Lips that now sing.

I love church. Always have. Where I grew up people go to church, even the non-Christians. Or the non-believers, shall I say; those who are Christian by default (default meaning that they claim they ARE Christian because they ARE NOT Muslim or Buddhist or Mormon). It is a part of our culture. While I don’t really agree that this is how it should be, it is how the situation stands. It is what I am used to.

In being a church-going-girl, I have seen the gamut of types of services.

 From very structured Greek Orthodox services, to very open, free, Charismatic ones, and all of the small Baptist churches in between. Because I am looking for him, I can usually find Jesus in all of these. Picking apart someone, belittling them, or crying wolf about a style of service is not my thing and frankly I don’t really think it is Biblical. Do I agree with everything done in those services? No. But more likely than not my real issue is preference rather than doctrine, so I can let a lot of things slide.

All that to be said, a worship service at camp or at a youth conference can be something entirely different. There are usually counselors running around in superhero or banana costumes, and really, really loud music being played (because that is how the young ones like it), and also, very stereotypically, there are loads of junior highers and high schoolers with their eyes closed, tears streaming down their faces, and hands raised really high into the air.
Great.
I love it.
Am I always a part of it?
Nope.
Why?
Because God doesn’t always tell me to raise my hands…so some nights I don’t. That particular expression (nor any expression) of worship is not to be done as something showy, something to draw attention to oneself. Therefore, if I am doing it out of habit or because everyone else is doing it, it needs to stop.

I was talking with one of my sweet campers one morning about it and she said, “I look around and I see all of these kids with their eyes closed and their hands raised, just praising Jesus, and I think ‘Why don’t I feel like doing that?! Is something wrong with me? I saw you last night, and you were doing it too and I could just tell that you were really into it. Very emotionally connected to God.’”

I had to smile. I love high school aged girls. They are so trusting that what they see is the truth (that can get us in trouble at times…but that is a topic for another time).
"Well, here’s the deal,” I said to her. “What you saw last night was not me feeling emotionally connected. What you saw last night was me choosing to believe.”

I was a little shocked at my honesty.

But the truth is there are a lot of times that I don’t feel like I agree with the words of the worship songs. I can be in a season of life where to say the phrase, “You are good when there is nothing good in me” is a stretch for my emotions to connect with because I might be plagued with doubt about the goodness of God. Life might have crowded in. Or to sing “I surrender all” might be a bold-faced lie because if I am being truthful, there are areas of my life that I am not handing over to him.

That night in particular, though, the night she was watching me, I had taken on an attitude of “choosing to believe.”

The hard part about life is the emotions. If we could be realistic all the time, if hearts were never involved, if past fears were never brought up again, if perceptions could be changed, we would all be better off. That’s not the case, however. Unfortunately. Emotions do play a part in our life.
So what happens when our emotions are contrary to the truth? What do we do in THAT situation? How do we worship when we are enshrouded in those feelings?

We do exactly what I was telling her: we choose to believe. We abandon how we feel about the situation and we choose to believe.

The truth of the matter is that whether my current life situation wants to FEEL that those words on the screen are true or not, THEY ARE.
God, regardless of if I want to believe it, is the “Redeemer, my Healer, Lord, Almighty, my Savior, Defender, you are my King.” Period. My opinion of God does not change one single thing about who God actually is. My opinion of him changes only how I relate to him.
John 4:24 says, “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” The spirit is truth, who He is, how He works, truth indwelling in those who believe. That is truth. And truth is found nowhere outside of the triune person of God. Therefore, worship is the declaration that “God is God” and the believing that that statement is true.
Whether you “emotionally” feel it at that time or not.

On another note, one night I was looking around at the crowd and I was overwhelmed by the beauty before me. The fact that there WERE a lot of people declaring the truth of who God is, making strong stands in the heavenly realms, was one of the most overwhelming things to be a part of.

As I was hearing those voices ring through the building, no doubt making their way before the throne of God, all I could see was the grace pouring forth from said throne. There before me were 300+ people, all of whose lips once did not sing.
But now they do.
The majority of those people have been called and redeemed by the Living God.
People are not born in a relationship with God. People are not born singing his praises. People are rescued into that. They are ransomed into that. They are given lips that now “sing new songs” (Psalm 98:1).

A lot of times, and I especially see this in small churches, people can become disillusioned with the other members in their church. They can see their problems, their issues, their hang-ups. They see that those down the pew are not perfect. Grumbling can ensue, bitterness can take over.

But how often do we look at those people, not as the ones putting up an issue about what worship songs we sing, but as a people whose lips now sing any worship song? And how often do we praise God because they once did not?
Believers are those “in progress;” the ones who now sing. Don’t ever forget how much grace you have been given.
And choose to believe, Wolfies. God IS who he says he is.

Camp.

I am at camp.

I didn't really go to camp as a kid.

But this week I am at camp. As a counselor.

There are kids at camp.

I don't really know if kids like me.

But this week I am with the kids at camp. Being their counselor.

In hopes of not failing miserably, I have been trying my hardest to be what I would want a 20-something camp counselor to be if I was a high schooler at camp: Witty, spunky, dance-y, Jesus-loving-y, and incredibly surprising.
So far to date my biggest claim to fame has been to lead all of my troops in a little plan I like to call "Sabotage the Worship Leader." Whether it be leaving him sneaky notes when he comes to do a clean-check on our cabins, finding ways to make critiques on his skinny jeans and insanely deep V-neck shirts, or, my favorite, having my girls take secret-snapshots of him throughout the week so that this morning we could make a gallery of Creeper Photos that he saw immediately upon walking into our cabin.
He walked in to see if our cabin was clean.
He found a wall of photos of himself that he didn't know we had taken.
With a sign that said, "Hey Luis, you just got creeped on."

Anyway. When I get back to civilization I will post pictures and tell you more to the story. Because there IS more to the story.

Jesus is pursuing you, wolfs. Don't ever doubt that.

Decisions I Never Thought About.

Sometimes in life I have a tendency to believe that there are some experiences, situations, decisions that are shoe-ins. As in I don’t even have to look for them, seek them out, try to make them happen, they just will come knocking. I tend to plan my life around them. Prepare myself for their arrival, tailor myself into whatever it is I think will make those situations, experiences, and decisions easier.
But then the years pass.
And those experiences, situations, decisions---all of the shoe-ins---don’t come knocking. I have no door to open. Then, because those experiences didn’t happen, I find myself having to make other decisions by myself---decisions that I never thought I would have to make.

Is all of this too obtuse?

Let me bring it into a more tangible thought.
Girls who grow up as Christians tend to think that they will be married by the time they are 23. Do we want to get married by 23? Do we fear getting married by 23? Are we ready when we are 23?
That doesn’t matter; the fact is that all of us will be married by 23. It is our lot. Christian girls get married early. Period. It’s what we do.
But what about those of us who (gasp!)—don’t’? What if 23 comes and goes without the set of rings?
Then what?

Or what about those people who are going to be doctors? Their grandfather was a doctor, their father was a doctor, their uncle was a doctor, they will be a doctor. But then they can’t get into medical school.

Then what?
Then what do they do with their life?

Or what if someone planned to spend the majority of their life being a mom? But your body doesn’t want you to be a mom?

On our drive to Utah last week we came upon a storm.

There were all of these mangy looking clouds. We were happy to see that a storm was rolling in because they needed water desperately in these areas.

It didn’t take too long, however, before we realized that not all of those clouds had rain in them: most of them were smoke.
Smoke from the forest fires.

And I couldn’t help but think, “What if I was the one losing my house to all of that? How would I feel having everything taken away…and there being nothing I can do about it?”

What if, like them, the place where all of my hopes and dreams and futures went up, literally, in flames? If all that is burnable in this life-eternal did just that---burn?

What happens when God changes your plans? And night and day you wrestle with how in the world you are going to reconcile yourself to the new normal?

It’s the classic issue of God’s ways not being our ways. His being higher than ours (Is. 55:8-9), and trying to figure out how in the world to be a man of God or a woman of God when what you thought the world was going to look like isn’t how it turns out to look.

I was talking to a friend about it; one who knows what life is like when you are in this stage, and suddenly I knew. Life in this stage is exactly the same as life when you ARE married by 23, going to be a doctor, going to be a mom, what-have-you:

To live is Christ.

Four really simple words.

To live, i.e. to be alive, whether in want or need, waiting or promise-fulfilled, riches and wealth, hunger, famine, or even if it’s just having to make decisions you never thought you would have to make, is Christ. All is Christ. Every experience, situation, decision, planned or unaccounted for, if it involves living, then be it unto Christ.

In Philippians, when Paul is in jail writing to a church, he says to them, “Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.” (Phil 1:12)

Did Paul particularly enjoy being in jail?
I can imagine not.
Was that his goal as a small boy, to be an inmate?
Doubtful.
But he knew that to live, whether chained or free, is Christ.
And even more, he knew a lesson I hope to learn: If we are living in Christ, Jesus will conform all things to his will. He makes all of our circumstances his servants. They serve to advance the gospel, to do its bidding.
Now that is hope; that is something worth living for.

Acts 17:26-28 says “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’

The gospel of Jesus, the life of the Christian is a simple one:

To live is Christ.
To seek him.
To reach out for him.
To find him.
To advance the gospel.
Because in no one else do we live and move and have our being.

Abandon.

I was in the desert last week.

I said I was in Utah, and I was. And there is a part of Utah that is a desert. And that is where I was. In the desert.
I don’t live in the desert. It is very green where I live. Lush, easy to breathe, black dirt. The desert is the opposite. I can imagine that it would be exceptionally difficult to live your life, to work forever, in a place like that.
There was evidence of this being true.
Scattered across the land you would see settlements; houses that once were but are no longer.
Mills and factories that work no more.
Abandoned. Houses and homesteads and industries abandoned.

What is the story behind that? For surely all houses and industry are built at one time. Full of hope or potential for money.
But no longer. They have been left.

I have mentioned it before and feel no compulsion to hide the fact that I have, what I would call, trust issues.

It doesn’t matter how close I am to some people, there is this small little fear deep in my heart telling me that they, too, will leave. Walk away, be there no longer.
This is probably irrational for me to feel in addition to being just not nice for me to think about the people I love. They don’t deserve me to fear that about them. They weren’t the ones who left. They are the ones who have stayed so far.
But alas, the fight to kill the fear in my heart remains in heavy heat.

On my trip last week (the one to the desert) I was listening to tunes one morning during my quiet time. Do you know the song “The Stand” by Hillsong? Yeah, I have known it since college. Have sung it probably 100 times, at least.

How the Holy Spirit is so great just boggles my mind. Don’t you love how he can take something mundane, like doing dishes, or some verse that you have known since before Sunday school days, and all of the sudden make it new? Give you a completely new perspective on it? Such was the case with this song.

I was just bobbing my head along with it, I am sure my hands were flying all over the air, when the line, “I’ll stand, with arms high and heart abandoned…” rung through.

A heart abandoned.

What an interesting thought.

Let me ask you: What is in your heart? What drives you? What keeps you awake at night, not letting your mind rest? What fears you most?

Then let me ask you this: Are those fears rational? Do those fears line up with the gospel? Are those fears lies? If you would let Jesus, would he dispel them?

One of the main struggles women deal with is this belief that we will be left. Walked away from. I know I am not alone this struggle.

We fear we will be abandoned.

But that is irrational. Insulting to God. Untrue.

Why?

Because unlike us, humans, he doesn’t abandon. He doesn’t walk away.

What would happen, though, if we abandoned? Our heart, that is. Absolutely, without question, walked away. Left those fears, refused to return, ran away from? In like, if the fears in our heart were a house, people who came to visit those fears would find dirty dishes in the sink and cold coffee in the pot.  We didn’t try to tidy ourselves up, we didn’t try to hide them in a junk drawer, as if we planned on returning and didn’t want to come back to a mess, but just RAN AWAY.

Abandoned.

With a resolve never to return.

Because it will take a resolve. The devil hates runners-from-fear. He hates the ones who choose to run to Jesus, the ones who walk away and go live at Jesus’ house. Why? Because deep-seeded fear is what runs us, it will be what we believe most. And that is how the devil can control us.

For those of us who have given our life to the Lord, can he take away our eternity in heaven?
No.
Can he drag us to hell?
Negative.
But can he make us live life in fear?
You bet he can.
Can he nullify the power of the gospel in our life and in our ministry here on this earth?
He will and does.
That is how he gets us: He gets us to make a home with our fears.
Wolfies, that is not where our citizenship lies. God has rescued us from that and brought us into the Kingdom of Christ (Colossians 1:13-14).

What is something else is that even if humans walk away from us, because they do, and they will, and you know that, HE NEVER WILL.  He will never abandon. Never walk away. Never forsake. (Deut. 4:31; I Kings 6:13; Neh 9:19; Neh 9:31; Ps 16:10; II Cor 4:9) Even if he should. Even if what we have done is worthy of him leaving us in the dust, nothing can separate us from that love, even ourselves (Romans 8:38-39).

Him not leaving us is not a license to abuse grace, as I hope you know, it is a license to live outside the snatch of fear.

If you get nothing else out of this, believe it as truth when I say this:
We can abandon our FEARS, our lying heart, because He will never abandon US.
Run away from them, kids. He has already killed their power, don’t let them take you over again (Gal 5:1).

U.tah.

Hi Wolfies!
Sorry so much for my absence this week! I am on a missions trip in Utah! It is going super well and the Lord is, amazingly enough, doing really sweet things.

One thing that has been really cool that our missions team has done has been to write "Encoura-grams" to each other, meaning we secretly write little notes to people and put them in envelopes with their names on it. What a blessing it has been to know that how the Lord works through you can affect other people in their walk with Him. So my quick little "encoura-gram" to you today is this:
Has someone's life ever encouraged you to be closer to the Lord? Has someone ever helped you through a difficult time and you are thankful for it? Is there anyone you know who you can say teaches you how to live like Jesus?
Then tell them.

They might need to hear it today.

I will be back to my regular "hours" starting Sunday and, kids, I have got a lot to tell you.

The Lord is good.

PacNorWeSum.

The remainder of my summer will find me in the Pacific Northwest. All over and around.
On my first day here the neighbors called the people I was staying with and said they had just seen a mama bear and her two cubs traipsing through the garbage.

While I, naturally, stared out the window for the rest of the day waiting for them to come walking down the driveway, it was to no avail and I fear they are to be forever lost to me on someone else’s garbage.

I don’t know why I didn’t just sprinkle ours over the front yard. That would have drawn them in and they wouldn’t have had to even go to the work of tearing all those bags.

Well, that’s too bad I didn’t have that idea the other day.

Why is it that wild animals are always so elusive around me? First it was the elk in Colorado (Read about that Here).  And now the bears who don’t want to see me in WA.

Is it that they fear my killer instinct, do you think? My own “wolf-ness”?

Ha.

Hahahaha. Bah! Hababah!

Yeah, I am kidding, of course.

But that would be amazing.

Anyway.

So I am hoping to see something wild this summer, just so long as I am securely in a car, or a house, or somewhere they don’t surprise me and try to take me captive, because let’s be honest, they are the ones who are harder to tame than someone such as myself. We have talked of this before.

So here is to God, and what I hope will be a wild summer with him.

Don't these mountains look like something from an old western painting? Of course there wouldn't be any houses in the old western painting.

I hepled out with a church cotton-candy stand on the 4th! Do you know that it literally is JUST sugar?

MASSIVE slugs come out at night.

Sparklers: They turn any 13 year old boy into a pyromaniac.

Ten Thousand Freedoms

Oh sweet freedom.
Yesterday was my country’s celebratory day of independence.  Where we celebrate freedom. Freedom that was bought, paid for, and ransomed at very high prices.
But what freedom isn’t acquired that way? For surely the cost of freedom is very high, and the removing of shackles can come with a lot of pain, a lot of tears, a lot of blood, a lot of loss.

Over the course of this blog I have mentioned, maybe alluded to, a little bit of my past. A little bit of my struggle, or that which I have been freed from and continue to find freedom from.

Plain and simple, my story is written with a lot about eating issues. Disorders, if you will, for that is what they are: a lack of the rightful order of things.

I am not alone in struggles like this, even though the devil would want anyone who struggles with anything to feel nothing but aloneness.
Freedom from these has come within the last few years, after what seemed like ten thousand days of struggle. I can look back now and see how even the length of time the Lord allowed me to walk in those bondages was to his glory; to his weaving.

He really is the only one who can take our scars and make them into jewelry, can’t he?

Praise to his name.

I was looking through some of my writings the other day, and on this day-after-July-4^th it seems that now is the appropriate time to tell you all a little more of my freedom story. This was penned March 21^st, 2011. I called it that day, “On Running.” I had no idea it would end up to be better called “On Freedom”:
 ~~~~

About a year ago at this time during my devotions one day, I was praying for Obama and about the end of the world when, in very Bethany-esque fashion, my brain switched gears to make the phrase cross through my mind, “God, you should help me become a runner,” to which he answered in one of the most vivid responses of my day thus far, “You never know who you might have to run away from.”

*Gasp!*

*Terrified Gasp!*

Let me tell you one thing. If God can’t get a girl to run, no one can get a girl to run, so when God says something as blatant as that, this girl decided she should start running.

At first it was murder, as I was expecting it to be. Couldn’t hardly go five minutes without wanting to stab my eye with a pencil, but somehow I kept putting one foot in front of the other and the feet somehow kept going further.

It was amazing what “becoming a runner” can do to a girl who struggles with insecurity like I do. I started seeing these changes in my body and I LIKED THEM. For the first time, I started liking my body, feeling comfortable in my own skin, wanting to be healthy, feeling like my body was something worth taking care of.

So through April,  May, June, July and all that blasted heat and humidity, every night that I got home from work while it was still light out…the running shoes were donned, and the black pants covered those still-white legs.

It helped immensely that I knew absolutely no one in my town. What else was a girl to do?
I had all of these visions of me finally getting the body I always dreamed of, trying to convince myself that I was STILL doing this because God said so, and because I was preparing my lungs for the day I might be chased by some dragon, not because I got results I had never had before.
I definitely thanked God for giving me such a task, thanked him for helping me do something I seriously never thought I would do.

But then there was this one day in August.

It was hot. It was August. Which part of that was redundant? Now you tell me…

Anyway. So it was hot and it was August and I was out like I had been for the last 5 months, cruising around town when I had the thought, “I think I have gone further than I ever have before” when I stopped to walk for a spot. One block later I started running again.

Or should I say, ATTEMPTED to run again?
Because let me tell you: there was no more running happening.
My right knee was locked and it was hurting with a solid pain.
ABSOLUTELY no more running.

I hobbled my way back those few blocks to my apartment, not really sure what had just happened. I mean, I was a runner, for goodness sakes! Runners do not injure!

The next day it was a little swollen and a little bruised, so I decided to take a week off. I don’t remember if I had pain during the day or not in that week, but when I tried that handful of days later to run again, it was still a no-go.

I took a month off and thought that surely by September I should be mended.

But no.
October.
No.
And then it got cold.
And then it got dark at night.
And as much as I had grown accustomed to the running in the summer, I had not grown accustomed to the cold and to the night.
“Well, I was going to have to do workout videos this winter anyway what with all that snow. And the cold.”
I got a few DVDs from the library over the course of the winter and those went well for a while. Until my knee started hurting. Or rather, since it kept hurting because it never really had stopped hurting.
When I would wake up in the morning or in the middle of the night and it would hurt, that was it.

In Googleing my symptoms one day I was convinced that I had torn my meniscus and I thought “I don’t want to have arthritis when I am thirty! I will have kids to chase by then!” so I broke down and went to the doctor.

And you know what he said? “If something was wrong you would have swelling. Take some Aleve.”
Hmm. I was relieved a little bit, but still angry that my knee hurt and that he had no intention of healing it.
In taking matters then into my own hands, I gave myself 2 months off from working out over the winter.
And you would not believe how insecure I became. Like, it was BAD. All of my ill-feelings I struggled with at any given time were combined into ONE giant feeling of BLAH about my body, and worse yet, about who I was.

You know, it is an interesting thing to have God tell you to do something, you do it, and then he takes away your ability to do it. What a confused mess I was on top of feeling all kinds of worthless!
I would pray, “God! Let me run! You are the one who said I needed to do this! You are the one who provided me with lungs to do this! Yet you are the one who allowed my knee to give out on me! What are you doing?”
Isn’t that strange? I just couldn’t figure it out.

And to be honest, I still don’t really get it.

Earlier this week I think I had a little bit of a break-through in how I view my body, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I haven’t nearly obsessed about whatever body part I obsess about since then as I usually do.

 So that is what progress looks like for a girl whose very own self is her thorn in the flesh. And progress makes me happy.

And tonight?

Well, I got home and it was still light out. While it wasn’t warm, it wasn’t really cold, either, so I thought I should try it again.
So I did.
The knee hurt a little.
But my lungs could still do it.
I probably went a mile at the most.
But knowing that my lungs could still do it; that I could still run away from a dragon: that was comforting.

Here now I sit on my bed typing this. Feeling some pain in my knee. But all of the sudden I feel like maybe I don’t need to run anymore. As if God has released me from that. Almost like he said, “I will give you the stamina to out-run the dragons I want you to out-run. But I really want you to be able to run around playing with your kids. So maybe we should just power-walk from now on.”

Ha. God is funny.

I will still buy a knee-brace, probably. Every now and again I might even try to see how far this girl can go.

But, to be completely honest, I feel as if there is still this dragon that is chasing me---beating me.

This dragon I deal with about my body. It is my constant battle.

Oh dear God I pray this is not my thorn in the flesh. I don’t think I can deal with this forever.
There is an inch of pride in me that wants me to be completely free from it. Actually, there is a whole boat-load of pride that wants me to be free from it. It has been my “Jesus-crutch” for so long. I can say, “Look at me. I am a miracle standing before you. I am a girl who once starved herself and now is a chef. Only Jesus can do that.” The pride in me wants to be able to say, “And now I love my body and never look negatively in the mirror.” I want to be totally cured from it.

But as I type this I think, “Maybe that second part isn’t what God wants me to say- and that’s why I can’t say that.”

He just reminded me that even if the second part doesn’t come true, the first part still is. No matter how much of my pride wants to say part 2.

I guess I just wanted my testimony to have a different ending. I wanted my change to be “radical.” I didn’t want to still struggle with it, post-salvation. I wanted to be one of those who said, “Oh yeah, and then I met Jesus and all of my issues melted away.”

“Maybe the beauty of salvation isn’t that you don’t struggle with it anymore, but that you don’t struggle with it ALONE anymore. And that one day your victory over this—the victory over this I already won—will be complete,” he just said to me. “Oh pretty girl, you are just waiting for your “new dress.” One day ‘the earthly tent you live in will be destroyed’…and you will ‘be clothed with your heavenly dwelling’ and ‘what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.’” (2 Corinthians 5:2-5, segments).

Oh to be swallowed up by life!

Wow. I think I just got another perspective.

This, too, this struggle with this flesh, is just a constant reminder of this sinful pit of death I was saved from.
A pit where, left to my own devices, I would still be living, being totally consumed by it, eaten alive by its darkness. But a pit that holds me no longer.

Thank you, Jesus. How great a salvation to not walk my dark nights alone (Psalm 18:28b).

And if nothing else, to now have a Running Partner when I am being chased by all kinds of dragons.

~~~~~~
I can’t read this anymore and not start crying. Maybe it doesn’t make a dent to any of you, maybe your struggles DID go away when you met Jesus. That would be sweet if they did. But I think some of you might be like me; some of you might have struggled post-salvation, and maybe some of you have or had a Running Partner who helped/helps you outrun the dragon, rather than having one who just slays the dragon right before your eyes.

That part where he talked to me about the victory one day being complete, when he throws that dragon away one time and for all---what a day that will be. A day I will be waiting for. And a day I now know I will be more grateful for BECAUSE He had me run away from him for so long.

But for now, I will choose to let him walk this freedom walk with me. Some days we do in fact walk, or stroll peacefully, and some days we will for what seems like my life, run away from that dragon chasing me and run to the freedom He offers.

I am just glad that freedom comes in Him. That whether it be on days of peaceful strolls, or marathon days, or 24-hour sprints out of the darkness, that he, the One who carries me through, is the One where I find freedom.

What a good God.
He didn’t have to give us freedom. He didn’t have to do what he did.

But he did.

And freedom is a good thing.

This is a song called “Ten Thousand” by the artist John Mark McMillan.

For those of you who have known what it’s like to run for 10,000 days, I pray you can sing the lines of this chorus, and know His freedom for all of the next 10,000s days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC8eNJ4PsIE

Sigh.

A couple weekends ago I was in a situation, a large group of people, where I knew no one, except one person. The people were all wonderful I was soon to find out, and while I am not one who gets shy or nervous in a crowded room full of complete strangers, there was this one moment where I was sitting there and thought, “Ah yes. I don’t have any idea who these people are. And they don’t know me from Eve, either.”

It was in this moment, as I was with these people, not uncomfortable yet completely unknown, that the one person I knew walked into the room.
I have spent countless times with this person. We are close. I feel at home with them. They know who I am and I know who they are. Like really KNOW. As in I am not surprised by things that they do; I can see their actions coming and I am sure the reverse is the same.
So when this person walked into the room, it was almost as if home walked into the room. It was a sigh of relief. I found myself smiling from ear to ear, just because I saw them. We didn’t talk, not a single word. We just looked at each other, smiled, and moved on with whatever we were doing. It was like a moment of rest from the “unknowing.” With them I didn’t have to say anything, I didn’t have to give any information, they already “got” me.
What a relief, even for this girl who is totally fine in rooms of crowded strangers.

 This weekend I was in Duluth, Minnesota, for a dear friends’ wedding. I met up with another fabulous friend at the airport who was also travelling in for it and then we zipped further north together.

What a sweet time we had!

The night before the wedding everybody was running around and talking plans for the next day and making piles of things that still needed to get to the church. It was buzzing, and I suppose I was a part of the buzz.

When my friend and I got back to our hotel room that night, I was surprised that there again was that same feeling. The sigh. The “Ah, I already know you and don’t have to explain myself. We’re comfortable together.”
The next morning between all of the hair and makeup I needed just a minute to myself with the Lord.
And it was then it hit me:

He is the true Sigh of Relief.

Just like those other moments, all I needed was one quick verse, one simple prayer, almost like a “hello, there,” to bring my focus back. He brought me to center in like 12 seconds. It was one glance, one smile, and a handful of words.
But that was what I needed that morning. Simply the reassurance that when I am with him, I am not unknown. I don’t have to be somebody else because he already knows me.

 As humans, we have this desire to be known. We look for it through all different means. Relationships, status, friendships, fame, popularity, etc. We want people to know who we are. Sometimes it drives people to madness or depression or  to doing crazy things just to get someone to see them, hear them, know them.

Isn’t it great being a Christian? Because we don’t have to buy into the madness; we don’t have to run the race to be seen and noted and on a list of Who’s Who. Why? Because we are already on the list. God’s list.

It says in Psalm 139:1, 3b O Lord, you have searched me and you know me…you are familiar with all of my ways.

Or what about Matthew 10:30 that says, “Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” Now come on! Who, but Someone who is madly in love, would care enough to count the hairs on your head?

Nobody.
Nobody else wants to know you that much. Nobody else loves you that much.

Wolfies, if you are one of His, you are known. Rest in that fact today. He loves knowing you, and he wants you to know him, too. Go love the One who loves you.