Half.

Half a year: How long it's been since the last time I added to this compilation of thoughts from the past.
Half-life: The time needed for a substance to decrease half through decay (Thank you online Earth Science for this pertinent knowledge I've accumulated over the past three months)
Half a glass: Orange juice: what I drank for breakfast this morning.
Half-hearted: How I've struggled feeling about school this year... one step forward, two steps back, and learning to be joyful despite the impediments.
Half a century: How young my precious mom will be turning soon. She's one of the most beautiful people I've ever met. I wish you could meet her too.
Half-off: What we love finding on price tags at the store.
Half-thrilled, Half-scared witless: About the future, about the grand adventures the Lord throws us into when we feel wholly inadequate and underprepared, only to be reminded that it is nothing we do, but only through him that we live and breath and exist.
Half-full: How I prefer to see the glass.
Half a month: How long it's been since getting LSAT scores back and realizing that the crazy ambitions planted somewhere inside me since being young actually have a chance of becoming reality.
Half-time: An alteration of rhythmic feel by doubling the tempo or the part of the Super Bowl we never watched growing up.
Half an hour: How long it'll take me to write this little excerpt instead of studying, but certainly worth the time.

Those are my "Halves" this morning as I sit here thinking about the past 183 days wich have elapsed since my last time filling this online box with text flowing from the offshoots of my thoughts. Mostly, this morning has reminded me that the Lord is good, and that I am not apart from Him. Life in many ways has proven to be a trek more than a walk along the beach. It's proven to shatter some of my idyllic notions and to buttress their opposites. Reading in 1 Corinthians this morning, this blessed me: "He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful."

Remembering faithfulness in the everyday world is something that, if I were honest, doesn't happen enough in my life. I don't often enough open the crusty brown refrigerator door in our little apartment to get the leftover alfredo pasta and immediately think "I've been given food today; He is faithful." I don't often enough sit in front of my small library of textbooks and think "I've been given an opportunity to learn today; He is faithful." Thankfully, though, God's faithfulness is not dependent upon my recognition or appreciation of it, but rather inherent in His very nature.

How I see it evidenced over the past six months, and how I constantly need to be reminded.

Then Came Life.

I lay on the rose-covered quilt staring at the pale and dark green of the surrounding walls. Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath I could smell… pomegranates. Or, whatever that candle I got at a garage sale for $1 happened to be.

“Enter as Strangers, Leave as Friends.” That’s what my wall said, right above Guido the white dresser. I laughed a little thinking about the day I nailed that board into the wall, and my friends endless inquiries, “What’s that even suppose to mean?”

This was it. The last night. It’s hard to explain all the thoughts flooding through the head of a 17-year-old leaving home… maybe forever. Thoughts from all the years I’d been in that house, thoughts about how many hours I’d spent there with the people I’d grown to love. How many mornings I’d waken up early to do calculus problems, how many slumber parties I’d had in that basement with my friends… sometimes in tents, with microwave smores.

All the crazy games my friends and I would make up to keep ourselves awake all night, continuously downing bon-bons from a gallon bucket which once held Neapolitan ice cream. It had since been transformed into a candy treasure chest. We were usually sick by morning.

I wanted to laugh, and cry, and scream, and sing, and dance, and frankly, to curl up into the fetal position and hide under my bed forever. As an alternative, I reached for my leather bound and imprinted journal with the giant Celtic circle on the front.

“As I find myself writing here tonight by candlelight, I can only wonder what adventures You hold in store for my future. My emotions are in a hyperactive state, I feel a little bit like I’m tied to the end of a Skip It… Daddy… I don’t want to walk this path alone. Protect my heart in these next few years, help me to see like you see, to love like you love, to serve like you serve.

That I should even have the slightest access to your ear is mind boggling, and yet you call me your beloved child. I don’t like waiting for answers, but this is where I find myself again. You tell me to be content, You tell me not to worry, because You will bring everything to pass in your perfect timing. While my heard knows that’s true, my head still often doubts.

My college years are yours. Thank you for providing for me and my family when I don’t see the options. I plead with you to continue to provide so I can dedicate these next years to sharing the gospel with people.

You give me joy that’s unspeakable…”

The letters found their way across the page for another hour or so before my head fell with the finality of sleep against the white embroidered pillow sham.

Then came life.

I sit here a few year later, and some things are very different, but other things, they never change. Faithfulness. Love. Grace. Mercy. Those things never change, because they're attributes of my unchanging God. I wish I had time to document all the stories, all the dreams, all the tears, and people who’ve come in and out of my life over the past two years. Alas, the coming of life makes that difficult.

But it’s okay. Maybe someday I’ll have the chance to fill my journal in on the adventure. Until then, it’s painted in the ebb and flow of existence, and on the heart of the God of the universe who loves me and I Him. I may not have time to write this story, but praise the Lord he lets me live it.

Then life continued. So long for now.

[Reasons] to Rise Before the ((Sun))

[1] Hearing silence in a place where 3,000+ people live on 10 acres.
[2] Running by nothing but the light of stars.
[3] Robin Roberts does it!
[4] Getting any shower in the whole flipping bathroom you want. (...And hot water too).
[5] Watching the sunrise paint the sky.
[6] Fresh coffee.
[7] Having time to curl your hair, and read Jeanette Wallis, and listen to Mumford & Sons.
[8] Birds singing.
[9] Someone has to milk the goats. Disregard that we don't have any.
[10] Remembering "Today is always fresh with no mistakes in it."
[11] Experiencing strawberry 20% of your daily fiber needs Pop-Tarts. Yes. I'm addicted.

“Our life is frittered away by detail…”

I’d like to think of simplicity as the antithesis of tyranny, tyranny of self-consumption, tyranny of materialism, tyranny of concern for pleasing people. Where there is simplicity, one need not worry about the deceit of words, for language would be used without manipulative intent. Where there is simplicity, bother over the accumulation of things dissipates and contentedness grows in its place. Where there is simplicity, there’s no need to spend effort trying to evoke good impressions of ourselves in the eyes of others, because we’d actually be conforming to goodness in our lives and not only in appearances.

Henry David Thoreau had something right. He recognized the meaninglessness of so many of the things his contemporaries viewed as important. They fought after them, adored them, and allowed their lives to revolve around these empirical constructions. I think we tend to do the same thing today, with our iPods, our skyscrapers, our schedules, our church services, and even our philosophy and views of God.

The other day, Mark and I went to a little creek bed where we tried to catch this gross looking fish. Walking back to campus barefoot and muddy, I noticed something as we entered chapel. The chapel here at Cedarville is huge, with a giant screen boasting big digitally produced words, the stage surrounded by complex lighting setups, and the band eliciting electronically modified sounds, all with the purpose of producing a state which encourages worship. It was expansive and grand, but then walking back to my dorm tonight, I looked up.

Stars.

The glory of God was just as clear in the muddy creek of that morning and the black sky filled with twinkling specks of illumination than I’ve ever seen it in our humanly constructed feats of architecture and technology. We complicate life. Our schedules are full, and lives consumed with work – sometimes I think we don’t trust God anymore.

Think about the Sabbath for a minute. God asks us to take one seventh of our time and use it to honor him. He wants us to play. He loves to watch us interact with his creation, with nature, with one another, to hang out with people, to talk, because it’s a reflection of His character. Yet most of the time, I allow work to take priority over play, over setting aside a day for my Lord. It shows my lack of trust.

When we work all the time, when we fill out schedules full and fail to see the beauty of simplicity, its representative of a lack of trust that God is good. He created and planned the rhythms of life where one-seventh of our time should be spent in reflection of him. It shows a lack of trust in understanding that his plans are better than ours when we fail to adhere to those rhythms.

Sometimes I allow my thoughts about the complexity of God, His work through the person of Jesus, His perfect unity with the Spirit, and forget to recognize the simplicity of the message of the gospel and the commands as to how we are suppose to live as his children.

Kids remind me that the gospel is clear even to the most simple minded, because they understand it. They understand that we’ve sinned, that God loves us, that He sent His Son Jesus to die for us, that He rose again, and that He offers us a chance to be a part of His family. I forget that the entirety of the law can be summarized on one short phrase, “…love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind… and love your neighbor as yourself.”

It’s one of my biggest temptations not to spend time pursuing joy and peace. There is virtue in responsibility and hard work, but overwhelming life with things will only lead to a lack of fulfillment, because it goes against what the Lord tells us.

So go climb a tree. Enjoy creation. Be thankful for something stupidly small. Have a conversation with someone face to face, lest we forget how. Remember that God’s presence is clear not only in the emotional and ostentatious, but in the commonalities and the routines of life. I continue to learn that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. Take time to be satisfied.

Sci-Fi-esque Spirituality

I wonder sometimes why we’ve been encapsulated in physical existence.

Yes, I recognize the absurdity of that statement and its apparent connections to science fiction novels. Bear with me though, because I do wonder why our Creator chose to intertwine the spiritual with the physical, and why we must use the tangible aspects of human existence to interact with others.

Sometimes I wish our bodies were gone. Maybe that sounds strange. Nope, it does sound strange, but sometimes I try to imagine what life would be like if relationships were formed from the intermingling of souls rather than interactions of physical expression. I think that’s how it was meant to be. Relationship is at the core of who God is because his very identity represents a community of persons.

The interactions of the Father, Son, and Spirit show up everywhere in Scripture. They show up in John 17 as Jesus prays to the Father asking to revel in his glory through his upcoming death. And 1 Corinthians 2:10-11 tells us “The Spirit teaches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”

Each member of the trinity seeks to be known for who they are, for within each is found majesty, and beauty, and love. Each knows that the more they look at one another, the more they delight in the other. Their relationship shows us the power of mutual enjoyment and trust.

Yet here we are as humans, made in the image of God to be a reflection of His nature in the world, but somehow I can’t escape the conclusion that our physical existence has made that impossible. Worse, it makes me wonder how often we miss the pure essence of personhood, and how often we assign a value to someone based on the formation of cells making up their physicality. It saddens me that human stake in the worth of a soul can change based on our perceptions of matter.

Maybe not in our words it doesn’t change, but in our actions it does. It’s hard to describe those situations, but we’ve all had them. Those times you walk in a room and sense your inadequacy because you don’t have the right body, or your clothes didn’t come from some designer nutshop for a small fortune.

I think that’s why I hate malls. Malls have become a spiritual dilemma for me because whenever I walk in a mall, I’m reminded of just how human we are, and the implications that come from that inescapable state which is humanness. We don’t live in a world that gives us the beauty of trust anymore; a world where purity of thought used to mean nakedness apart from shame. For some reason we have to clothe ourselves. For some reason we assign a value to this aspect of our humanness.

Even more than that, malls remind me that we often put more stock in compositions of fabric and thread than we do in the immensity of the abiding soul. It bothers me that we as children of God worry about this. It bothers me that I worry about it. Humans weren’t made to assign each other values based on the fickleness of external perception, but we do.

There is nothing else in human existence greater than truly being known and loved by another. That’s what we’re meant to do. This isn’t easy because it requires commitment that's willing to bear all things, but really, nothing else matters.

That’s why when the Spirit of God is present, there’s an immediate desire to fellowship. Its part of God’s nature which we see in Acts during Pentecost, or watching Jesus interact with his disciples in Luke 24. It’s why Scripture places such emphasis on hospitality toward others, why gossip is listed right alongside sexual immorality, and why food and fellowship are not suggested but commanded as part of the life of a believer. God longs for unity among his children, for their relationality with himself and with each other – it’s a perfect portrait of who he is.

Salvation is that promise of restoration in our relationality. It’s the hope of knowing the God of the universe sees us as more than the sum of our substantive parts and chooses to embrace us despite our layers of polluted humanness. It’s Christ smashing into our world and making it possible for us to enter a radically different existence.

I just pray we don’t miss it.

Merry Christmas

It’s finals week here (this'll be short). Even so, with my mental faculties fatigued and my heart longing to be home with the Christmas tree, my family, rest, and momma’s monkey bread, I was struck by something today that Donald Miller wrote…

"Imagine how much a man's life would be changed if he trusted that he was loved by God? He could interact with the poor and not show partiality, he could love his wife easily and not expect her to redeem him, he would be slow to anger because redemption was no longer at stake, he could be wise and giving with his money because money no longer represented points, he could give up on formulaic religion, knowing that checking stuff off a spiritual to-do list was a worthless pursuit, he would have confidence and the ability to laugh at himself, and he could love people without expecting anything in return. It would be quite beautiful, really."

I don’t pretend to understand the vastness that is the love of God. It leaves me speechless and breathless. It leaves me overwhelmed with joy and simultaneous sorrow because I realize how many days I end and have utterly failed to love people as God would. I’ve been selfish, disconnected, inconsiderate, and apathetic. If we really sought to emulate the love of God in our lives, things would look so differently. Through God’s grace and the work of his spirit in me, I’m going to try to be a reflection of that challenge brought by Paul to the Corinthians – a challenge to love.

…Heidi is patient, she is kind. She does not envy, she does not boast, she is not proud. Heidi is not rude, and she is not self-seeking she is not easily angered, and she keeps no record of wrongs. Heidi does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. She always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres…

We’re about to celebrate the physical manifestation of love coming to earth in the form of a baby for the purpose of reconciling fallen humanity with its perfect creator. Oh that we would live in light of the truth of that love. Let's do it.

Merry Christmas!

Fifteen Kids and Fred Flintstone

Rarely do we make the effort to comprehend the tangible and physical manifestations of Christ in the world around us. As I write this, I’m sitting in the corner of a crummy seafood restaurant in downtown Dayton, OH where I wandered in to find coffee over lunch break. I’ve spent all morning in a Dayton courthouse watching as kids became permanent parts of families that aren’t biologically theirs. Every Friday morning they do adoptions here. It means a good end to the otherwise frustrating and often unrewarding week of paper work, inter-agency wrangling, and sad stories of abused kids.

The courthouse looked like something from prehistoric times as I stepped onto the second floor after being sent through the normal bout of metal detectors and desk clerks. Caseworkers and magistrate’s assistants alike were dressed in wild hair colors and Flintstones costumes to celebrate this year’s theme. Even the judge joined in with her giant inflatable “Bam Bam!” club to smack alongside her gavel at the end of a hearing . This is how they do National Adoption Day here.

Talking with all of the kids and their soon-to-be families as I gave the little ones crayons and coloring sheets, got them all snacks, and ran errands for the secretaries, my heart was glad. All the kids wanted to tell me about their favorite subjects in school, their favorite sport to play, their biggest talent, their favorite food, and all the other funny information that comes from the mind of a child. They laughed while I told them stories about “When I was a little girl…”, and giggled as we played house in the Styrofoam cave at the end of the hallway.

Talking with their soon-to-be legal parents, they shared with me about the joys and grief that accompany this journey of adoption. One dad sat and talked with me in the waiting room about how they really weren’t on the best financial grounds to be adopting twins…. The kids might not get all the newest toys, but they’d have all the love that family could muster. A mom told me of how she’d waited three years for all the paperwork to go through before she could finally call the abandoned little girl hers. Family after family, story after story; all so unique yet so similarly priceless.

And I sit in this poignantly smelling seafood café to write. People are sitting all around me reading their newspapers, sucked into their own personal worlds. It’s been strange this morning to watch some of my dreams start to show their nature in physical form apart from their theoretical existence in my imagination. It’s not all the ideological utopia I can paint things as in my mind. There’s administrative red tape everywhere, paperwork, formalities, long waiting periods, confusion, but somewhere in there, the beauty of taking a child whose parents can’t or won’t take care of them and placing them into the arms of someone who loves them… well, it still manages to take my breath away. To be enthusiastically accepted into a family that doesn’t need to love you; they want to, they choose to. Wow. All I can say, is if I ever do work in foster care I hope it never grows old. I hope the stories and implications of the concept of adoption never leave the awe factor within my thinking.

Did you know there are 129,000 kids in the foster care system ready and waiting to be adopted as I write this? Fifteen of those kids were blessed with homes and families before my very eyes this morning. Oh that such an impact within human action would never be seen as a common place event. The spiritual and physical are inseparable realities making up our existence, the world we live in. What a blessing it is to step away from the Cedarville bubble every now and then to remember that and to experience it firsthand.

Patricia

“Please… come back in 20 minutes…” the dark haired little woman choked while a baby squirmed in her arms and a rangy mutt circled her shoeless feet. We’d walked to her neighborhood from an old rusty overpass just on the outskirts of Harlan. This was hour number three marching through trailer parks; knocking on doors, praying, talking to people, and listening to their stories.

“I live just across the street… I’m watching the baby for her mamma while she’s at the store. Please, I need to talk to you. Give me a half hour?” We smiled and nodded, taking a step back off the broken porch. I glanced over my shoulder to see the house we’d be returning to in a matter of minutes. The dirt yard had covered itself around the bottom of the house courtesy of the thunderstorms that week. Behind the brown, little shades of orange peeked out, though actually, it was more peach as the years had worn the brightness of the palate to nothing more than a dull reminder of its glory days.

Plastic bags and duct tape filled the bottom left corner of the front window where glass had once been. This was it. This was Patricia’s home. There were hundreds more just like it on the streets around us.

As the three of us left to investigate the surrounding streets, we encountered all kinds of people. The bent grey haired man taking out his garbage who wanted to debate the exclusivity of Christ, the mother with seven children who asked us to come in and gathered all her children around to hold hands so they could listen to us talk and pray, even the three old maids smoking on the front porch with their cynical looks, “Hell girl, you go ahead and pray, things can’t get any worse.”

We eventually headed back to that faded peach house with the broken window. I knocked on the door - silence. I knocked gently again – still no answer. A little confused, we turned to head back down the streets when Patricia came rushing from the neighbor’s. “Please come in, come in…”

We stepped into the old house, and immediately upon entrance, it struck me; this woman had nothing. An old shredded couch, a few trinkets, that was all. Glancing back into the kitchen, shards of glass lay spewed about the floor.

She asked us to sit down. As we started to talk, tears came to Patricia’s eyes. She started telling us about her family. Dropping out of school in jr high, she’d come from a rough background. She’d raised two kids alone, only her daughter was still alive. This daughter was also raising a daughter as a single parent… This little girl, Patricia’s granddaughter, had a terminal illness.

Particia’s daughter was going through suicidal depression because of her granddaughter’s illness. They couldn’t afford the hospital bills, and were left without money for groceries, electricity, or a telephone. She wept as she told us of her anger toward God, pointing back to the kitchen full of broken glass.
“I couldn’t take it anymore last night… I broke everything. Everything… why is this happening? Where is God? Where is he?”

My heart broke. We sat for over an hour, I held this hurting woman in my arms and we prayed and talked. I cried with this complete stranger for the pain of this world as we listened to her story. Patricia at one point got up and picked up a little worn Bible off a shelf. She was a Christian, and told us about when she put her faith in the forgiveness and grace of Christ. We were able to get her information about a local church that could help her, and went on to contact the pastor. As the time came for us to go, Patricia held my hand and looked as us.

“I sat in my kitchen last night after breaking everything, and just screamed out to God that if my life mattered at all to him, to show that to me. He sent you to me to show me. He knew I needed you today. He sent you to me.”

As we left, I couldn’t help but stand humbled and awestruck at how God uses people to accomplish his perfect plans, and to encourage his hurting children. It’s been six months since that day, and I haven’t heard from Patricia since then. I pray that her faith is strong, and that God will continue to reveal himself to her.

This isn’t the way life was meant to be. Death, pain, sorrow, guilt; it’s all a result of sin. It’s all a result of the curse that we all must suffer under. The rich and poor, the young and old, the wise and foolish, each life will pass like a vapor. Where our human depravity leaves gaping holes though, the person and work of Jesus Christ offers a redemptive solution. He overcame death. He healed the sick and the hurting.

This life will soon be over… Praise the Lord! Why you ask? Because my friend, there’s another life still yet to come. I’ll cling to the promises of God until then, and enjoy this life he’s so generously given me.

Someday though, I’m ready for heaven.

Being Known

The Romantic era, that time when artists began to see things like poetry and music as a sudden and overwhelming consummation of emotion stemming from an interaction with the sublime. Far different than systematic interpretation of those artists going before, the value of the inner sense of existence and reality, even in its most simplistic and rustic form was enough to be hailed as the new foundation for art.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately, mostly because I have this (as probably most do) love-hate relationship with emotions. Emotions allow one to experience the joys of life in a way that is unmatched by hard formed observations made apart from this influx of feelings. Yet at the same time, when life lacks this elation, possessing emotion means the pain and sorrow of the moment can be experienced at a level of excruciation.

Furthermore, emotions are extremely personal. The feelings you have or the passions that arise from witnessing a series of events can never be duplicated, nor can they be fully explained to another. I have to think, then, that we as human beings can never truly be known by others. Human relationships are funny things. They just are. For some reason, though, as Christians we are commanded by God to interact with people - of this I am convinced.

Scripture absolutely revolves around the message of the gospel, the promises of God, and how we should live in this world in light of that revelation. Many of our commands for living center on interaction with people. Hmm. Curious that God would command us as finite beings to engage humanity, whom we have no ability to ever truly know.

Only God will ever know me or you; because he is the creator; because he is God. In some sense, that realization seems lonely at first - to understand that those individuals I care about will never truly know me, nor I them. How much more exhilarating though, to think that there is a being so consuming that he understands me to my core, even when I don’t understand myself.

One of the things I hear many people struggle with here at college is the lack of deep relationships. Some have a hard time coming into a setting where people know little or nothing about them. We get caught up in conversations of “surfacy crap.” Last year definitely brought that struggle to me, and in many ways, it continues today.

Oh to be known. What a blessing and simultaneous agony. I sense that we as human beings have some innate desire to be known. Not even necessarily to be loved or liked, just known. Humans will never really be able to fulfill that desire for one another. What great incentive that is then to point people toward Christ, the knower of all things. This is a fairly lengthy passage from Psalm 139, but it’s worth the time it takes to digest…

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.
You hem me in – behind and before;
You have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
Too lofty for me to attain.

Where can I go from your spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there.
If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.”

How inescapable. How comforting. How thrilling. How humbling.

I am known by God. That’s more than enough.

The Father of the Fatherless

It’s not one of those things I can place my finger on when it started, the first time I remember being overwhelmed with the needs of humanity in regard to this heartbreaking reality.

You see, I’ve largely taken for granted that at family reunions, everyone knows my name. They love me. They have stories of my birth, and those times when I toddled around the kitchen begging to eat ice cream for breakfast. I’ve taken for granted that when I was young and other kids asked what my parents did, I had an immediate answer. “My mom’s a teacher. My dad, he works in the hospital looking at people’s bones.”

I take for granted that I live with people who share my DNA, and that I know those who gave me the particles that helped start this thing called life. Even my name. I take for granted that there were two wonderful individuals who carefully thought and searched and chose the parts that would make up the silk kimono of phonetics wrapping and defining the life of this girl. I take for granted that I know my story. The story of Heidi Benson.

Not everyone has that. Did you know?

Perhaps it was the time I watched a Home for the Holidays special in 3rd grade that my heart broke when I realized how many kids didn’t have what I did. Maybe it was the times my family hosted international orphans for months at a time, and I saw the thrill on their faces as we included them into our family. Maybe it was the way their eyes would sparkle when my mom bought them light-up shoes from Payless.

Maybe it was when I went to the home of my “little brother” whose mom had just died of cancer and whose dad was sitting in prison that it first burdened my heart. It could have been while writing my senior research paper for composition that I came across statistics about the foster care system that left me on my knees crying out to God. Perhaps it was those times I sat in the studio of my jazz musician uncle who told me of his memories of the world of adoption, and his search for identity in the madness of it all.

Perhaps it was how every home I stayed in this summer had some connection –they had been foster parents, had adopted a child internationally, in the US, or were adopted themselves. Maybe, just maybe it was the first time I read James 1:27 and bothered to think about what those words say. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this – to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Maybe it’s when I remember that I’m adopted. Though alienated from God because of my sinful nature, he predestined me to be his adoptive child through faith in the death and resurrection of his only Son.

I love kids. I want so badly to be able to express how spending everyday this summer with hundreds of kids affected my thinking. How I can explain that it exposed my overwhelming selfishness and pride? How can I put into words that it grabbed my heart, my emotions, the essence of my very being? How do I tell you that every time a child came and gave me a hug, a smile, or came running to me with tears dripping down their little snotty faces, I had a resounding peace that told me I would spend the rest of my life fighting for the lives of little bugger faced, greasy fingered kids.

I hate sin. I really do. I hate how it corrupts everything, how it warps what is good, how it distorts what is innocent and precious, how it tears into the lives of families, of people, of children. But praise God for his grace! Praise him for choosing to redeem us and therefore give us hope in this dying and desperate world.
Now it’s our call as believers to spread that hope, to share the gospel; this good news of the promise of Christ with everyone. It is our job to be the embodiment of that hope in the lives of people everywhere.

That’s why I want to work in the foster care system someday. That’s why I want to work with adoption. That’s why I’m at Cedarville, why I choose to study, why I choose to smile. It’s why I desperately try to be a living example of the pure joy that comes from knowing Jesus as my Savior, and my closest friend.

I hope I never grow weary of pursuing good, and that I never tire of investing in the lives of people. Human relationships are the actual conditions in which the ideal life of Christ is to be exhibited. Therefore, I pray that people are always my highest priority. Not grades, not grad schools, not prestige or recognition. I sincerely hope that someday my life is utterly unnoticeable. That people wouldn’t even think of recognizing me, because Christ is so much more evident. I pray that he may increase, and I decrease, so that he may receive all the glory and honor that so much due to his perfect and holy name.

I don’t pretend to think that I’ll ever be able to make the foster care system a perfect place, or that adoption will lead to perfect situations. We’re people. We’re broken. Sin’s made that an impossibility. I do hope that for God’s glory, and because of his grace alone, I can help. I can be an advocate, an encouragement, and an agent for reform. I hope someday kids can say I was someone who loved them, and someone who cared.

Kids are important to me because they’re important to God. They’re precious, so I’ll fight for them. My savior is the Father of the fatherless. I want them to know. This is my heart. Will you help me?

Rop Tú Mo Baile

The last drop of sunlight falls behind the hills of lush foliage in shades of green spilling out as far as the eye can see. A monastery rests in the crest of a hill where a nearly blind Christian Irish poet scratches out words with painstaking care and literary skill.

Rop tú mo baile, a Choimdiu cride:
ní ní nech aile acht Rí secht nime.
Rop tú mo scrútain i l-ló 's i n-aidche;
rop tú ad-chëar im chotlud caidche.

The words sat untouched from their original Old Irish form for nearly 1,500 years until the 20th century when two English scholars translated them into versified text. Set to the tune of an Irish Folk song, today we find them in the bindings of hymnals; stacked in the back hallways, resting against the worn wood of pews.

Back in highschool Laura Mace and I would hunt through the dust and grime to find this music we could play on junky pianos and violins with missing sound boards. I remember singing these words with missionary kids with our hands entwined making an oblong mass, and crying them when my grandma died earlier this year. Today I sit pondering the weight of what these words imply. The veracity espoused in the text; the challenge to live in light of their meaning.

“Be Thou my vision”

My vision. The vista by which I observe and perceive reality. To maintain the perspective of Christ is no simple task. The difficulty of allowing Christ to be the purpose of my vision can be found in the generality of living in a fallen state of humanity, and specifically in my own inordinate self-love. Do I think and act the way Jesus would in the way I handle relationships, in the way I spend my time, in the place I throw my money, in my priorities, in my goals, in my dreams, in my studies?

“Oh Lord of my heart”

Is he? Is he Lord of my heart, or do I merely say that he is? Perhaps it is my pride which truly rules the overwhelming majority of the time. Even in those times when I make my spiritual epiphanies known to the world around me. Even when I serve, is it really the Lord I serve? Or is it my ego? Is it my selfishness? Is it the image I want people to pin to my face and my name?

That Christ be eminent in all I do requires surrender; something of which I must struggle and toil to give. Galatians 1:10 has been consuming my thoughts today. “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

“Not be all else to me, save that Thou art”

Not be all else. Not be: to mean nothing. All: the entirety of. Else: anything other than Christ. That all else should be nothing to me in comparison to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord. Wow. I’m so often so far from that standard it’s somewhat discouraging to think about. Praise God for mercy, forgiveness, and second chances.

“Thou my best thought, by day or by night”

He is the best thought, but how often do I forget that? How often do I fill my mind with meaningless entertainment, with empty clutter of our culture’s consumerist mentality? I wonder why we get caught up in the politics of it all, and how often we forget the sincere focus and the foundations of our faith.

Our thoughts should be centered on unifying truths about who God is, rather than on human division regarding issues lacking meritorious note. It was Merold Westphal who once said, “There is an atheism which is closer to the truth than a certain kind of religion, not the religion of ‘somebody else,’ but quite possibly our own.” Yet what an opportunity Christians have been given to return religion to what it should be; to remember the writing of James, that “religion our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this : to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

“Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light”

That the presence of God should be illumination into how I live my life. Illumination, the work of the Holy Spirit by revelation that God should give us the understanding we need through his Word. That Word which is perfect for life and godliness. What a gift we’ve been given through having access to a text whereby God proclaims himself to us. How often I take it for granted. How often I forget and make light of God’s ability to encourage and renew through his Word.

The more I study history, the more I see the endurance of God’s work through periods of time past and the lives of people throughout history. I just get goose bumps thinking about it. Reading through the creeds, and hymns from as far back as the 6th century like this one emphasize all the more clearly to me that my Abba is faithful, that he keeps his promises, that he is sovereign, that he is good. And this journey to know him is only just beginning… I love it.

On Kindness

A dear friend of mine said something today that hurt my heart. She said, “Heidi, it’s incredible. We’re here at a school that wears the label of Christian, yet I’ve met some of the meanest people I’ve ever known here.”

It hurt my heart. Hurt it because I wonder how many times I may have said something over the past few months that was less than gracious to someone. I wonder how many times I could have given encouragement, but didn't for one reason or another. I wonder if people walk away from me feeling as valued and precious as they truly are in the sight of God. It doesn’t take much to be kind. It really doesn’t, but I wonder if I make even the smallest amount of effort that is required.

I’m challenged today to re-examine my thoughts and actions, and inspired to strive for the example of Mother Teresa as she said, “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”

“Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” --Ephesians 4:32