a time to weep

I recently spent time in Atlanta for RUF Intern training, and it was fabulous. A few days filled with quality people (and I mean quality), teaching from very godly and wise men and women, and free meals and cookies. It may be one of my favorite parts of my job.

The sessions we sit through are always great, but sometimes they can be challenging/convicting. One of the sessions that stuck out to me this past training was led by Keith Berger, former campus minister at LSU and current area coordinator for...one of the other US regions. (I don't know which one, obviously; I just know it's not mine.) He talked about basic discipleship principles, and throughout his talk, I could feel my internal level of anxiety building. At the end, I would have cried had I not been in a room full of people.

Now, I am not normally an emotional person. ...Actually, I take that back. I haven't been an emotional person in the past (due to the unintentional murder of a pet hermit crab...more on that another time, possibly), but since I began the internship with RUF, I suppose I just have to accept that I have become more emotional. I guess I would be classified as "normal" now. ...In the emotional sense. So as the session ended and I felt the tears building, I began to question myself. Why did this particular session bother me more than the others? (Because it did, I polled a few other interns.) I realized it was because I felt like a failure. I had heard all that Keith said about how we as interns should be discipling our girls, and I realized I was not doing most of the things he assumed us to be doing at this point in the internship.

I began talking with one of my friends there, another intern and wonderful woman. When I told her this, she (with the best of intentions) told me I was a wonderful intern. To which I responded, "You don't know that. You're not there (in Huntsville), you don't see or know what I do." She lovingly tried to persuade me otherwise, trying to be encouraging. And I am very grateful to her for those attempts, but it was ineffective. Because I was right. She can't know what kind of intern I am, for the most part. And I really haven't been doing my job like I should.

So now my anxiety level has increased, because not only do I feel that I've failed my girls, but now I feel like people are wrongly assuming that I'm doing what I'm not actually doing. (Anxiety issues-I see them. We're working on it. ...and by we I mean me.) So I then found Keith, and asked him if I could walk out with him. (To which he replied, quite funnily, "Are we going to just walk?" "Oh no. We're gonna talk.") Our exchange went as follows:

Me: So. ...Your session made me want to cry.

Keith: *insert some sort of sentiment here that expresses sorrow for my state but not necessarily apology...I don't remember exactly what he said here.*

Me: What does that mean (the me wanting to cry thing)?

Keith: Well, why do you want to cry?

Me: ...Because I heard all the things you said, and it just made me realize that this whole past semester, I haven't been doing my job. I haven't done those things.

Keith: *pause* ...It's okay to weep over that. That's a legitimate thing to grieve over.

I don't think I can fully describe to you the freedom I felt when he said that. ...Because he's right. It's a bizarre thing, this Christianity. So full of paradoxes. But it's truth, nevertheless. When you see legitimate failure, when you really see your sin...you need to grieve over that. You need someone to say, yes. What you see, the sorrow you feel, that's real. That's right. Because sin is something to weep over. It shouldn't be in this world; our beings weren't originally designed to be okay with brokenness because we weren't broken when we were made. We were never supposed to be in the state we're in now. So we shouldn't be okay with it!

Now, I'll admit there is a high propensity on my part to be too hard on myself, to wallow in guilt, and that is NOT okay. Because there is the good news as well, that Christ has fully paid for all my sins, past, present, and future. Jesus did in fact take my sin and His righteousness and say, "Tradesies!" [Loose translation of...the Bible. Brought to you by Leigh Douglas.] But the freedom of that comes only with first acknowledging the crimes we've committed. We've got to repent and grieve over our sin, and only then will we be able to celebrate and experience the true freedom the Gospel brings.

And friends...it is indeed glorious.

takin' care of [more car] business

I feel like I write about my car a lot. This isn't really a problem, I suppose, except that I feel it is a tad bit deceiving. While I do probably personify my car more than your average girl, Stella usually doesn't play this active of a role in my thoughts and life. But when a car acts up as much as mine has been doing in the past year, especially these past few months...well, it certainly causes a stir. (And let's just be honest, she's loving the blog-fame.)

On my recent trip to SC, I had quite a bit of car trouble. On the way to a wedding, I started to notice that on the sharper turns, I was having difficulty turning the wheel. There weren't a whole lot of these turns, so at first I just thought I was imagining it. (Don't you imagine difficulty in turning every now and then?) Then a little bit later, after another particularly sharp turn, I noticed both my brake and battery lights where aglow. I figured this wasn't good. ...But of course, I kept driving. (I have a tendency to be late to weddings; this was NOT going to be another mark in that tally.)

Then a little bit later, I noticed the "ABS" light was on. Now I'm no car guru, but I know that this stands for Anti-lock Brake System, and that this is REALLY not good. ...But I kept driving.

I am now 8 miles away from the wedding, my speedometer and another meter (something to do with gears and the engine) start to drop to 0 and then pop back up. My radio begins to flicker. Then the speedometer begins to spend considerable time on "0mph." ...And yet I keep driving. (Although now I will say that I began to repeat over and over, "Please don't let me die, please don't let me die. This is a really dumb life decision, to keep driving. If you die it will totally have been preventable and all your fault and you should probably get a Darwin award. ...Oh please don't let me die.")

Praise the Lord (really, I mean this, I'm not just using this phrase in the typical southern way), I made it to the wedding. Barely. I parked, turned off the car...and couldn't get the key out of the ignition. But like I said, I REALLY didn't want to be late to the wedding, so I slipped the keyless entry remote off the keychain, locked up, and went to the wedding. Afterwards, in between the ceremony and reception, I went back out to my car to see if I could figure out the damage. ...yeah, I couldn't get it unlocked. When your battery is completely dead, the whole automatic unlock for the doors thing doesn't work. Just fyi.

Suffice it to say I left my car in the middle of nowhere, got a ride back to Clemson (where all of my overnight things were NOT), got up the next morning, was picked up by my angelic parents, and drove an hour back to the farm where the wedding was (feeling pretty gross, I might add, as I had not brushed my teeth with a toothbrush for over 24 hours at this point). Turns out my alternator belt was almost non-existent. It was 1/16th of an inch wide. ...It's supposed to 9/16ths of an inch wide. That's a half-inch difference. (Yes, I was a math major. Look at me, I can subtract!) Anyways, my amazing and wonderful father (of whom I still believe is amazing and wonderful even when he is NOT fixing my cars) fixed it all for free. I then drove home to Huntsville.

...A few days later, I had to jump my car to get it started. A fluke? ...no. The past few days I have had to jump my car every time I started it. At this point, I'm thinking it's one of two problems: either a) when I drove my car to the point of exhaustion before the wedding, I so completely ran down my battery that it was permanently useless. b) the alternator belt was too loose and was not doing it's job of charging my battery while I drove.

So today I took it to AutoZone, where they test batteries for free. Turns out my battery is fine, the connection was just obstructed with some junk and so my battery wasn't fully charging while driving. After "James" at AutoZone fixed this for me, he said we should jump my car just to check the alternator. So I pulled out the handy-dandy portable battery car jumper thing (I have no idea what it's actually called), hooked it up myself and jumped my car, as I've been doing for the past few days.

...When I finished, James had this look on his face. Our conversation went as follows:

James: You have one of those?

Me: Haha, yeah, I've needed it.

James: Where did you buy that?

Me: Uh, I borrowed it from a friend; I'm not sure where she bought it. Why, is it not the normal kind?

J: No.

(After I unhooked everything and put it back in my car...)

J: Where were you when I was twenty years younger?

M: Haha, I don't know. Except I do, but I was three.

J: Haha, you probably weren't even born yet.

M: Not correcting him is probably a good idea here. ...this feels familiar...funny that last time I was saying I was older, and now this guy doesn't even think I'm 20. Hahaha.

J: Are you from here originally?

M: No, I'm from South Carolina. Hollaaaaaa. *Insert other state pride sentiments here.*

J: Well this here is a redneck EMT.

M: Really? What does that even mean?

J: Yeah, this is a redneck defibrillator for your car.

M: Oh, hahaha. Nice. Apparently I get street cred from car guys for knowing how to jump my own car with a device that isn't even mine. Awesome.

James then finished giving me instructions about what to do with my car, then said he was going to give his fellow employee (who apparently is from SC as well) a hard time. I'm not really sure why. And then I left. And laughed a lot.

unexpected is an understatement

Usually when I traverse to South Carolina, the place where I spent the first 22 years of my life, I am quite sad to leave. When it’s been your home for that long, something just feels innately right about being there. This feeling exists in the exact shade of blue sky, the look of the pines that line the interstate, the familiar road names, the staple restaurants, not to mention all the memories that accompany those sights.

And yet for the first time, maybe ever, I didn’t feel a sense of loss in driving across the state line into Georgia today. (Except for maybe the sense of loss upon realizing there was no sense of loss…) And it was just another of the many ways that God has surprised me these past few days. It’s best described in the lyrics of a song that I don’t know the author of, nor do I know its name. (A dear friend put it on a mixed cd she gave me freshman year of college, and I have searched in vain for the song on the internet. Clearly technology isn’t everything.) The lyrics go as follows:

City lights, they feel like home

I feel like I belong

So far from the southern dream I knew, I love

…

I know that it’s perfect here.

When that song came on as I was driving into Huntsville (literally, the timing was perfect), I realized that as I was singing along, the words were ringing true in my heart. Which, for any of you who know me and have talked to me in the past year, you understand how significant this is.

But here’s the thing. …It really is true. As I have worked into the second and final year of the internship, I’ve realized that Huntsville finally feels a little like home. It’s definitely been a rocky road to get to this point, but God has graciously allowed me to reach it. Not that I expect it to be permanent, but there’s beauty in it all the same. And I don’t mention its temporary nature to be pessimistic, but simply to say that the joy of it isn’t in the length of duration, but in the existence of it. In other words, I will still be able to rejoice in it when it is no longer there (whether because I am homesick for SC, because I have moved away again, or something else unbeknownst to me). God never has to grant us that feeling of belonging to a geographical location, to a particular community. It’s not something He promises us. It is a gift of His free grace, much like many other things as small as the shape of one’s toes and as large as one’s eternal status.

I suppose what I mean to express here is gratefulness. And repentance. I have spent many of the past few days complaining about various aspects of my life. I have heard my own selfishness drip off my tongue. God has graciously allowed me to hear it, and to have a desire to work out my salvation with fear and trembling. I have been frustrated and angry with my circumstances. God has graciously provided for those circumstances and allowed me to see the beauty of things I enjoyed in the midst of their turmoil. He gave me rest when I needed it, and He gave me a desire to return to work, to be a part of His kingdom growth. And these were no small feats. In the midst of my failures, God has again given me grace, and He has also given me the courage to stand upon the righteousness He has imputed to me. And I can think of no other place I’d rather be…it really is perfect here.