submission, all is at rest,
i in my Savior am happy and blest,
watching and waiting, looking above,
filled with His goodness, lost in His love.”
God is GOOD!! rest in Him today.
