Boogie

I'm at my friend Sarah's apartment getting ready to boogie.

She has amazing-smelling soap. Now you know.

I don't have my camera to document, so I figured I'd use my words.

Hey! Speaking of boogie, remember that time I had sinusitis during exam week? (get it?!)

It may be gross, but I feel the need to express how happy I am that that's over. Finished my antibiotics today, even.

This week is flying by. What with the lunch dates with Deirdre and Mrs. Engel, Matt Paxson, Sandy, the dinner outings with Peterso and some fabulous interns, speaking at 180, moving, watching Free Willy 4, Ice Castles (and consequently actual skating videos on youtube ;) can't break the habit), reading up on some Bible, praying over my future and specifically Washington, D.C., going through pictures, unpacking, enjoying some bomb pops, running miscellaneous errands (the wedding related ones are the best!) and in all of this napping and (finally) getting eight some-odd hours of sleep each night on a perfectly lovely futon at La Petit Maison Blanche.

Yes, staycation in FredVegas has a little extra spark that the city usually lacks in my own rush.

I love this place. I love these friends. I love my job. I love what each teaches me.

And I love the promise that I can anticipate better, sweeter, deeper in the future.

I am so thankful for the means to go out with a group of people and have a leisurely dinner. So as I get ready tonight, I dare not take it for granted. The dress, the shoes, the food. The boogie.

Better, sweeter, deeper doesn't necessarily mean that I'll always have the physical means to hit the town or even the emotional state to want to party. But while I do, I'm soakin' it up.

Where, oh where, to give back?

It's never far from my mind. The responsibility to do something with all that I have subtly underlays the gratitude in my heart for having it in the first place. Even as I anticipate the future and how that responsibility plays into it all, I will take the gratitude out dancing tonight.

For a boogie or two.

And maybe I'll take these Irish Folk songs on Sarah's computer for a jig, too.

Bloom Where You Are Planted

Wow.

I had no idea how literally I, myself, would take my last post.

Silence has done me some kind of good.

I walked in the door of La Petite Maison Blanche tonight and, after a long rant about the two wasps who sabotaged my nap and all but ruined my life this afternoon, had a cookie shoved in my face by the amazing Deirdre.

So as you can imagine, I'm a happy camper.

Now I'm sitting down and wondering how in the world I'm going to actually recap the last month. So much has happened in my heart that really may or may not be articulatalable. (definitely not a word, but hey it's been a while and homegirl is fresh off of exams)

There are simply too many songs and books and moments and laughs and tears. What is more, though God uses these things in my life to reveal a bit about himself and the world I live in, there is a God who exists outside of these things. Who says in the absence of these things--outside of my ability to buy this and that, outside of temporary happiness or chest-tightening sobs-- He is still enough. So I am so thankful for a job that uses church money to equip me with tools and venues to show care for seven individuals looking for a purpose in life.

BUT. I am more thankful for the attributes that these books and songs and moments reveal about God. And without each of them, I am confident that those attributes would still exist. Maybe that doesn't make much sense. But it does in my head.

Like I said. Unarticulatable.

That confidence means the world to this heart that has been in sore want for some courage. Like many times this semester, it just doesn't seem right or fair to begin throwing up pictures of how beautiful and fun my life is (and it is that from time to time a lot) without somehow capturing here the heart that it is coming from. The silence has done so much to address that heart, with its hits and misses, and I am content to know that my lack of creative writing here, for once, does not reflect a lack of time mulling over the Word of God, desperate for his direction.

It is also nice to sit and not be spouting stuff out off the top of my head. Much of this has been marinating in my pocket for a good while and is by no means just a cutesy blog topic. My dilemma, actually, is not knowing what topic to go with. How to categorize and make organized thoughts out of a daily, if jumbled, attempt to know the Holy Spirit in a way that would bring me out of my cage and into a life of risk for a God who demands no less? How to go about a summer filled with ordinary when I have an extraordinary God? Is it that the two cannot jive? I think it's that I have to start there. In the ordinary, if God is going to trust me with extraordinary. And He'll let me know when that will be.

It will not work the other way around, Sadie.

So I'll be the most faithful I know how to be with my every day, trusting God to make it eventuate in a life change. Not just for my sake, but for His. For His church's sake. For His people's sake. For the sake of their peace and prosperity even as I wait in this exile of a life that so often feels far from God. I've always known the verse Jeremiah 29:11. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord. "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." I guess over time the words become mundane and bumper-stickery. But as I prepared my sermonette for our high schoolers on Sunday, I saw them in an entirely new light.

Because God didn't promise that to people looking towards their own plan. It wasn't a confidence boost for seniors looking to make it big in the world, originally. It wasn't about encouraging people along in their hopes and dreams. It was God promising his exiles in Babylon, after their plans for crossing in Jerusalem continued to fail, that he had a plan B. And it was not going to be easy. It was not about making it big or having revenge or taking courage to do their own thing.

It was about having confidence to do God's thing. And this is what Jeremiah said:

⁴ This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. ⁷ Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." ⁸ Yes, this is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: "Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. ⁹ They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them," declares the LORD.

¹⁰ This is what the LORD says: "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place.

A "bloom where you are planted" sort of message for the exiles. Most of whom were elders, priests, and prophets who wanted nothing more than to glorify God in the place they had always planned for. All of whom were getting told to wait their turn.

All of whom were commanded in the meantime to make their place of bondage home. Told by God to seek peace and prosperity not for themselves, but for their captors and the foreigners. To be faithful where they were not because it was their plan but because God had a far better way. Just another 70 years, what's the big deal, folks?

I think the point of Jeremiah 29:11 is that is was a big thing to ask of these exiles, who were already yearning for home and are here told that it would for sure be at least another 70 years before they'd step foot in Jerusalem.

The verse isn't for those looking to make it big off of their own plans, however Godly and good they might have been. It's reassurance to a people whose plan had just been for sure crushed. A message that not only would they make it in the meantime, before Plan B was revealed, but that they would prosper. Because God said so.

I am waiting for God to fulfill his "glorious promise" of eternity in a place where nothing can be done but to glorify Him. But I dare not wish away this exile, for it is where His promise is sweetest and most needed. I want Plan B. I want the hope, I want the future. But it means that Plan A goes out the window. This idea that I know on my own where to go and that it'll just all work out goes to the curb.

This will be home because God said there is a purpose in my being here. And if the city prospers, I prosper. So I'll seek some peace and prosperity for other people, and put my hope in the promise of the God of Plan B's.

Silence.

Popular demand subtle-y asked me to quiet the blog.

I'm about the people.

Also, it's really kind of annoying to me, too.

So if you want music, take a joy ride with your cursor on over to the play button.

But really, have fun. If it's in the half second that it takes to press play (or in the 5 seconds it takes to turn your own music on), let it be a moment of happy.

I am increasingly broken these days.

I am also increasingly happy.

I really don't know how God swings that.

I pray that it would be more joy than so much happiness.

I don't need one more emotion.

Have those, thanks.

But a mindset? I'll take a new one, God, if you're offering.

And He is.

Everyday.

It's why there is a Spirit.

It is trustworthy and working, but demands a person's attention.

I look for moments of silence.

Mostly because I want to live a life that anticipates God.

I want to listen before He speaks.

I want to be ready to hear.

Far be it from me to tell God to speak up.

Above my own noise.

And far be it from me to hear

and not do.

I am scared to hear.

I am desperate to hear.

I am tired of hearing myself talk and telling myself I'm so right.

I am tired of listening to what other people think and believing that they are right.

I am sick of seeking validation for myself from myself or others.

I am sick of feeling invalidated by myself and others.

Mostly because I want to see what God is doing well in others.

I don't want to pick at flaws or joke about weaknesses.

I choose to look for miracles.

I choose to find how God is working, not how we're failing.

And I want to join Him there.

I want to seek glory for God and from God.

Not that I am worthy.

But mostly because I'm unworthy. To do His work. To have some sort of meaning. To be led. To speak.

I want the worth I do have to come from God.

And I want to know Him as worthy, so I can put it right back down at His feet.

And I want to know what that specifically looks like in my life.

I know it doesn't mean cozy.

It means tears in a frequency I have never known.

It means laughs at an almost equal frequency.

Each of both from and for a God I don't feel like should have ever cared this much.

But He does.

And that.

Makes me want to shut up* already.

(*it's not nice to say shut up)

"Jesus Wept"

When Lazarus died, Jesus wept.

Blotchy tears, I am convinced. (insert some sort of jargon about greek roots and stuff here)

Because his friend, whom he loved, was dead. Buried. Gone.

He felt the pain as deeply as any of us would have (or do).

He could have kept his friend from dying. He knew all along he could save him. But first he let the community hurt. Long. And he dared join them there.

Could it have been so that he could rejoice just as jubilantly when his friend emerged (hopped out of...?) from that tomb? He met Mary (used her hair to wipe perfume on Jesus' feet Mary) and Martha in their low to lift them high.

I was confused as to why the story of Lazarus was our sermon tonight when Mark began. 'Til then it clicked.

He stooped. To lift us out of this.

Whatever this is to you.

He lowered himself to helplessness, finality, and the feeling of irreversability.

The drop in his stomach, the lump in his throat.

And even with the power to raise Lazarus, Christ would not do it without knowing that God would get the glory.

With the power to climb off that cross, Christ would not do it because he knew that would not glorify God. So he died.

And Mary and Martha wept.

Tears (blotchy ones) that Jesus knew.

As far as they knew, the situation was helpless, final, and irreversable. The only person they'd even known with the ability to reverse death was dead. Refused to use his power, knowing the glory was not in escaping death, but in beating it. In redeeming it.

He focused his power on redemption. He focused his power on humility.

Before he spoke Lazarus out of the tomb, Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

"Yes, Lord," she told him, "I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world." (John 11:25-27).

The glory is not in escaping the pain, but in having it redeemed. Letting Christ beat it.

Martha focused on the power of Christ's redemption. She focused on humility.

And Lazarus walked out of that tomb.

Once Jesus was buried, the power that commanded such a miracle seemed gone.

He wept like us. He got wounded like us.

But his power to heal is so far beyond me.

"He was in the world, and though the world was made through him,

the world did not recognize him.

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name,

he gave the right to become children of God--

children born not of natural descent

nor of human decision or a husband's will,

but born of God."

(John 1:10-13)

When he rose from death, Christ proved for all that nothing is helpless, final, or irreversable.

He knows the power of my tears. Because he came low.

Then he resurrected on high.

He stoops with his wounds, tells me to feel them because he knows.

He wept.

But he also rose. That I would know the power of those wounds.

Sin has lost its power, death has lost its sting.

As with Jesus, though, it is not just about having the power. It's using that power to the glory of God. And feeling powerless outside of the grace and guidance of God.

I weep for it.

So did Jesus.

He joins me in the longing, and he leads me to the joy.

So I say, "Happy Easter, happy Spring, happy every little thing!"

Low

I am selfish.

I am struggling.

I am hurtful.

I am hurting.

I am sinful.

I am not good enough.

I am the one with the problem.

I am stained.

I am humiliated.

I am imperfect.

I feel these things tonight.

I am low.

But.

(and it's not an easy but for me to get to)

I praise a God who says Sadie, that's the point.

Who sweat blood in the garden because the above mentioned things hurt him even more than they hurt me tonight.

But he took the cup.

He lowered himself.

To lift me up.

I don't feel worth it.

And I'd like to stay low because it's where I belong I think.

But I'm going to get over myself before I miss the blessing.

He's already taken this on.

I don't have to fixate on it.

But just so you don't miss it.

I'm imperfect.

That doesn't end because I choose to focus on Christ in his perfection.

It just means I refuse to stop at my sin.

Because Christ refused to stop there first.

And having been lowest of low, he raised himself from the dead.

To bring me with him.

Even though I'm low.

And I am that.

When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered,

I was senseless and ignorant;

I was a brute beast before you.

Yet I am always with you;

you hold me by my right hand.

You guide me with you counsel,

and afterward you will take me into glory.

Whom have I in heaven but you?

And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart

and my portion forever.

-Psalm 73:21-26

senseless. ignorant. fail.

guidance. glory. strength.

You Have A Way

I'm at a loss for words, there's nothing to say

I sit in silence wondering what led me to this place

How did my heart become so lifeless and cold

Where did the passion go?

When all my efforts seem like chasing wind

I've used up all my strength and there's nothing left to give

I've lost the feeling and I'm numb to the core

I can't fake it anymore.

chorus:

Here I am at the end I'm in need of resurrection

Only You can take this empty shell and raise it from the dead

What I've lost to the world what seems far beyond redemption

You can take the pieces in Your hand and make me whole again, again

You speak and all creation falls to its knees

You raise Your hand and calm the waves of the raging sea

You have a way of turning winter to spring

Make something beautiful out of all this suffering

-Nicol Sponberg, "Resurrection"

Every day is such an experience these days that it's hard to keep up for myself, much less for a blog. A week and a half ago I got challenged by essentially my boss to truly rest before God.

I had no idea really what that would look like. When Matt asked how often and for how long I thought I could commit to the challenge, I said every night for an hour for at least until our meeting the next week.

I promise to you I had no idea what I was saying because I was about to pee in my pants.

Literally.

No, like really. And with that one swift move, God showed me a little about just how capable He is of humbling me into my rightful place. And every day for at least an hour I sit humbled to my core. I really don't know how to put into words how incapable I feel in this job. Nor can I express how awesome (truly awe-some) it is to feel so out of control. To feel so absolutely inadequate to the point of getting rawly honest in front of God and begging Him to do something with this life that I seem convinced will never amount to anything of real consequence. That I am certain will never be enough to be everything person X or Y wants from me. That I am sure will never be good enough.

And it won't.

The point of all of these inexplicable moments I've had with God, it seems, is to confirm these self-denying, incredibly hard things to believe about my life. The world will go on after I am gone, I will never meet every person's expectation of me or even be to everyone the uplifting, encouraging influence I want to be, and I am absolutely not good enough.

Period.

End of story.

To me that is numbing, like Nicol sings in the song.

"I can't fake it anymore."

I can't fake having the answers for all of the problems laid before me on Sunday nights or during various dinner dates throughout the week. I can't fake knowing God and I can't fake believing that He is enough for any circumstance.

How I act doesn't make God any less real or capable. So to act like I have my own lift together does nothing to glorify God. And I don't have to fake it. It makes God no more real or capable.

He just is. He simply can.

So comes the humbling moment in life when "all my efforts seem like chasing the wind" and I have to sit before God and let Him know all that I am not. Then comes the freeing moment when I realize that's all He ever wanted. All He really wants me to know is what He is. Because I can't change the winter to spring. I can't rid my life or the life of my family or the lives of the students entrusted to me of "all this suffering." Only God can make something beautiful of it. And only if I can get over myself and my inadequacy long enough to turn the suffering over. What has it ever done for me? Why hold on to it? Why hold the burden on for myself?

Why not open my eyes and realize that imperfection is not the period. It's not end of story.

He has a way of turning winter to spring.

God had a way. He has a way. Imperfection is not definite. As a matter of a fact, perfection is imminent. And I can have a part in it, against all odds.

What I've lost to the world what seems far beyond redemption

You can take the pieces in Your hand and make me whole again

God sent Jesus, He took away the absolute certainty of human imperfection. He came down and left with us, with me, His Spirit. The one that resurrected Jesus from the grave. That power is in me. That God sees me. That God cares for me. That God wants me to feel whole, not inadequate. That God wants me to trust Him. Period.

And that God is faithful. That God is my God. Here, at home, in Peru, in Brazil, in the classroom, in my time with friends, in the past, in the future. God.

They may seem disconnected to me, all of these aspects of my life, they may seem mere pieces of a broken life, the burdens of a broken heart. And some of it seems far beyond redemption. But God refuses to see me like that, beyond redemption. He just needs the pieces. He wants me to sit and watch as He makes me whole again.

Then I can talk about what He has done in my life, circumstances or no circumstances. Perfect past or imperfect past. Whether I look good or bad. It doesn't matter. Because it's not about me.

He has the way.

There is something so freeing about getting to point of not being able to fake a connection with God-- not being able to fake patience or love or joy or peace or kindness or goodness or gentleness or faithfulness or self control-- and instead beginning to see Him connect to me. To bring spring to me despite my fixation on winter.

He brought Jesus to the world when it was determined to remain fixated on itself. He has a way.

I remember my affliction and my wandering,

the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them,

and my soul is downcast within 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.

I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him."

The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,

to the one who seeks him;

it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.

Let him sit alone in silence,

for the LORD has laid it on him.

Let him bury his face in the dust-- there may yet be hope.

Let him offer his cheek to the one who would strike him,

and let him be filled with disgrace.

For men are not cast off by the Lord forever.

Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.

For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men."

-Lamentations 3:19-33

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,

for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him,

not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--

the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings,

becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow,

to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

-Philippians 3:7-11

You see, at just the right time, when were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare die.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!

For if, when were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son,

how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

through whom we have now received reconciliation.

-Romans 5:6-11

The crocus is a big deal to my Mom. This time every year (I was lucky to catch it over spring break!) she goes into flower mode, counting them as they blossom in our front yard, talking to them, encouraging them to grow stronger even as some of the winter weather lingers and threatens to thwart their development. She encourages them to mature to beauty despite the odds.

It wasn't until recently that I found out why the appearance of the crocus inspires her so, year after year-- it was the flower someone delivered to her family after her Dad died when she was college-aged. He died in December and for Mom there was no sign that spring would soon come. The crocus blossoming was one sure sign that life was going on, that beauty would come about despite the odds during an extremely dark time.

Her Dad's name was Benford Truett.

Turns out we're going to have another Truett in the family soon.

Turns out God has a way of turning winter to spring.

And if it means I look outside of my right mind to whomever, I'll praise God for and encourage along manifestations of that promise. In myself, in my friends, in my family, in my interns... in the flowers, for God's sake.

Because He has a way.

Decidedly Discontent

So I have this awesome job that came out of nowhere.

Really.

Given to me. That only means as much as it does when you consider my general lack of motivation for all things official such as interviews and applications (and housing agreements/degree order forms... but that's another miraculously taken care of story, thankfully).

And when I say awesome, I don't just mean cool benefits. I mean it's a big thing. Not only in terms of time commitment and objectives of the internship, but in my mind it is the opportunity to seek consistently and like I never have the wisdom of God. And it has come at the perfect time because this wisdom I am perceived as having is beginning rub me raw. In my apparent mental health and flexibility and chipper attitude, I'm told I'm hard to be around. My "perfection" brings out others imperfection.

That aura of perfection, friends, is not a reflection of a pursuit for the wisdom of God. That is the self-promoting, self-loving image of a girl who has been given enough in life to look like she's earned it with her spiritual-ness and good temperament. And it is hard to hear that the pursuit of purification from God actually makes someone else feel unworthy or less connected to him. Mostly because I forever want God's perfection (no quotation marks) to convict me of my own imperfection. I don't want to take that role that is unique to God's perfection from him. And I don't want to see myself as this wise entity because isn't it true that man's wisdom will be made foolishness? 1 Corinthians 1:25 says, "God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength."

To hear how strong I am, how good I think I am, to actually believe how good I am? It means I haven't even tapped into know God's weakness, much less his strength. To be wise by human appearance makes me yearn to know even God's foolishness as it reigns superior to whatever good sounding lessons and words I can muster.

"For who makes you superior? What do you have that you didn't receive? If, in fact, you did receive it, why do you boast as if you hadn't received it?" Sadie, girlfriend, why do you boast the job, the family, the friends, the education as if you earned it. As if it wasn't given to you. As if you won't have to give it back?

I will have to, sooner or later. And so, I am decidedly discontent with holding on to these things as my own while I only halfheartedly and upon my own convenience pursue God. It only makes me look good.

And I am sick of that.

This new job I have is already equipping me with resources to begin my pursuit God-given, not human conceived wisdom. In an unexpected trip to the Christian bookstore with the new boss, the church paid for me three books that I can't bring myself to just skim. Not when just about every word of Tozer feels directly pointed at me.

"The doctrine of justification by faith-- a biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort-- has in our time fallen into eveil company and been interpreted by many in such a manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and wihtout embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be 'received' without creating any special love for Him n the soul of the receiver. The man is 'saved,' but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact, he is specifically taught to be satisfied and is encouraged to be content with little."

I'd like to believe I could be content with a few less gifts, but I cannot bring myself to be satisfied with a stagnant (or more likely waning) relationship with the giver.

I want to be a David.

"David's life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad shout of the finder... [holy men and women of the past] mourned for him, prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and whey they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking."

So here's to the seeking.