Daily Bread

I have been learning a lot this week how much I need to trust in the Lord on a truly daily basis.
These past two weeks have been really hard. I have been so exhausted and so overwhelmed. When the halfway point in Durham hit, I was taken over by a sense of urgency in the worst of ways. I felt like I had been in this place forever, in this darn hotel for as long as I could remember. Everything seemed so endless, how could we be only halfway?? It struck me just how long the summer was really going to be. My heart ached for Columbia and for my friends. I truly feel like I understand what Paul was talking about in Philippians when he says that he is longing to see those that live in Philippi, he says that his heart aches to see them. I was so emotionally, physically, and spiritually tired. And that meant a lot of tears. I cried when I was angry (which was a lot), when I was frustrated (which was even more), and when I felt either too overwhelmed with people or really lonely (which is all the time).
I began praying everyday that the Lord would give me strength for that day and reminders of His love and His promises for me to hold onto. They fell like mana from heaven. He would fill me up after my prayer, and the days would still be hard, but the Lord provided constant reminders of the love that He has poured out for me on the cross and of the plan that He has for my life and of my future as a permanent citizen of His presence in heaven. But, much like the mana for the Israelites, He would only give me enough for the day. It felt like a switch would flip as soon as my head hit the pillow at night, my worries about the future and about this summer would flood me again. The next day I would pray again for strength and the Lord would grant it, but only enough for that day.
It occurred to me that if I wanted strength for the day, I would have to gain it from the Lord, and that meant that I need to see Him every morning to fill me back up again. The days when I didn't make it were really difficult. Not that the Lord wanted to punish me for not visiting Him that day, but if I didn't visit Him in the morning, it was a lot more difficult to remember what His promises had been.
The Lord has been my daily bread these past two weeks. It has been really difficult in the mornings before seeing Him, I get really frustrated with my roommates and with my friends. This morning I woke up absolutely distraught over the fact that my boyfriend didn't like a picture of us that I had posted. "Does that mean that he doesn't like what I posted? What if he felt that that was inappropriate? It's just a picture of us? Why Wouldn't he like it? Does he not like me??" What ridiculous, immature, hopeless thoughts run through my mind without the reminders of the promises of the Lord. After asking the Lord for His daily provision f bread for me, my thoughts rested more on the love that He has poured over me and how faithful He has been this summer to provide for my needs. We do not serve a Master who doesn't know our needs or who wants to punish us for the bad things that we do. We, instead, have a loving Father who has laid out a beautiful plan for us, who knows our hurts and our needs so intimately, and He wants to provide for us everything that we need, but we have to go to Him each day and ask for it. His promises are only helpful when we know that they are coming from Him and when we know the heart of the One who gives freely to all who ask.

So Literally Alive in Christ

For a really long time I have been praying for the gospel to become really real to me. Yes, I believe that Christ died for my sins and rose from the dead, but I don't always act like that, and honestly, sometimes I forget it, it lacks meaning in my life sometimes. So I have been asking the Lord to make it real in my life. And this past week He did. He opened my eyes to something that He had done in my life that I had never recognized before. 
My struggles with depression have been long and painful. For almost two years now I have been in a relentless battle with my own mind. The enemy has filled me up with constant reminders that I am unlovable and useless, a burden that everyone around me must carry. I have spent many days alone in my room with a tear stained face, desperately needing help and comfort, but feeling that my need for other people would only serve to inconvenience them. 
Some of those days were particularly hard. It felt like a crowd was constantly screaming at me that I was the worst human, that I could never amount to anything, and that if I tried to get help from anyone that they would resent me for burdening them. On these days it felt like the only way to get the pain to stop was to end my life or to focus on a physical pain that could distract me from the mental ones. 
On those truly dark days, there was one thought I could hold onto. Even in the midst of all of my doubt about the Lord, this one thought kept me going "if there is even a chance that the gospel is true, and if there is even a chance that God loves me, then maybe He really does have a plan for my life, and maybe I can hold on for just a little bit longer. 
And I did, I held on tight to that one thought for months, and the Lord did have a plan for me, and that plan was city project. 
From the first day I knew that I was in a better place. People around me were constantly talking about the gospel, and I have been immersed in constant reminders that I am so very loved by the King. 
This past Tuesday, the Lord opened my eyes to just how close I had come to spiraling into that pit, but that those thoughts that I had held onto were from Him. I am literally so alive in Christ. It is by the grace of God that I do not have scars on my wrists and it is by the grace of God that I am breathing today. He has been so relentless in His love for me, even when I felt so unlovable. It is truly His breath in my lungs so I will pour out my praise to Him. 

In Psalm 34 it says 
Is anyone crying for help? God is listening,
ready to rescue you. If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there; He will help you catch your breath. 

You are so very loved by the King, and you are not a burden to anyone. You don't have to hurt anymore, the Lord wants to help you. He wants so badly to save you from the pit and fill you up with joy.

He Who Provides All I Need

Romans 8:32
He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all - how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?

What more do we need to know about Him? Why would a good Father who has already given me everything and has already provided for my biggest need, salvation, not give me everything that I need for this life on Earth?
Last week I didn't really believe this about my friendships though. I sat on a bus on the way to New York City with 120 that I had barely met, and I was scared. I was scared that I would not have any friends and that I would have no one to care about me that week and this whole summer. I was scared because I felt like I had to do all of the work to make friends myself. I had spent four days already trying to be a part of everything that I could and meet as many people as possible, for fear that I would spend another summer in lonely exile.
Graciously, the Lord knew that I would need company and community to make it through this week. When I sat down on the bus at 6:00 Sunday morning, I was not in the seat that I wanted to be in. I was next to a girl that I kind of knew, but I was far from the group of people that I wanted to be sitting with. These were the people that I had been attempting to become friends with since orientation stated. They are the people who are always doing something, always laughing, and always having fun. These were the people that I wanted to be around. Haye were people that would sufficiently distract me from the hard parts of this summer and that would be a good place for me to hide and pretend to be happy with.
But that is not where I was, instead I was at the back of the bus and feeling alone. Then I made a choice to give myself grace, to allow myself to be alone for a little while and to spend time with the Lord. I put in my headphones and pulled out my journal and began praying. "Lord, your plan is so much better than mine. I know that you are a good Father, and that you know what you are doing this summer. If it is your plan for me to have another lonely summer, then work your will in that. But Lord if you have people for me to build with this summer, please bring me to them." I gave up on trying so hard to make friends and gave it to God.
And He was so, so faithful. The Lord is so good. He brought me to a group of girls who had been praying the same thing to Him. These girls were not fun-loving people for me to hide behind, but truth-seeking people who would be so sweet to me when I shared with them my struggles form this past year. They made my 21st birthday so fantastic and they were exactly the people that I needed for this past week. The Lord is so good and so faithful. He provides all that we need.
He was faithful in other parts of the trip as well. He filled me with boldness to talk to a woman in a coffee shop who was in desperate need of encouragement. He provided a connection with some Buddhist Monks who we prayed over even as they were in the midst of seeking false gods. He provided me with the most wonderful evangelism group to spend the week with. And when I felt convicted of my apathy, and of my unwillingness to share the gospel, He provided me with abundant grace. He is so good and so faithful to me. And I can feel myself falling so much deeper in love with Him.

A Well-Intentioned Mess Still in Progress

This morning I read an excerpt from She Reads Truth that hit me pretty hard.

"But even as I became more sure of who God was, I became less sure of who I was in relation to Him. The little girl who stood unabashedly before God, eager hands ready to serve, became a teenager who hid like Mother Eve beneath fig leaves of shame. It was no longer Moses’ “Here I am” that I echoed in my heart. It was also his disbelief: “Who am I that I should go?” Or, as was more accurate to my line of thinking at the time: who am I that I am worth loving? The fullness of the gospel had saved me, but I only seemed to remember half of it. I knew I needed to be forgiven, but I couldn’t believe I was. I knew God’s love was deep, but I thought my sin was deeper. I knew Christ accepted me, but I didn’t imagine He’d accepted all of me. I was a work in process, and I assumed the work was mine to complete. I was a well-intentioned mess, and I thought the mess was mine to clean up. But guess what? That wasn’t Truth. God never said I have to clean myself up before I come to Him, to get it right before I trust in Him. He never said I could not or would not be a work in process. Search for these commands in the Bible, and you will come up short. In fact, God says the opposite. The Bible is full of in-process people, those whom Christ pursued and loved exactly as they were, well-intentioned messes like me. Like you. If we need permission to be in process, we can look to Scripture. 
I am the woman at the well, taken aback that this man would dare to be seen with me.
I am Zaccheus, standing at a distance and hoping to catch a glimpse of the Messiah.
I am Peter, promising I would never deny Him and then turning around to do exactly that.
I am Peter, weeping when I meet Jesus’ eyes and realize that I have failed and failed big, again.
I am Martha, running around trying to guarantee my worth and everyone else’s happiness.
I am Mary, collapsing at His feet because I am so desperate for His presence.
I am the adulterous woman, standing guilty for all the world to see.
I am the bleeding woman, utterly incapable of healing what ails me.
I am a mess, in process, just like all of them. Looking through its pages, I see pieces of me all through God’s Book."

Wow. It was as if she was talking about me and not herself. Is there any sin that grips me tighter than the belief that though it was once grace, now it has to be me? It is something that I struggle with constantly. Geez, it was the reason that I even read that short devotional this morning; I had been reading the covenant for City Project yesterday, and one of the statements was that I would commit to spending daily time with the Lord, which is not something that I have been making time for recently, and thought, "oh, I need to work really hard to get back to where I need to be for this trip". Is there anything that is less like the gospel than thinking "how hard i need to work to get there"? THAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE GOSPEL IS. The gospel is grace, not just once, not just to save your soul eternally, but grace again and again and again and again and I can't even write enough agains to explain it. I need constant reminders in my life that IT WILL ALWAYS BE GRACE. My soul saving did not make me personally strong enough to shake off any sin that entangles me, it instead, connected me to the Source that provides grace EVERY SINGLE TIME. It is so like me to think that I have to clean myself up to approach the throne and ask for grace, how ridiculous is that? Of course I can't clean myself up, that is why I have to run to grace in the first place. It has always been grace, it will alway be grace, it will never not be grace. I do not have to clean myself up to go on City Project, to approach the Lord, or to ask for grace. Grace is given freely, to those who are drowning deep in their sin. I do not have to clean myself up to get grace, grace does the cleaning because I am incapable. 

If you want this a little louder, then listen to Judah Smith say it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwX_EpNR4CA

Plans and Updates

Good morning sweet friends,
If you read my post from almost a year ago, you know that last summer I felt extremely isolated and could not figure out how to grow closer to the Lord and was ultimately miserable at that camp. Coming through the past few months, I have been incredibly anxious about my plans for this coming summer. Worry and anxiety are things that I struggle with frequently, but never before have I had worries this deep and that felt this real. Thankfully, the Lord came through, as He does, with an incredible opportunity for me for this summer. While I was running away from camp, the Lord directed me right to The City Project. This project is an eight week discipleship intensive where I will learn the ins and outs of evangelism and some theology, I will get to spend a week in New York City ministering to international residents, five weeks in Durham, North Carolina, where I will take classes on evangelism and theology as well as serve with Ronald McDonald House of Durham, and Finally spend two weeks in Southeast Asia serving internationally. I am really excited about this, but still a little apprehensive about jumping into another summer where I don't know anyone. But I am trusting that this summer will be better. Additionally, I have been convicted recently about how difficult it is for me to open up to the people in my life, I have found that when I can type something out and really think about what it is that I want to say, it is a lot easier, and often even therapeutic. So this summer I am going to use this blog to write out the things that it is hard for me to say, so that hopefully, it will become a little easier for me to say them.
Thank you for listening,
Emily

An Open Letter to the Girl Who Took My Seat

Dear Girl,

     I know that we aren't in elementary school anymore, and we have not had assigned seats in school for eight years, BUT I have sat in that very seat you're sitting in for every day this semester so far. We have been in this class twenty two times already and twenty one of those times I have sat in that seat. So, that brings us to today, day twenty two, and to you, sitting in my unassigned assigned seat. 

     I don't think you quite know that amount of effort and decision making that went into me sitting in this seat the very first time. On the first day, I came to class an extra ten minutes early beyond the normal twenty that I usually try to get there. I carefully thought out the way that the room was set up, where the professor would stand, and where she would face when teaching the class. I thought about who would try to sit next to me and how to avoid the weirdos, and about the possibility of a friend showing up and making sure I had room for them. 

     I carefully thought out sitting next to that lefty desk that no one will want so that I could use it to put my coffee and my phone on while I take notes on my own desk. I decided to sit on the third row because that is close enough that I can see everything and pay attention, but far enough away that the professor wouldn't call on me every day of class. 

     Like I said, I know that we do not really have assigned seats. I also realize that this may be your first time coming to this class, as we do have a test next class. Maybe you just didn't know that this was my seat. Maybe you just thought that it was an incredibly perfect open seat that no one had claimed for themselves yet, but that is not the case. 

     I carefully picked this exact seat to be mine. I have sat in it everyday up to now. I know exactly how it feels to sit in it. I know exactly where to rest my arm, how to reach for my coffee, and where to look to not get called on. After all of these weeks, the things that come with sitting in this seat are automatic for me, and you have taken that away. 

     However, I know that you are a soul, jut like me, broken, and in need of saving. So, instead of giving you a death glare and maybe even confronting you about taking my seat, I will let it go and smile at you. But that is only of this once, when time comes around for our next test, if you are sitting in this seat, it's going to get real. 

Much love,

The Girl Who Cares Too Much About Where She Sits

Sometimes I get angry about silly things, I get too caught up and excited over things that don't matter. So sometimes, I have to remind myself that I am not perfect and I can't expect other people to be either. I'm broken, and so are the people who drive me crazy. We all just need a little Jesus, and not to get mad about it. 

Music III

Another song that has been replaying in my mind this semester is call A New Heart by a band called a treehouse wait (sic).

"Right by your disorientation, stands your Creator, 
He says, "I know who you are, and I'll show you the way"
And in the midst of your heartache, stands you Savior
"I am the Potter," He says, "and you are the clay"
So, let me shape you, form and create in you
A new heart
Please, let me shape you, form and create in you
A new heart
She's been anxious forever, 
She's been crying for days,
She's been waiting for You to take it away,
And You tell her You love her,
But the questions won't go,
And at midnight You whisper,
I will make you whole
...
Watch me making all things new, 
Beautiful and just for you.
I give you a heart that's just like mine
That breaks for people all the time."

I really like the second verse. I get anxious about everything, and when I'm anxious I cry. Sometimes I don't even know why I'm anxious. It just happens, and I love the line "at midnight You whisper 'I will make you whole'" because that's always how it feels when I find peace from the Lord, it's a whisper when I'm at my lowest. I also really love "and You tell her You love her, but the questions won't go" because even in the constant reminders of the Lord telling me that He loves me and is going to do what's best for me I am still bombarded with questions that I can't answer. But it really finally gets me when she says "watch me making all things new, beautiful and just for you." It reminds me of the song Beautiful Things by Gungor, heck, it reminds me of the whole gospel, the Lord taking broken things and turning them into something beautiful, and then giving us the want to bring other broken people to Him so that He can make them beautiful too. "I give you a heart that's just like mine, that breaks for people all the time."

Another song by A treehouse wait (sic) that I really love is the song Someone is Dancing

"Someone is dancing,
Lord is it you?
Someone is singing
A song I once knew
It speaks of a promise
Whatever may come
I'm in the arms of my Lord. 

There I stop turning, 
Staring at me
And my wounds are hurting 

For what I have been
In whose arms will I be kept 

When I've burnt every bridge
In none but the arms of my lord

Nothing is certain, 

Colors will fade
Summer goes autumn 

And autumn turns gray
Play then your violins 

That tell me of spring
When I am at home with you lord."

I'm not really sure that I can explain why I love this song. It just really speaks to my heart. The song is slow and quiet, it is sweet and comforting. It sounds like what it feels like to be in the arms of the Lord. 

Lastly is a song called You of All Friends

"To you of all friends

I look back and think 'bout

how our roads have changed

And how our lives turned out

So different

From what we had planned out or thought

While I saw the sky in million colors

It all caught my eyes

and you took the blame and believed all the lies

That people had told you must be the truth

So I took your heart and held it

oh I took your heart and held it close

I held it close

Your heart turned to stone

When nothing But actions without love was shown

Wherever you went there were people who spoke

Of one thing then did the complete opposite

You needed to know why God had ran off and just left you alone

But there was no room to ask questions that dumb

So you went away to be strong by yourself

So I took your heart and held it

oh I took your heart and held it close

I held it close

How low can you go?

How weak can one be

Without crashing completely?

Why should i play the songs in major?

I can Never be your saviour

I can never give you any life

But like oranges and how you peel them

He can take your wounds and heal them

He can take your broken pieces

Make it to a heart that breathes

In and out and out and in"

I like this song because I relate to both the girl singing and the friend that she sings about, at different times in my life, heck, at different times today, sometimes even at the same time, I am both of these people. 

I see the sky in a million colors and I follow what others have told em must be the truth.

I've needed to know why God had just left me alone, and at the same time, I've known how incorrect that question is. 

I love the line "He can take your words and heal them, He can take your broken pieces, make it to a heart that breathes", I like it especially when I don't just feel like I have broken pieces, I feel like I am broken pieces. But the Lord is consistent in taking broken me and putting me back together into a heart that looks more like His. 

This all brings me to one idea, the Lord sometimes works in me by taking my heart and letting it break in to pieces so that He can form in me a new heart that looks much more like Him and that continues to break, but starts breaking for better reasons. Rather than breaking for the hurt that I inadvertently cause myself, it begins to break instead for the lack of love and the broken hearts of other people. I break for people all the time. 

The Isolation Cabin

Do you remember how in The Parent Trap, while the girls were at camp, they got sent to the isolation cabin, but that's where they started to become friends and finally realized that they were twins? Well, I have a feeling that God is attempting to do something similar with me this summer.

I am working at a summer camp up in the mountains and I feel very alone. I rarely have cell phone service, but even when I do, my boyfriend is working at a different camp and is busy most of the time, one of my closest friends is in Kenya, and one of my other closest friends has been in Israel. On top of not being able to reach people back home, I worked here before, however, I took a few years off and now I have come in knowing essentially no one.

But because I worked here before, I know how people act here, at the very beginning I began to fall back into the gossip and cliques and really everything but love that tends to make up this place. After a little while thought, I decided that I didn't want to fall into that again this year.

As I began to work on loving people and being kind, I found it to be much harder than I had anticipated. Had camp already changed me back into the person I was three years ago? The girl who fell so easily into these temptations? Surely not.

I began having small breakdowns nearly everyday during which I would cry for a few minutes and then pull myself together and go back out to face the world. I blamed these instances on missing my friends and my boyfriend, but this just didn't seem like the kind of thing that would keep me continually in this state for so long.

When I woke up at 1:00 this morning, I had a very sudden realization of how alone I am, I had felt alone before tonight, but I had made friends and I had people to hang out with, so why did I suddenly feel so very isolated?

I started to put the pieces together and came to the realization that I was alone in my attempt to change my role in the culture I am living in. I have no one to talk to about how I wanted to change the way I've been acting and the things that I would usually do to help with this feeling like corporate worship and fellowship aren't options here.

In the midst of my heartache stood my Savior, He said "you have been using so many things that are meant to reflect Me and show My Glory in place of Me, so I have taken those things away from you for now, and I am leading you to scripture, you are not going to always have a group of people to help you when you struggle, but you should be coming to Me first anyway. I am your Creator and I have made a plan for you, no one else knows this plan, so you're going to need to start looking to Me first."

 I have been so cut off from the world and from other Christians and it has been really difficult so far, but maybe as I realize what I need to do to help with this, things will become easier as I fall on the Lord.

Music II

I wrote a post a while back about how important music is to me, especially music about the Lord.
I talked about how three songs had been my prayers to the Lord and over time they had turned from prayers to praises, because I had seen the Lord work. I've have some new songs that are speaking to me right now and I wanted to share and explain them.
The first is a song by The Collection called To Dust, I first heard about this song while one of the leaders on my trip to Boston was telling me about some of the music she listened to and why she liked it. She pretty much just said the whole last verse of this song to me while we were walking through the streets of Boston, and since then I have listened to it more than anything else. Sometimes I put it on repeat and just leave it for a couple of hours. There are several parts and pieces to this song, it's all really gorgeous and magnates to be beautifully poetic and fantastically candid at the same time.
"well I remember when You danced with me in the mud so ever frequently, and I didn't wash my feet for weeks for fear that the muddy healing would rub off"
I just relate to this line a lot, it makes me think of times when I've gone on mission trips and grow a ton with the Lord over a short period of time and it was never overly religious or strict and legalistic, it was like dancing in the mud with my Father as He explains how much He loves me and wants the bet for me.
"I used to no love You, but I changed my mind and if that happened once, could it happens, how many times can I 'still have faith'?"
This describe basically the way that I have been thinking for about six months now, thinking about my journey with the Lord and how I made a decision to follow Him but then sometimes looking at my life and seeing that I struggle to follow Him, and asking myself, "well i changed my mind to choose to follow Him, could I change it again to not follow Him?" which has kind of become a haunting question in my life this year, but is something that I'm working through.
But it's kind of answered in the next line
"but You are forever, and if we brave this weather, You go and walk across the water to keep me from drowning to the bottom"
This has been the thing that has brought me so much peace since January, it's not up to me, I made a choice, but I didn't save myself, He saved me, and I can't do anything to change that.

Now, the last verse of this song has just kind of been on my heart constantly since I first heard it in Boston in March.

"I was staring, looking back, out the keyhole of my door

You saw that I had seen you, and I fell to the floor


You were dancing with the children and loving all the broken


And I was too scared to come out


And then you busted through my doorway and it seemed so very violent


But peaceful words came out and silenced all my silence


And I realized that the knowledge that I thought that I had known


Was nothing compared to you coming to my home"

The first few lines there are so how I looked at being a Christian before I actually became one, and how I, sinfully, sometimes still view it. I grew up almost bombarded with the gospel and the stories of the Bible, I had Christian parents, I went to church every Sunday and Wednesday, and I went to a Christian school, no part of my live was away from it all. But the way that I saw it was so distorted, and sometimes the way that I see it now is still distorted. I felt like I just wanted Christ around to make sure that I wasn't going to go to hell, and I felt like that whole like relationship thing was just how bad people became good people, how broken people became whole. But I didn't need that of course, I was a good girl, I wasn't broken, but of course I was, I would never have gone outside to be loved with the other broken ones because I didn't see myself as broken, and sometimes I still have trouble reminding myself that I am broken and in need of Christ. I feel sometimes like the pharisees that Jesus rebukes for being like a cup that they was on the outside so that it looks nice but leave the inside dirt covered and disgusting. I am seeing more of the inside of my broken and twisted heart this year as I've been given more freedom to pursue my own wants and desires which are so often incredibly sinful. But then I think to when Christ did burst in through my doorway and how I realized that all that I had thought that I had known about Him and what it meant to follow Him was nothing compared to actually being close to Him. 

"And I could be content to forget everything I've known, and fall asleep right now, for good, before Your throne."