While cleaning up from Jr. High last night, the worship leader (and my new guitar teacher) was wrapping up the chords on stage and said, "Hey Jesika! By next month you'll be playing up on stage!" I stumbled over my words, warning him I'll either cry or faint or both. Of course, the cure to stage fright is to throw me up on stage...and I want to get over this fear…but I might really, truly cry up there. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even be singing, just strumming away on backup, but the thought still makes my palms sweat and my knees shake. My first thought was that I could take a couple shots of alcohol for liquid courage (it’s crazy how old thoughts still surface) but I pushed the idea away and realized that God is using this to show me how to let go and depend on Him. (and how cool is it that He’s using music to teach me?!)
Fear is starting to really lose its grip on me. I’ve been in the thick of battle with it for awhile now. Just last night, before Jr. High started, the youth pastor asked me to pray for the team. He even gave me an out, which I almost took (praying out loud is extremely hard for me -- my mind freezes in fear and anxiety sets in), but I stepped it up and prayed. It was short, clumsy and plain, but I was so happy God gave me the opportunity to fight against my anxiety. He’s growing me so much lately! I bet one day soon fear won't have a hold on me at all! :)
Thursday
Wednesday
05.27.09 P.S.
I took a personality test the other day. CC took it too and sent me a section from hers and a section from mine with the comment, "wow." It's pretty right on. Here's the section of mine she sent to me:
INFPs feel internal turmoil when they find themselves in situations in which there is conflict between their inner code of ethics and their relationships with others. They feel caught between pleasing others and maintaining their own integrity. Their natural tendency to identify with others, compounded with their self-sacrificial dispositions, tends to leave them confused as to who they really are. Their quiet personalities further feeds their feelings of depersonalization. The INFP's quest for self-identity then seems even more alluring — but increasingly impossible to attain.
I guess that explains why I'm always changing and never quite settling?
INFPs feel internal turmoil when they find themselves in situations in which there is conflict between their inner code of ethics and their relationships with others. They feel caught between pleasing others and maintaining their own integrity. Their natural tendency to identify with others, compounded with their self-sacrificial dispositions, tends to leave them confused as to who they really are. Their quiet personalities further feeds their feelings of depersonalization. The INFP's quest for self-identity then seems even more alluring — but increasingly impossible to attain.
I guess that explains why I'm always changing and never quite settling?
05.27.09
I wish my passion was consistent. I wish that when I'm inspired by something the inspiration doesn't slowly fade away until I'm right back where I was in the beginning. I wish the passion stayed with me and I made changes. I get so overwhelmed and on fire for something (most recently, while reading Irresistible Revolution, I wanted to sell all my meaningless possessions and give the money to the poor) and then I sink right back into the same old ways of living. It's sad when I think of all the changes and growth I could be going through if I just did a quarter of the things that inspire and light me up.
Thursday
05.21.09
Things I want to start doing again:
- Taking photographs
- Exercising, with weights
- Wearing hippie skirts
- Being excited about the sky
- Finding quiet time to read
- Creating pen and ink sketches
- Taking risks
- Sleeping as many hours as my body needs
- Yoga
- Letting my guard down
- Catching local shows
- Writing
- Taking photographs
- Exercising, with weights
- Wearing hippie skirts
- Being excited about the sky
- Finding quiet time to read
- Creating pen and ink sketches
- Taking risks
- Sleeping as many hours as my body needs
- Yoga
- Letting my guard down
- Catching local shows
- Writing
Wednesday
Tuesday
05.19.09 P.S.
I knew this was going to happen. It happens every single time I come back from Texas (or any wide-opens space, for that matter). I’m struggling to understand why God created me with these deep desires but hasn’t provided a way to fill them. I feel like the past 10+ years I’ve lived in waiting and aching. I keep thinking that it’s just right around the corner…that if I’m patient for just another year God will open the door to my desires -- He’ll send me to the countryside, bring me romance, call me to share His love through horses and art and music! I’ve kept busy with things in attempt to ignore the waiting and the desire but it’s heavy. It’s scary. What if I'm waiting and aching for something that will never come?
On Saturday I took Titan out for a little ride near Carrie's house. It was drizzling out but the air was warm. I threw a bridle and bareback pad on Titan and rode him down the deserted street. Trees lined the road behind and in front of us and it felt like we were miles and miles away from civilzation, rain fell in soft streaks, cardinals swooped across the road, Titan's steady rythm of hoof beats echoed and when I listened I could hear the fall of rain on the leaves...I was in absolute heaven. When I got back to the house, Charles came out with his fancy camera and took a picture (I was completely and totally HAPPY):
On Saturday I took Titan out for a little ride near Carrie's house. It was drizzling out but the air was warm. I threw a bridle and bareback pad on Titan and rode him down the deserted street. Trees lined the road behind and in front of us and it felt like we were miles and miles away from civilzation, rain fell in soft streaks, cardinals swooped across the road, Titan's steady rythm of hoof beats echoed and when I listened I could hear the fall of rain on the leaves...I was in absolute heaven. When I got back to the house, Charles came out with his fancy camera and took a picture (I was completely and totally HAPPY):
05.19.09
I'm halfway through The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne and can't get over how much his words jump out at me. I'm feeling convicted. I want to share some of them (some of these are actually quotes from other people that he mentions in his book)...
We do indeed have a God of resurrection, a God who can create beauty from the messes we make of our world.
The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.
We are called not to be successful but to be faithful.
We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it.
We can do all sorts of miracles, but if we have not love, it is nothing.
With the most sincere hearts, we do not want to see anyone walk away from Jesus because of the discomfort of his cross, so we clip the claws of the Lion a little, we clean up a bit the bloody Passion we are called to follow.
Yet over and over in the Scriptures, Jesus warns people of the cost of discipleship, that it will cost them everything they have ever hoped for and believed in -- their biological families, their possessions, even their lives. He warns them to count to cost before putting their hand to the plow. And Jesus allows people to walk away.
God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.
Do not worry about your career. Concern yourself with your vocation, and that is to be lovers of Jesus.
We've taken the blood at the foot of the cross and turned it into Kool-Aid.
So I did a little survey, probing Christians about their conceptions of Jesus. It was fun just to see how many people think Jesus loved homosexuals or ate kosher. But I learned a striking thing from the survey. I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80% said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question. I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2% said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.
Yet I am convinced that Jesus came not to just prepare us to die but to teach us how to live.
Today the church is tempted by the spectacular, to do big, miraculous things so people might believe, but Jesus has called us to littleness and compares our revolution to the little mustard seed, to yeast making its way through dough, slowly infecting this dark world with love.
In fact, if our lives are easy, we must be doing something wrong.
Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer. This love is not sentimental but heart-wrenching, the most difficult and the most beautiful thing in the world.
There are plenty of people who are miserable in their jobs, for they have not listened to God's call. And I would add there are many Christians who are not fulfilled in their spiritual lives because they have no sense of their gifts or purpose, and they just run to the mission filed to save souls rather than transform lives and communities using their gifts and those of the people they live among. Both lead to emptiness and burnout.
Economists predict that within the next decade, the leading cause of violence and war will be not oil but water.
Tithes, tax-exempt donations, and short-term mission trips, while they accomplish some good, can also function as outlets that allow us to appease our consciences and still remain a safe distance from the poor.
Writing a check makes us feel good and can fool us into thinking that we have loved the poor. But seeing the squat houses and tent cities and hungry children will transform our lives.
Live simply that others may simply live.
When we talk of materialism and simplicity, we must always being with love for God and neighbor, otherwise we're operating out of little more than legalistic, guilt-ridden self-righteousness.
It also becomes scandalous for the church to spend money on windows and buildings when some family members don't even have water.
Redistribution is a description of what happens when people fall in love with each other across class lines.
Certainly the thirty-five thousand children starving to death today need not fast to connect to God. Rather we need to fast in order to connect to them and to God.
Poverty was created not by God but by you and me, because we have not learned to love our neighbors as ourselves.
I'm convinced God did no mess up and make too many people and not enough stuff. Poverty was created not by God but by you and me, because we have not learned to love our neighbors as ourselves. Gandhi put it well when he said, "There is enough for everyone's need, but there is not enough for everyone's greed." One of the first commands given to our biblical ancestors (even before the Big 10) while they were stuck in the middle of the wilderness somewhere between Pharaoh's empire and the Promised Land was this: each one was to gather only as much they needed (Exodus 16:16). In the story of the exodus, God rains down manna from heaven and assures the Israelites that there will be enough. When they save some for the next day, God sends maggots to destroy their stockpile. (Maybe we need some maggots today.) They are ordered to carry with them on omer of manna (about three pounds) as a symbol of their daily providence of bread. Of course, we hear the subtle echoes of this in the Lord's Prayer as we are taught to pray for our daily bread. (To pray for "my" daily bread is a desecration; we are to pray for "our" daily bread, for all of us.) Over and over, we hear the promise that if we take only what we need, there will be enough.
We cannot say we love God and pass by our hungry neighbor.
We do indeed have a God of resurrection, a God who can create beauty from the messes we make of our world.
The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.
We are called not to be successful but to be faithful.
We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it.
We can do all sorts of miracles, but if we have not love, it is nothing.
With the most sincere hearts, we do not want to see anyone walk away from Jesus because of the discomfort of his cross, so we clip the claws of the Lion a little, we clean up a bit the bloody Passion we are called to follow.
Yet over and over in the Scriptures, Jesus warns people of the cost of discipleship, that it will cost them everything they have ever hoped for and believed in -- their biological families, their possessions, even their lives. He warns them to count to cost before putting their hand to the plow. And Jesus allows people to walk away.
God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.
Do not worry about your career. Concern yourself with your vocation, and that is to be lovers of Jesus.
We've taken the blood at the foot of the cross and turned it into Kool-Aid.
So I did a little survey, probing Christians about their conceptions of Jesus. It was fun just to see how many people think Jesus loved homosexuals or ate kosher. But I learned a striking thing from the survey. I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80% said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question. I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2% said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.
Yet I am convinced that Jesus came not to just prepare us to die but to teach us how to live.
Today the church is tempted by the spectacular, to do big, miraculous things so people might believe, but Jesus has called us to littleness and compares our revolution to the little mustard seed, to yeast making its way through dough, slowly infecting this dark world with love.
In fact, if our lives are easy, we must be doing something wrong.
Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer. This love is not sentimental but heart-wrenching, the most difficult and the most beautiful thing in the world.
There are plenty of people who are miserable in their jobs, for they have not listened to God's call. And I would add there are many Christians who are not fulfilled in their spiritual lives because they have no sense of their gifts or purpose, and they just run to the mission filed to save souls rather than transform lives and communities using their gifts and those of the people they live among. Both lead to emptiness and burnout.
Economists predict that within the next decade, the leading cause of violence and war will be not oil but water.
Tithes, tax-exempt donations, and short-term mission trips, while they accomplish some good, can also function as outlets that allow us to appease our consciences and still remain a safe distance from the poor.
Writing a check makes us feel good and can fool us into thinking that we have loved the poor. But seeing the squat houses and tent cities and hungry children will transform our lives.
Live simply that others may simply live.
When we talk of materialism and simplicity, we must always being with love for God and neighbor, otherwise we're operating out of little more than legalistic, guilt-ridden self-righteousness.
It also becomes scandalous for the church to spend money on windows and buildings when some family members don't even have water.
Redistribution is a description of what happens when people fall in love with each other across class lines.
Certainly the thirty-five thousand children starving to death today need not fast to connect to God. Rather we need to fast in order to connect to them and to God.
Poverty was created not by God but by you and me, because we have not learned to love our neighbors as ourselves.
I'm convinced God did no mess up and make too many people and not enough stuff. Poverty was created not by God but by you and me, because we have not learned to love our neighbors as ourselves. Gandhi put it well when he said, "There is enough for everyone's need, but there is not enough for everyone's greed." One of the first commands given to our biblical ancestors (even before the Big 10) while they were stuck in the middle of the wilderness somewhere between Pharaoh's empire and the Promised Land was this: each one was to gather only as much they needed (Exodus 16:16). In the story of the exodus, God rains down manna from heaven and assures the Israelites that there will be enough. When they save some for the next day, God sends maggots to destroy their stockpile. (Maybe we need some maggots today.) They are ordered to carry with them on omer of manna (about three pounds) as a symbol of their daily providence of bread. Of course, we hear the subtle echoes of this in the Lord's Prayer as we are taught to pray for our daily bread. (To pray for "my" daily bread is a desecration; we are to pray for "our" daily bread, for all of us.) Over and over, we hear the promise that if we take only what we need, there will be enough.
We cannot say we love God and pass by our hungry neighbor.
Friday
05.15.09
I'm flying to Texas today! It's going to be amazing meeting Jack for the first time. I’m still having a hard believing that my best childhood friend is a Mom now. The world is spinning way too fast! I still remember when we were kids (well, kids in middle school) riding horses back in the hills, without a care in the world. Soon enough, Jack’s going to be off having his own adventures. Wow. It’s so big I can’t even take it in!
I’m also super excited to spend time with Carrie and, of course, NORMAN! He’s turning three this year!
I’m also super excited to spend time with Carrie and, of course, NORMAN! He’s turning three this year!
Monday
05.11.09
Bringing a guitar to work is embarrassing! I have a lesson with Taps after work today and don't want to leave my guitar in the hot sun -- having a guitar in my cubicle is awkward...in a cool, rock-star kinda way. I've been getting such a kick out of playing lately. I played so much on Saturday that I had a blister on one of my fingers.
Wednesday
05.06.09 P.S.
My uncle was walking by the outside of my cube today and put the camera over the wall and flashed away. Attached is the outcome. I think the expression explains it all!
05.06.09
Last night I played Frisbee at the park with some church friends. Wait, scratch that. I tried to play. I was pretty clumsy – I caught a lot of air and half the time the Frisbee went in a different direction from where I wanted it to go. It was fun though! I can’t remember the last time I’ve thrown or caught a Frisbee (especially a snazzy one that lights up). Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever played Frisbee before last night. How odd is that?! This weekend, I’m thinking of going down to REI and buying my very own Frisbee that lights up. I want to play again!
Frisbee, Frisbee, Frisbee...what a weird word.
After work today I'm meeting the family at Disneyland to celebrate my sister's birthday. I'm excited for a dose of family time. It's funny, I used to be so against hanging with the fam but these past few years I'm really cherishing it.
Frisbee, Frisbee, Frisbee...what a weird word.
After work today I'm meeting the family at Disneyland to celebrate my sister's birthday. I'm excited for a dose of family time. It's funny, I used to be so against hanging with the fam but these past few years I'm really cherishing it.
Tuesday
05.05.09
I think my heart is starting to defrost. It's a slow defrost, but it's defrosting! I can hear God whispering. Here's part of an e-mail I sent to the Refuge web team this morning. I think the passion IS still there inside me!
...I wish we could take you back to when Refuge was born - through a group of boys living on the streets, dirty and hungry, sleeping on cement and cardboard outside the back of a bar, drinking beer collected from the bottom of bottles to fill their stomachs and dull the pain, being abused in horrible ways by the drunk men at the end of the night, lost physically but also lost spiritually, no home and their hearts hanging by a thread. That is the beginning of Refuge. Even though we are so much bigger than a group of street boys now, they are still the deepest, strongest beat of our heart. Most have been lost by AIDS, abuse, starvation and sickness, but they will always be the very center of what Refuge is. Dirty, hungry, lost, scared, desperately in need of Jesus and somehow, at the same time, so, so beautiful. That's what Refuge looks like.
...it's extremely important to us to have a web site that shines the light of Refuge. We are the same as we were when we first began, just on a much bigger level now. Now we don't just reach out to the street kids, but also the orphans, the young teen who's raising her brothers and sisters on her own and having to decided every day which will eat and which won't, the man who uses what little money he makes to buy alcohol to take away the pain of living in a place that is so oppressed, the woman who's lost her child to starvation and doesn't have the money to buy a coffin and instead has to watch her child be thrown into a pile of bodies and trash to be burned, the children who are abused and forced to give up their childhood in order to survive, the blind village, the old folks home, the money changer on the streets - all are so, so broken but so, so beautiful. Jesus loves each one of them. We love each one of them..."
...I wish we could take you back to when Refuge was born - through a group of boys living on the streets, dirty and hungry, sleeping on cement and cardboard outside the back of a bar, drinking beer collected from the bottom of bottles to fill their stomachs and dull the pain, being abused in horrible ways by the drunk men at the end of the night, lost physically but also lost spiritually, no home and their hearts hanging by a thread. That is the beginning of Refuge. Even though we are so much bigger than a group of street boys now, they are still the deepest, strongest beat of our heart. Most have been lost by AIDS, abuse, starvation and sickness, but they will always be the very center of what Refuge is. Dirty, hungry, lost, scared, desperately in need of Jesus and somehow, at the same time, so, so beautiful. That's what Refuge looks like.
...it's extremely important to us to have a web site that shines the light of Refuge. We are the same as we were when we first began, just on a much bigger level now. Now we don't just reach out to the street kids, but also the orphans, the young teen who's raising her brothers and sisters on her own and having to decided every day which will eat and which won't, the man who uses what little money he makes to buy alcohol to take away the pain of living in a place that is so oppressed, the woman who's lost her child to starvation and doesn't have the money to buy a coffin and instead has to watch her child be thrown into a pile of bodies and trash to be burned, the children who are abused and forced to give up their childhood in order to survive, the blind village, the old folks home, the money changer on the streets - all are so, so broken but so, so beautiful. Jesus loves each one of them. We love each one of them..."
Monday
05.04.09
I’ve been struggling lately. You can tell by my last few entries…they are all so serious…and that’s only the part I’m willing to share with anyone who’s reading. There’s a lot more to it, and it’s gotten worse. Yesterday I lost it. Thankfully, CC was there to pray over me when it hit hard and I at least could breathe again. It seems like the battle gets stronger and stronger…and as hard and scary and messy as it is, I can’t help but thank God for it. I know, for certain, that when things are hard, when I’m being attacked, that He allows it in order to strengthen me. I’m so, so excited that I’m being refined right now! I’m still feeling lost and confused and scared and desperately seeking His voice, but I’m walking through this battle with the confident knowledge that even though He feels so far away, He’s walking right next to me and making me stronger.
I saw a quote last night in a box Regina left at my house (full of Refuge stuff). It said, "The size of your enemy is a picture of the size of your destiny." I just love that. I just love that when the battle gets thick and heavy and hard, it just means there’s something God’s doing in me that’s freaking the devil out. So exciting!
I promise,the next post won't be so serious!
I saw a quote last night in a box Regina left at my house (full of Refuge stuff). It said, "The size of your enemy is a picture of the size of your destiny." I just love that. I just love that when the battle gets thick and heavy and hard, it just means there’s something God’s doing in me that’s freaking the devil out. So exciting!
I promise,the next post won't be so serious!
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