the truth

Thankful for friends who share very timely Henri Nouwen quotes:

“The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: “These feelings, strong as they may be are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in His eyes, called the beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace….

You have to keep looking for people and places where truth is spoken and where you are reminded of your deepest identity as the chosen one. The limited, sometimes broken, love of those who share our humanity can often point us to the truth of who we are: precious in God’s eyes.”

so much extra

Oh how I so easily forget how much grace we have already been given!

On my morning commute today, I found myself struggling to pray against the incessant flow of complaints that were going through my head. Just as I was praying against the negative thoughts and feeling quite inadequate, I turned a corner and saw the biggest, most vibrant pinkish-orange sun I have ever seen rising over the beautiful green, rolling hills of Oregon. Simultaneously, out of the radio station I unconsciously flipped on someone was saying "His anointing is enough." It was a very needed, sobering moment.

His grace is enough....anything extra is extra grace.

not an even trade

and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise  instead of a spirit of despair.  They will be called oaks of righteousness,  a planting of the LORD  for the display of his splendor.

           Isaiah 61:3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsRA68-DRa0

It matters who God is

"God is the map whereby we locate the setting of our life, that God is the water in which we launch our life raft, that God is the real thing from which and toward which we receive our being and identify ourselves. It follows that the kind of God at work in your life will determine the shape and quality and risk at the center of your existence. It matters who God is."

-Walter Brueggemann

I trust Oswald Chambers

I just came across this excerpt from a devotional someone posted. I have found many of Oswald Chamber's devotionals to be rich in substance and oftentimes quite personally applicable. As I strive to love the people in my life better with greater understanding, this devotional reminded me that loving people better doesn't mean putting our faith or trust in them. Of course it's hard to fully love someone whom you have difficulty trusting but that's where the beauty of God's perfect, gracious love lies. It's such an interesting thought....loving our neighbor better means trusting our neighbor less.....it's not so much that our love needs to be "distrustful" but that trust simply isn't part of that perfect love equation.

"If we love someone, but do not love God, we demand total perfection and righteousness from that person, and when we do not get it we become cruel and vindictive; yet we are demanding of a human being something which he or she cannot possibly give. There is only one Being who can completely satisfy to the absolute depth of the hurting human heart, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ...Our Lord trusted no one, and never placed His faith in people, yet He was never suspicious or bitter. Our Lord’s confidence in God, and in what God’s grace could do for anyone, was so perfect that He never despaired, never giving up hope for any person. If our trust is placed in human beings, we will end up despairing of everyone." Oswald Chambers from John 2:24-25

permanent, earthly ache

"...our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache...At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door." (p. 15)

-The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis 

gratitude for forgiveness of ingratitude

I am thankful for forgiveness when I am not so thankful.

We are commanded to be thankful always, in all circumstances. This is hard because we don't and can't love God perfectly. Our love for Him becomes more perfected when we begin to more deeply realize and offer thankfulness for His perfect love for us. Gratitude is at the heart of the Christian life. 

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/interviews/q-a-with-tim-keller-5

Gratitude is more than a mental exercise, more than a formula of words. We cannot be satisfied to make a mental note of things which God has done for us and then perfunctorily thank Him for favors received.

To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us — and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is grace, for it brings with us immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder, and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference… Gratitude is therefore the heart of the Christian life.  

-Thomas Merton, one of my favorite desert fathers

Sometimes I just need these reminders that:  ALL of life is grace

Abandoned Devotion

God means us to live a fully orbed life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when that life is attacked from the outside, and we tumble into a way of introspection which we thought had gone. Self-consciousness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of the life in God, and self-consciousness continually produces wrestling. Self-consciousness is not sin; it may be produced by a nervous temperament or by a sudden dumping down into new circumstances. It is never God's will that we should be anything less than absolutely complete in Him. Anything that disturbs rest in Him must be cured at once, and it is not cured by being ignored, but by coming to Jesus Christ. If we come to Him and ask Him to produce Christ-consciousness, He will always do it until we learn to abide in Him.

Never allow the dividing up of your life in Christ to remain without facing it. Beware of leakage, of the dividing up of your life by the influence of friends or of circumstances; beware of anything that is going to split up your oneness with Him and make you see yourself separately. Nothing is so important as to keep right spiritually. The great solution is the simple one -"Come unto Me." The depth of our reality, intellectually, morally and spiritually, is tested by these words. In every degree in which we are not real, we will dispute rather than come.

So thankful for having come across this devotional today. "Come unto Me" is such a great mantra to remember when confusion, frustration, and chaos rob your inner sense of peace. Life is a battle between self-consciousness and "Christ-consciousness" and will forever be until Christ returns. "Come unto Me" reminds me of my need to surrender what consciousness I can give to Him, but it also reminds me that one day I won't have to come to Him for I will already be with Him. The constant battle against this separation of self from God will be no more. I will no longer have to fight for abandoned devotion to Him. My consciousness of self will be completely replaced with consciousness of self as seen through Christ.

All of His

But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, Nor shall the flame scorch you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in your place. Since you were precious in My sight, You have been honored, And I have loved you; Therefore I will give men for you, And people for your life. Fear not, for I am with you....Everyone who is called by My name, Whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made him.


Throughout college, my mom would send me almost weekly letters that always had a Bible verse in them somewhere. A favorite passage of hers is Isaiah 43, which she often quoted in the letters. I love this passage too because it reminds me of how precious I am in His sight -the alliteration used here to describe His love in this passage is so powerful. He created you, He formed you, He redeemed you, He called you by name, you are His. He will be with you, He will walk with you, He will protect you, He won't let anyone hurt you. He formed you, He made you, He loves you.

So thankful that God has made His love clear to me and blessed me with parents who shared His love with me since birth.

Learning to listen less to my selfhood

“If I try self-consciously to become a person, I will never be one. The most real people, those who are able to forget their selfish selves, who have true compassion, are usually the most distinct individuals. But that comes second. Personhood comes first, and our civilization tempts, if not teaches, us to reverse the process…

The people that I know who are most concerned about their individuality, who probe constantly into motives, who are always turned inwards towards their own reactions, usually become less and less individual, less and less spontaneous, more and more afraid of the consequences of giving themselves away.

…I haven’t defined a self, nor do I want to. A self is not something static, tied up in a pretty parcel and handed to [us], finished and complete. A self is always becoming.”

-Madeleine L’Engle in A Circle of Quiet

I stumbled upon a blog that quotes this excerpt from a book I hope to read soon. This is a good reminder to be gentle with myself, to acknowledge that the journey of selfhood is one to be only reflected on gently and held loosely. The self must be analyzed and dissected but very carefully so as not to lose any part of it in the process. Self is most fully experienced in fully living.

guilty homesickness

Living a little over 2,000 miles from home, feelings of homesickness rush over me every now and then. Usually I am too busy to think about how much I miss the familiarity and comfort of home - being around my family, walking my dog, helping out with the yard work, always having tasty food available in the fridge (I still have a long way to come in developing my cooking skills). There is a little hurt in my heart whenever I hear my mom say on the phone that she misses me. It hurts knowing I can't be there with her to comfort her in her sorrow and hearing her say this only intensifies my longing for home. It's in these moments that I am more aware of my intense longing for our real home, heaven.

There are some weeks where I am hit more strongly by the realization of how broken our world is...this week was one of them. My eyes became a little moist in my child psychopathology class as we watched a video clip showing the extensive, long-term therapy this little girl went through because of the permanent scars of sexual abuse she received from her dad, a married couple must learn to cope with the difficulty of reactive attachment disorder present in all three of their adopted children, a young woman is shamed and guilted into thinking that she is a horrible person for not aborting her baby who was born with an extremely rare and very debilitating disease. On a more personal level, I am always more readily reminded of my brokenness when part of my body is not working well such as my sore foot this week that I must have sprained.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty for allowing myself to ruminate at length over my longing for heaven. I attended a psychological assessment conference the other day where the main topic at hand was anger disorders. The speaker attempted to argue that rumination is a cognitive process in anger. Rumination has been associated with depression while affective anger has been associated with impulsivity and the two -rumination and impulsivity -are usually thought of as opposites. I think too much "rumination" over anything isn't good and can easily lead to depression but rumination over natural longings is natural and healthy to some extent....or it is at least healthier to be on more of the rumination side of the spectrum when thinking about the other world we were created for than opting for a faster way of getting there by being more on the impulsivity side of things. But, seizing every moment and looking for joy in everything sounds a little more impulsive to me. Of course a joyful heart is a thankful heart and cultivating a heart of ceaseless thankfulness is not an impulsive undertaking. I guess there is a time to ruminate and a time to be impulsive....but perhaps rumination must come before the impulsivity or impulsivity flows out of rumination rather.

"In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country,...I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you -the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both...Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth's expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things -the beauty, the memory of our own past -are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited....Here, then, is the desire, still wandering and uncertain of its object and still largely unable to see that object in the direction where it really lies...Heaven is, by definition, outside our experience, but all intelligible descriptions must be of things within our experience. The scriptural picture of heaven is therefore just as symbolical as the picture which our desire, unaided, invents for itself..." -C.S. Lewis

We do not see as He sees

Needed to read this story this week:

"...A white stallion had rode into the paddocks of an old man and all the villagers had congratulated him on such good fortune.

And the old man had only offered this: "It it a curse or a blessing? All we can see is a sliver. Who can see what will come next?"

When the white horse ran off, the townsfolk were convinced the white stallion had been a curse. The old man lived surrendered and satisfied in the will of God alone: "I cannot see as He sees." 

And when the horse returned with a dozen more horses, the townsfolk declared it a blessing, yet the old man said only, "It is as He wills and I will give thanks for His will."

Then the man's only son broke his leg when thrown from the white stallion. The town folk bemoaned the bad fortune of that white stallion. And the old man had only offered, "We'll see. We'll see. It is as He wills and I give thanks for His will."

When a draft for a war took all the young men off to battle but the son with the broken leg, the villagers all proclaimed the good fortune of that white horse.

And the old man said but this, "We see only a sliver of the sum. We cannot see how the bad might be good. God is sovereign and He is good and He sees and works all things together for good."

"From where we stand, we can't see whether it's something good or bad. All we can see is that God's sovereign and He is always good, working all things for good. My focus need only be on Him. It's just a White Horse Hour....God's only up to good work. All we can see is Christ -and in Him all is grace."

-Ann Voskamp

"Whatever You may do, I will thank You.

I am ready for all; I accept all.

Let only Your will be done in me...

And I'll ask for nothing else, my Lord."

-Charles de Foucauld 

transient cares

Bells are meant to remind us that God alone is good, that we belong to Him, that we are not living for this world. They break in upon our cares in order to remind us that all things pass away and that our preoccupations are not important. They speak to us of our freedom, which responsibilities and transient cares make us forget. They are the voice of our alliance with the God of heaven. They tell us that we are His true temple. They call us to peace with Him within ourselves. The Gospel of Mary and Martha is read at the end of the Blessing of a Church Bell in order to remind us of all these things.

The bells say: business does not matter. Rest in God and rejoice, for this world is only the figure and the promise of a world to come, and only those who are detached from transient things can possess the substance of an eternal promise.

The bells say: we have spoken for centuries from the towers of great Churches. We have spoken to the saints your fathers, in their land. We called them, as we call you, to sanctity. What is the word with which we called them?

We did not merely say, "Be good, come to Church." We did not merely say "Keep the commandments" but above all, "Christ is risen, Christ is risen!" And we said: "Come with us, God is good, salvation is not hard, His love has made it easy!" And this, our message, has always been for everyone, for those who came and for those who did not come, for our song is perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect and we pour our charity out upon all.

-Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude 

let us not forget our gall

Psychologists love to label, categorize, and diagnosis. It’s how we simplify the very complex, infinite variations of human experience into more tangible ways of knowing in order to fix anything that resembles any degree of “fixability.”

What initially turned me off by the field of psychology is now what has drawn me in….the human experience cannot be described, it can only be experienced.

It is an incredible privilege and an enormous responsibility when a client welcomes you to sit with him or her in some of his or her moments of deepest pain and emotional difficulty.

For some reason, three different people in the last week alone have mentioned Lamentations 3 to me whether in passing or in conversation. I do not think it was purely coincidental that this verse was frequently brought to mind lately.

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast with me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Encountering the inherent effects of sin in the therapy room on a regular basis is often extremely draining. Grasping to understand the noetic effects of sin on another’s person mind with my own mind affected by these very same effects paradoxically lends its way to further complication sometimes. We are told in my program to “hurry up and fail” because the classroom is the safest place to fail. I know I will periodically misunderstand what my client is accurately feeling; I know I may give a clinical diagnosis that may be quite stigmatizing but necessary for insurance purposes; I know I may not be completely present with my clients at all times; I know I will fail time and time again.  The complexity of the human experience can never be accurately or adequately broken down and simplified into diagnosable parts.

Viewing counseling for what it is –a shared journey where we are all fellow travelers experiencing the joy, pain, sadness, hope, and loneliness life brings –can certainly be romanticized, generalized, or understated. I can’t help but be excited that I will be forced to practice life’s purpose –to share in each other’s burdens –on a much broader, daily, professional scale…yet this is also very daunting.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “Grace can be accepted only when we face our own inabilities. Forgiveness can be embraced only when we lay bare our wrongdoing, and hope can be imparted only when we face the reality of our own despair.” As the therapist, I must continuously ask myself what inabilities, wrongdoings, and receptacles of despair am I holding on to or haven't confronted?

It is only through a genuine offering of grace and acceptance that real healing can take place. “The experience of being accepted is the beginning of healing for the feeling of being unacceptable…and that gift of acceptance is called grace.” Do I feel accepted enough to encourage feelings of acceptance in my client?

It may be daunting, yes, but His mercies are new each morning. The complexity of life doesn’t become any less complex when I wake up in the morning, only more hopeful. In Lamentations, the prophet Jeremiah only had to recall past experience of affliction to remember that there is hope and God is faithful. On referencing the end of the verse, “great is your faithfulness,” I love how my Bible’s concordance states: “the comforting, compassionate character of God dominates the wreckage of every other institution and office [insert “therapy room”].” God remains “full of grace and truth” in every situation. The human experience is complicated, the ways we attempt to alleviate the painful human experiences are also sometimes complicated and convoluted yet God is still God, His mercies are new each morning.

Prayer of Oscar Romero

It helps, now and then, to step back

and take the long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of

the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete,

which is another way of saying

that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:

We plant seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything

and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something,

and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,

an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,

but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders,

ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

-a prayer by Oscar Romero

I will joy

"Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls -
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation."

I love rereading things and discovering them anew again and again....I always remember the word joy in this passage being used as a noun but it is so refreshing and powerful to hear it used as a verb!

a prayer of acceptance

God grant me the serenity 

to accept the things I cannot change; 

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

I only ever really liked that last line of the serenity prayer. I am just now becoming more aware of the delicate line that exists between desiring change, expecting change, working towards change, and just accepting how things are. I think most people have more of a propensity towards change than acceptance, personally-speaking I mean. It's easy to want to another person to change, it's harder to realize that it is sometimes you who needs the changing. However, I still think most of us possess more courage to change the things we can/want to change and much less courage to just accept ourselves the way we are. In practically every instance where change is and should be desirable, acceptance must come first. Acceptance is almost twice as long as a word compared to change, but it is often overlooked half the time.

Sometimes I wonder how much of our grief is really tied to the unrecognizable need for acceptance and the unreasonable desire for change. Grief over inability of a family member to change looks a lot different than grief over a family member's unwillingness to change.

How much of ourselves are we really capable of changing? We are told things such as "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." Maybe we should learn to accept more of who God made us to be. It is only through a clouded lens that we see the person God created in all his capabilities, goals, motivations, desires as well as in all his limitations, inabilities, and incompetencies. There also exists the easy acceptance trap that becomes more of the easy apathetic trap which we must be weary of. Never quite realized before how much of life is like walking a tightrope with acceptance on one side and change on the other. 

God grant me....the wisdom to know the difference.