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