http://www.bethinking.org/your-course/intermediate/j-k-rowling-and-harry-potter.htm

J barrs on Harry Potter.

http://www.bethinking.org/spirituality/intermediate/the-christian-life-grace-and-identity.htm

J barrs and wim on grace and identity

"you don't think your way to a new kind of living, you live your way into a new kind of thinking"

henri nouwen

alone.

In solitude we grasp for any scrap of humanity we can find - in film, books, television, in the grocery store line, and the wave of a neighbor. Solitude heightens our people-sense; every look, touch, and word begin to mean the world to us.

things i like by Anne Lamott

“And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.” 

http://www.oprah.com/spirit/How-To-Find-Out-Who-You-Really-Are-by-Anne-Lamott

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” 

Easy, Yummy, No-Knead Bread

Even though it takes 2 days to make, in reality you'll spend mere minutes making this beautiful bread.

It comes out with a beautiful, floured, golden crust and is soft on the inside.

I found the recipe for this killer bread in - of all places - a New York Times article.

BAKE AND ENJOY!

Grace

My bucket list

ok grace, i think we have a few that are similar here goes...

1.own a coffee farm : )
2. live in a foreign country working
3. work for a non-prof company, ideally IJM something along those lines
4.  have a room just for reading, filled with tons of bookshelves, a fire place and lots of windows
5.  move somewhere out west, probably Colorado
6. zip-lining...a little more legit than the last
7. travel the world, going to the most random places
8. since i was in 4th grade i have said that i will one day work in an orphanage in Africa, and it is still my hearts desire, even though its trendy.
 I'm drawing a blank now, so this is all i gots!

A year later

Well, today a year ago, i packed up everything i had, sold what i could and moved to Chattanooga,Tn. I left Massachusetts, from one unknown to another. I am so thankful of where God has brought me. I have never felt so much joy and contentment. Even though this feeling does not last, it is something i have to chose. Something I have faith in, and believe in. God is doing amazing things in my life, amazing people in my life. I feel so much love.

These past few weeks were a huge indicator that growth is occurring. I'm not going to get into too much, but i had a lot of things happening to me,paralyzing fear, horrible dreams that stayed with me all day, I had a person i did not know come up to me and tell me things about myself. It became very clear to me that I was making a lot of  progress and this was another choice i would make. Every choice I have had to make comes back to my biggest problem. Trust. Trusting that God loves me enough to guide me through this and trust that He will not leave me. Every thing thrown at me that is a choice to lose focus, I have to keep choosing that God is going to get me through this. I do believe this, I do trust that God loves me more than I can even imagine and that my concept of love and the way God loves me is something i can't even comprehend. I am in constant awe of him. It makes me so joyful, the moments in the day where you just know God is revealing parts of how much he loves me, protecting me and guiding me. I desire to grow so much, to keep learning, loving others and learning how to love well and being reminded that we are all under grace. The more i grow closer to God, i want it so badly for everyone else. I want so badly for the ones i left back in Chattanooga to have what I have. To know how deeply they are loved, and they are not another person that God has forgotten, that there is healing in the pain in suffering.

I am thankful for where I have been, the experiences I've had and people I've met. They have all given me something that i could learn from and I couldn't forget them if i wanted to. I have been on one hell of a journey of running and restlessness. When i look back on the experiences I've had, L'Abri, ex boyfriends, moving where i wanted, it wasn't me. I don't even feel attached to those experiences, I don't even feel like i did those things. I am so thankful for that. It doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of things going on in my life that aren't bad. There are quite a few, but i know God is using them for something else. I can't let those things make me lose focus of where God is taking me. I just know he is going to use them and restore me fully.

Living as a forgiven

Ending of the week. I feel content, at ease...most of the time. Not that things are getting any easier, but the way i deal with them and see them is. I don't feel so restless inside, I am more patient with myself. I stopped living as a perfectionist and letting go of my convinced control. Overall i feel pretty happy. The healthier i get the more i see coming at me, but i can't lose focus of where I am at and what I am doing. I am becoming my own person, owning my choices, owning things that happened to me and then I am the one who deals with the good or bad result.

Journey

I'm a bit add so my thoughts are everywhere

I started a new job this week and school. I intentionally took this job at bristol's. I know the environment and what it will be like. How will i know if I have changed and can withstand saying no to those things i was tied to before? I trust myself enough to know if I feel i do not need to be there any longer i will leave. I prayed about it and really thought it over. I know it may seem excessive for just a job, but for me its not about making money. It is showing myself that I can go in that environment and not fall into that lifestyle again. I know this time of no work and school was a season, being able to hang out with good people everyday, have a schedule i followed, read as much as I want and stay in a place that was safe for me to heal. I know that things are just being thrown at me to lose focus of the path that I am on. I got 2 tickets last night, I locked myself out of my room and had to knock down the door to get in, i didn't get enough money for school loans so i can't even afford books. It could go on and on if I want it to. Through it all I still feel really hopeful, I know God has a plan for me and for these things. I feel like my patience and trust is being tested big time. I don't trust anyone. But that is something I am working on.I have such a fear of going back to that place I was once in. But I know with God you can't go back, only forward. And I am so thankful for that.

I read this today and loved it!!

"Although I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same. Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life; by your love I am sustained; and to your love I am always called back. There are days of sadness and days of joy; there are feelings of guilt and feelings of gratitude; there are moments of failure and moments of success; but all of them are embraced by your unwavering love.

My only real temptation is to doubt in your love, to think of myself as beyond the reach of your love, to remove myself from the healing radiance of your love. To do these things is to move into the darkness of despair. O' Lord, let me not fear too much the storms and winds of my daily life, and let me know that there is ebb and flow but that the sea remains the sea."

.

I have never been so content in my life. I feel like I have just started living, in a meaningful and intentional way. I have never wanted to make such healthy changes and be in a healthy community of people who challenge me. I feel so free to not feel the need to be a people pleaser, to convince myself that i could help people. The truth is, I wasn't helping anyone, I am not a healer, counselor or reconciler. Only God can do that, and He can use me through that. I truly had myself convinced that I could help these people and by doing so I used them to numb myself. Looking back I don't really remember much....just certain memories or things that happened along the way and how i felt about people. I was reading tonight about how God gave us memory, how He gave it to us to know what truly satisfies us and how we can return back to that in the future. Something so simple i never thought about. Therefore, I know God has really spared me in the fact that I have to sit and think hard on a lot of things that have happened to me if I want to remember them. I can feel again. I feel emotions, I can sympathize with someone hurting and not automatically go into "fix it" mode. I can just listen and be there with them. It is not something that will go away, I have to be constantly aware of it. I have to stop and question my own intentions of why i would say this or what my motives would be.

This has changed everything for me. I am now for the first time ever living as a forgiven person. I stopped holding onto what people had done to me in the past and choices I had made. I didn't believe that God couldn't forgive me, I just believed they gave me some sort of identity. Until i realized, I wasn't living, my hands were clinched onto those dark dark things of my past and when i set them free, I felt God's love for me, felt worthy of God loving me and others. There are still times when I will start to slip into telling myself I am not fun anymore because I don't go and get wasted and find my worthiness in any guy who shows it, or not the life of the party. Because those days were some of the darkest days of my life. I wasn't living, i was numb, using anything and anyone to numb. I have found such contentment and joy in my life now. Looking at life and the things that happen to me as things God is using to test me and to teach me new things and some bad things just happen because that is life. but i am no more just going along through life living day to day 'wondering what will happen today' but with intention. Loving God and myself and others. Okay. Done typing! Now i can breathe again!

A whole month later.

It has been a whole month since i posted anything. Life has been exhausting. My adopted sister is taking the energy from my family, its been hard. My family has never experienced anything like this. But the good, very good thing from this is that I have never been closer to my sister carrie. I am so thankful to have her. I am exhausted thinking about it as i type so Im done on this topic.

On leaving chattanooga. I feel angry at myself that i stayed as long as i did. I was so stupid to not see the danger I was in, to really truly believe i was ok? Living in survivor mode does that i guess. I have not one regret about leaving. I feel like it was more a bad bad dream and that it never happened, and i am so thankful for that. I am slowly working on being ok again, i still don't work a job, I have a schedule i follow everyday and i read most of the time. I have an amazing mentor, I don't know how to describe her,there is no way to describe her, 78 yrs old, and the wisest person I have ever met. I know I will get to that place where I feel content and at ease inside, but right now it still feels chaotic.

Thoughts from Henri Nouwen...

In the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), there are two sons: the younger son, who runs away from home to an alien country, and the older son, who stays home to do his duty. The younger son dissipates himself with alcohol and sex; the older son alienates himself by working hard and dutifully fulfilling all his obligations. Both are lost. Their father grieves over both, because with neither of them does he experience the intimacy he desires.

Both lust and cold obedience can prevent us from being true children of God. Whether we are like the younger son or the older son, we have to come home to the place where we can rest in the embrace of God's unconditional love.

Moving Forward

This friday will be 3 weeks here. These past few weeks have been hell to say the least. From not feeling anything to wishing i didn't feel and realizing that starting small is all it takes. Moving forward. I am finally coming out of it, conversations don't exhaust me as much as they did anymore. Now that i feel these things again, i don't know how i went on for so long the way I did. I truly lost myself for the past 2 years and I am trying to gain it back piece by piece. I am so thankful for the people here in my life now, moving back was not at all how i thought it would be, and the things i was scared to face aren't so scary when you let go of the past.

Grace, I need to figure out my bucket list again....also at this time in my life its hard to figure out what I really want to do. I'll get there eventually!

bucket list

dear kelsey (and anyone else who happens to see this),
this list is not exhaustive...and i'll probably change my mind about half the things in a year or two...but here it goes.


(in no particular order)



plant an apple tree

make bread for new neighbors

have a home

bake in an apron that looks something like this

stay in one place

have a room with bookcases on every wall

plant a big garden

join a church

go a whole day without being mean or snapping at anyone

take care of my parents when they're old

make apple sauce

teach english

be peaceful

be super super silly at 95 years old

have a dog

have a wood stove

have a clothes line

sleep at a beach

be wise

be smart

be kind


i can't think of anything else right now...but i'll try!



Grace

The Pain you experience today, is protecting you from a greater pain tomorrow.

A really unhealthy person once told me 'when you say goodbye, say it well' .I am preparing to move in the next week or two back to saint louis. Wishing i had magic skills to pack it all up in an hour and leave before anyone noticed or came by. Its not that i don't want to see the people i love before i leave, its exactly that, I feel its easier to just vanish before i have to feel anything. I hate saying goodbye, i hate it and avoid it like the plague. I am leaving the place of safety and comfort, where no one questions what I do, why I do what I do, hold me accountable or sets standards for me. I am leaving partly because of this, i need another new start. I have moved more than i want to even count, in the past 3 years. Each of which, have been such milestone moments in my life, in boston, i discovered who I was and how to really love myself, and in Chattanooga, how to love those around me, and how much alike we really are. We are all so damaged and need God's grace everyday.

I am ready for peace and quiet, in my heart. I am tired of being restless. No one here really understands why I am leaving, I don't blame them, i don't really get it either. Its just something i know i need to do, not want or have, need. Like ending a bad relationship, you just know that it is over and its more harmful to keep on. I do not look forward to moving back to saint louis, and i don't look forward to leaving here, but i don't know where else to go. I am moving forward, that is all i can do, back to the one place that scares the shit out of me. A friend recently told me 'if i dealt with those things that happened to me there, it wouldn't scare me to go back'. This just made aware of how much more harder it will be. I am anxious for the struggles and the setbacks, i know it will keep me growing into who i need to be. All i know is that I am thankful for every experience I have had in my life, good and bad. From crazy living situations, L'abri and the dysfunctional relationships along the way.

P.S.Grace, i am waiting to hear about your life at L'abri! so post!

what i did last night.

Well we are back. Grace is back in the states, from prague. And I am back to posting, as will she. Here goes!