Transplant

You know how I know when I'm feeling deep, emotional, and sometimes philosophical things?  I blog. Anytime else I forget that I have a blog. ha.

transplant

Verb Move or transfer (something) to another place or situation, typically with some effort or upheaval

Yet again my life is changing drastically... Something I obviously crave, right? Within the next 6 weeks Clark and I will be transplanting our life into big-city, Pittsburgh, PA. It happened a little suddenly...but sometimes what we need most is a "suddenly".

All along we have known we would not stay in New Concord, Ohio forever. Moving was on the horizon but not planned until next fall. But the restless in me just. kept. growing. When you know something deep down in the core of you, you can't shake it or excuse it away. That's where this restlessness sat. It just took one particularly restless, emotional day for me to make the jump in my mind. "Why are we waiting?" I've observed that most of the people around me think that Clark and I do everything too big and too fast; I thought we'd keep the streak going. I started asking questions like, "Why next year?" "What's stopping us until then?" We prayed about it and made a decision within the week. When you know, you know.

So now we are here, weeks away from the transplant and it's been harder than I thought. I've seen unexpected anxiety find it's way to the surface. I thought I liked change? This time there has definitely been some "upheaval" in my soul. But God is faithful, and He is already bringing comfort to the lonely places in me.

This is what I feel is God's word for my next season of life:

"I'm bringing you into a season of brokenness. A season of greater dependency. A season of intimacy with me. I will surround you with people who will sow into you. Let me take you away for a season to know how to be a wife to your husband and to know Me as your bridegroom. I will not leave you as an orphan."

I am familiar with brokenness and part of me cringed when I understood that this was yet another broken season. But most of me became peaceful, knowing the beautiful intimacy that comes as I am broken before God. I trust His timing and His plans for me.

I'll be posting more often (I hope) in Pittsburgh to keep you all informed on my crazy life. Thanks for following my crazy adventure as I follow God! :)

-Coffee Shop Girl

Security

My inspiration for the day. :)


        I saw this quote on Pinterest today and it resounded in me because it directly addresses one of the struggles I have had in the past 6 months. TD Jakes puts it so simply. Knowing when a person's part in your story is over... Knowing can be so difficult. 

        This year has been one of the most wonderful and the most painful years of my life. A lot of the pain has come from people's part in my story ending. Some, all too soon. And some, though it felt all too soon, I now see was God's divine timing. Knowing it was God's timing doesn't make the pain any less real, but it certainly brings peace where before there was fear and anxiety. 

        Letting go has always been such a struggle for me. In nearly every season of my life, in various situations, my mother has said to me, "You must learn to hold on loosely." Not to crush this delicate thing called life/friendship/love/trust. And through the years I like to think I've gotten better at this. When I find myself clenching my fist tightly around the things and people I think I need, I'm reminded that it only brings more pain to me. If those people and things are meant to be in my life, I will not have to hold on so tightly. 

        What a year of learning it has been. I am thankful to God for being so patient with me through this slow learning process. I know that I'm being shaped into the image of His son and these trials are all a part of the transformation.  

Twenty-Thirteen

This year I resolved to write. So I thought I'd write about resolving to write, among other things.

For the most part I have avoided/despised/cringed-at-the-thought of New Years Resolutions. I assume its because for most of my life I've had a *inadequacy complex* (my self-diagnosed term) and the thought of more pressure - or perceived pressure - being put me made me want to have a breakdown. However, seeing as how God has healed, is healing, and will heal that complex, NYRs don't daunt me anymore. There are many other more daunting things to be daunted by, I can't justify being daunted by these. Also, over the past year and a half my goal has been to continually live more intentionally in all areas of my life. I don't want to just happen. I want to be intended. I know God intended my life, surely it's reasonable to expect the same from myself.

So here's a few of maybe a rather long list of resolutions (I like the word Goals better than resolutions, maybe because "resolutions" just feels to resolved? ;) Commitment complex maybe?!) in no particular order, for Twenty-Thirteen:

- Record my 2nd album of original music.
- Expand my writing (Ok... maybe this one is a little vague ;)) Blogging, Songwriting, and potential book material.
- Teach at HCF's Practicum services.
- Invest in my marriage - be a better, more engaged, more encouraging wife than I was in 2012.
- Lead worship OFTEN (again, too vague.) Once a month perhaps.
- Buy/Rent a new house - By September!
- Go on a missions trip - big, small, with or without my church.
- Pray for direction regarding schooling/ministry.

Thats most of it. I left out a few. All of these things are completely doable, though some of them I've been avoiding for years. Praise God, He has finally chipped away enough of me that I have the desire to embrace these goals. Now, more than ever, I feel equipped (emotionally & spiritually, more than anything) to carry out God's intentions for my life. Some of them still feel daunting, but my God is able. I was intended for a purpose from the beginning, and I will be intentional in these things in 2013!

The Writer In Me

"If you find yourself asking yourself, and your friends, "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" Chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death." - Steven Pressfield, 'The War Of Art'


      I found inspiration in this quote this morning. It speaks to the writer in me that, apparently, is perfectly normal. I like to write, I want to write...but I don't really like to write and rarely want to. Sometimes I think I want to, but not enough to actually start, much less finish something.

It is scary! I'm not entirely sure why. I think writing is a lot like baring your soul. Which is scary. Writing is also asking someone to approve of your thoughts; your ideas - of you. That's scary. Sometimes I think I'm not changed or affected by what people think... but obviously the writer in me is. The writer in me is learning.

      The truth is, the writer in me is tired. It seems that there is nothing new to write about! But surely there is. Life is ever changing, ever expanding... I have no excuses. I must simply: begin.

Dreaded Revelations

       God's really on a roll this week, speaking to me in the grimiest situations! Last night I spend hours dreading my husband's hair. Yes - my new husband now has dreadlocks. The dreading process is unbelievably long and messy. You tease the hair, then apply wax and twist, twist, twist. Wax gets everywhere. EVERYWHERE. The wax binds the dread to make it stay together.

       It takes so much time to rub that wax way down deep into every dread. As I found out last night, it takes A LOT of wax to tame hair that's teased way beyond frizz. After you've gotten all your dreads twisted and waxed together as they can be, you blow dry them. This is a very important step! The heat melts the wax deep down into the dread and that is what will concrete the dread into place. It's all about the heat.

       This morning during Women's Bible Study I was thinking of how sometimes it's like God just melts over you. He completely surrounds you and soaks every part of you. He covers you up and holds you together like wax does a dread. But that melting, that concreting holding-together process, only happens under heat. When the heat gets turned on in your life, and your scalp is on fire and you don't think you can take it anymore...God melts around you, concreting and securing His faithfulness to you - in you. He holds us together, like wax. And that security in Him becomes more and more real and tangible only after God sees you through times of intense heat. Like I said, this is a VERY important step in the process. Without the times of trial where we allow God to pull us through and mold us and shape us and show us His goodness, we will never truly know what is it to be held together by God.


       He is the only thing that can hold us together - and He does it best when the heat is on.



   

Great Espresso and a Great God

     We've all heard and know that "God works in mysterious ways." That's such a nice way to put it. It's more like "God works in the weirdest, most unconventional, inconvenient, often ridiculous, sometimes irritating, simple, precious, ordinary ways." Well, that's how He works with me anyways. And that's how He spoke to me today.

     On slow days here at The Shop, I try to do something productive. I TRY. Today was lots of cleaning. I decided to tear apart my darling espresso machine and do some deep cleaning. When I took it apart I was appalled by what I found... so gross!! I thought, "Didn't I just clean this thing??" I thought back... Right, I cleaned it before the wedding. THAT WAS MONTHS AGO. *Ugh* Disgusted, I went to work. And it wasn't too far into the nauseating job that the Holy Spirit got chatty. I was reminded of what I've been told and what I have read about my beautiful machine many times before. 

"Your machine will perform as well as you want it to."

Meaning of course, the care of the machine is everything. The amount of work I put into cleaning it, in prepping it, in maintaining its efficiency, is the amount of great espresso I will get out of it. A novel idea right? 

    I know, it's not exactly profound, but it was how the Holy Spirit reminded me of some things today: 

 The amount of time and energy and investment I put into my relationship with God is what I will get out of it. I can be as used by God as I want to be. I can be as filled with the Holy Spirit as I want to be. Is it sometimes dirty and nauseating and inconvenient to maintain the upkeep on the relationship? Yes. Are the results worth it? Always.

     So my machine looks beautiful and brand new, and so does my perspective on my relationship with God. It was in the grime of that machine that God reminded me of my responsibility to Him; to our relationship. I'm not sure what I'd do if He didn't speak in the midst of that kind of stuff... because my life is mostly weird, simple, grimy, and ordinary. Here's to great espresso and a great God.

Satin In A Coffin

"You were laying on the carpet 
like you're satin in a coffin. 
You said, "Do you believe what you're sayin'?" 
Yeah right now, but not that often. 

Are you dead or are you sleepin'? 
Are you dead or are you sleepin'? 
Are you dead or are you sleepin'?"

-- Modest Mouse

These are the lyrics that the boys keep singing around me this evening. And it hit me as a call from God to His Bride. "Do you believe what you're saying?" "Are you dead or are you sleeping?" 

In response to a writing prompt by http://www.subject4change.com/ I wrote that we are on the verge of something new. God still says: 

"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." - Isaiah 43:19

And I can feel in it my bones! The restless I feel is only the restlessness that gets under my skin when God is calling me to something new. And I feel like He's asking "Are you dead or are you sleeping?" Because I must be one of those things because I'm not awake and alive in Him how I should be!!! I don't want to be dead or asleep! And I've made a decision to wake up and smell the coffee. To get over myself and get on with what He has! 

So Church, Friends, Family, are you dead or are you sleeping?