NEW SITE!!

Hello Reader Friends,

I have spent my Christmas Break creating a BRAND NEW blog site for 2013 and beyond! With some of the exciting things happening in my future (I'm moving to North Carolina in July!) I figured it was time to revamp my blogging space.

You are welcome to join my new cozy corner of the Internet at www.lattedaze.wordpress.com

I am delighted to invite you to continue following me on my "Set Apart Adventure" at this new blogging location!

Peace and Love,

Heidi

When God says No....

Sometimes God says No.

God doesn’t ask me to understand it or agree with it or like it. But if I’m going to have half a chance at happiness in the midst of it, I’m going to have learn to say okay.

Okay to that thing I really believe I ought to have but God says no to. Okay deprived of the reason and the whys.

Just a pure and trusting unconditional…okay.

But when I say it…if I’ll say it… something mysterious and divine begins to happen.

God makes it okay.

Okay God, Your will, not mine. Advancing YOUR kingdom in this world, not mine.

That’s when God steps in and holds me close and whispers sweet truths into my brokenness.

That thing I deeply wanted.  That thing I feared most. That word I could hardly utter…became okay.

And here’s a bit of wisdom I’d never known ‘til now—

Before I knew it, contentment tiptoed in my heart. To the point where after a while I wondered what all that worry and stress was about anyway.

Because it really was okay.

Life with Jesus is about surrendering to the adventure of now. Fearless Living. The bible says, “Do not be afraid” 365 times. Once for each day of the year.

Abandon all worries and fears and simply abide in Christ — all is well.  

The peace, the shalom is found in the release of everything into the hands of God. Isn’t it all safer in Divine hands anyway? Abandon and abide — all is well.

“When peace like a river attendeth my way,

 When sorrow like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, God has taught me to say:

It is well…It is well with my soul”

An Autumn Walk

I took a walk in the woods this morning.

My restless, aching, introverted soul was dying to get away. The dawning sky smothered like a faded grey blanket. I strolled through the whimsy Seattle wilderness with the attempt of possibly escaping what I knew God was calling me to this year. The earthly aroma of my early autumn walk filled my lungs. As I walked I prayed out loud to my best friend and God that I have shamefully neglected and been too busy to make time for the past few weeks. However, like always, my old friend met me with open arms and was quick to take any shame or guilt from my weary hands.

Oh, how light our Father’s yoke is. How deep is his unfailing love for us.

Still, my heart was anxious, my mind racing with all the seemingly impossible tasks before me, not qualified, not ready, not prepared, not enough time. I can’t do this. I am not the person you want for this.

Autumn is my beloved season and I like to embrace it—to soak in all of her beauty. A new school year, apples, crisp air, crunchy leaves below, sweaters, bon-fires, pumpkin spice white mochas, boots, school supply shopping, so many new things and new beginnings. Autumn has always been an exciting season for me—a sense of starting. My friend told me yesterday that she was “oddly and randomly obsessed with the way the months of autumn sound on her lips--September, October, November--like they’re regal, like they’re trimmed with gold.” I wholeheartedly agreed with her and knew exactly what she was saying.

This year is a dream come true for me. I am in my senior year at Seattle Pacific University. I still haven’t forgotten what a massive blessing and gift it is to be attending, growing, and learning at this school. I will be graduating this June debt free. I spent the summer preaching at my home church and began the candidacy process to become a pastor. I have my church, friends, and family’s support to attend Divinity School next fall. I am the Peer Advisor (0r “RA”) on 5 East Ashton to 47 beautiful and wonderful women. I have an incredible staff I get to serve Ashton with. I am only taking music, communication, and theology classes this year—everything that I love. I have a sweet job in the Admissions office where I get the opportunity to tell perspective students my story about coming to SPU.

However if I am painfully honest with myself, I’m sometimes secretly disappointed that this season will not be as calm, chill, and relaxing new beginnings as it usually is. I have a stack of grad application papers up to my eyeballs. I have administration papers, green cards, check-ins, and floor meeting memos to write and prepare for. It is a season of deadlines, of a bulging inbox, of long phone calls with my denomination synod, of late nights at the computer, of broken lights and maintenance request forms for days, of missing workouts and one too many cups of coffee and handfuls of chocolate chips, of doubting if I am the right person for what I seem to be called to. This is a season of barely keeping up.

It’s funny, isn’t it? How we can make ourselves dissatisfied even with our dreams-come-true, how we always think the next season will be better. 

I may not be meeting all my To-Do-List goals, but I’m meeting my career, ministry, and dream goals. I get to meet tons of new people, empower and inspire the ones in my life, hear new music, learn new things. I might not get to curl up with a fat mug of hot chocolate in hand to watch movies every weekend, but I do get to sink deep into my favorite comfy futon couch after a long day in my own quaint and charming dorm room on a floor I got to decorate—all while knowing someone else paid for it all!

I get the opportunity to be creative, doing everything well and beautifully, with an eagerness and delight—leaving a trail of loveliness behind everywhere I go. I might not be able to find time to schedule coffee dates with my good friends I left behind on 3^rd Hill during this crisp autumn season, but I have 47 5E Ashton ladies who I get to live life, dream big, cry, sing, and be silly with. I have deadlines for Grad schools I never in a million years thought I would have even the slightest chance of attending. I am preparing to finish off my undergrad college career with a major and minor I never thought my parents would support and be excited about. Everything is just like I’d always dreamed, and I’d be a fool not to enjoy every second of it. 

Living fully in this season makes the barely keeping up, showing up late to almost every meeting, and the late nights all part of the adventure. Living fully in this season makes me less anxious and more thankful. Living fully in this season keeps my prideful ego in check because I know in a blink of an eye this season will be over. **Lord, give me a humble heart.** And living fully in this season, will make the next one even sweeter. 

I continued to wonder aimlessly around those woods. I needed to be thankful. Needed to see that all is grace in my life: the good, the bad, the hard, the ugly, the beautiful, and the sweet moments. I want to live fully in this season, in the present moment because I know that is where God is. When I am present, I meet “I AM”—God’s very name. I meet the very presence of a present God.  In his arms time loses all sense of speed and stress, anxieties and worries fall off me like chains hitting a cement floor, and everything around me seems so still….so holy.

God’s kingdom is the only place to breathe in an atmosphere of pure grace. Sometimes the startling grace of your life can drop you right to your knees and is there any other way to rightly see your life?

It is easy to not feel sufficient to the leadership and calling that God has placed on your life. But one of my favorite parts of Prince Caspian from the Narnia Series by C.S Lewis says…

Then Peter, leading Caspian, forced his way through the crowd of animals. 

“This is Caspian, Sir,” he said. And Caspian knelt and kissed the Lion’s paw. 

“Welcome Prince,” said Aslan. “Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia?" 

“I—I don’t think I do, Sir,” said Caspian. “I’m only a kid.” 

“Good,” said Aslan. “If you had felt yourself sufficient, it would have been proof that you were not. Therefore, under us and under the High King, you shall be King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, and Emperor of the Lone Islands. You and your heirs while your race lasts.”

        

And in that still and holy moment I remembered what I should have realized all along. Jesus says that he wants to ABIDE in us. “Abide in me, and I will abide in YOU”. What a promise. Jesus doesn’t tell us to do anything that he isn’t willing to get inside us and do. Christ takes over from the inside. Transforming our hearts and minds by abiding INSIDE US. Martin Luther said abiding is the blessed exchange: giving Jesus all that I am for all that He is.

I can come to Jesus hands open, take a deep breath and just relax. Abide. Because it’s never about my abilities, my strength, my holiness, my leadership. I can come sin stained, messy, and broken and take hold of the promise that Christ is eager to come in and take responsibility to cover my cracks, to heal and mend, to set me free of the prisons I get myself into, to be my completeness and enoughness. I have nothing to prove. I am beloved. I can abandon my worries, my fears, my anxieties and wholly abide.

         It wasn’t radical enough for the God of the Universe, the word of life, to come and dwell among us (Emmanuel: “God with us”)—today I remember the beautiful truth that Jesus want to go one step further and dwell IN me too. I am enough. I am qualified. I am ready because Jesus is enough, Jesus is qualified, Jesus is ready.

         I took a walk in the woods this morning and came back a different person. A healthier person. A whole-er person.  An abided person. A beloved person.

Crashing into God's Grace, Abundance and Blessings

Full, little boys, symphonic laughter fills the house and I cannot help but laugh too as four-year-old Luke waddles to me with a face plastered in thick clumps of nutella. Eight-year-old Jack follows closely behind his younger brother, “The point of eating is to get the food in your mouth, not on your face silly” he jokes…

I smile at the unfolding memory filled with pure and simple beauty as I snuggle in my cozy black chair in my bedroom with a warm mug of bedtime tea.  After a long 8-½ hour workday and 40-hour week to say I am exhausted is an understatement. Yet, in the stillness of the night I can hear the notes of grace playing everywhere, in everything. The grace of God is simply ridiculous. All is grace. It’s always the simple things that change our lives. But I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.

“Out of God’s abundance we have received one grace after another and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessings and favor upon favor and gift heaped upon gift” ~John 1:14;16 (paraphrase)

And sure I am tired, but I am also bursting with a heavenly joy. Because bent down low is where I find fullness of joy. I have never felt closer to the heart of my sweet Jesus. Joyful, filled, and content.  This summer hasn’t been glamorous. I don’t have a really hip and cool internship or job that I can put on my resume. Nothing that would promote myself in the “real world” or help me climb the ladder of success. I wake up early every morning to love on two precious boys. But I am racking up lessons learned where it matters most: purifying my heart. Deep spiritual truths are learned while cleaning up spilled apple juice on the carpet for the second time today. Daily I witness profound and convicting Kingdom of God wisdom come out of the mouths of two little boys.

But even though I am blessed beyond comprehension--Somedays are just messy and hard. Somedays I don’t want to get out of bed. Somedays I don’t have the energy to step out of my car and start another long day where I will be tested, pushed, and challenged to patiently love and put myself last. Somedays I just want to go back to sleep and wake up when some of the mess and hard is over.

I park. Turn the keys in the ignition, close my eyes, open my hands and just sit. So empty today, Lord. I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. What is the point of giving of myself everyday? And Yahweh fills up my spirit with just one word, enough.

Enough.

Jesus. 

Holy Spirit.

Father of Abundance.

The Trinity Givers of endless blessings. Following King Jesus is really hard. But it’s worth it. He is enough. In this mess…I am blessed. The nearer I draw to a holy, loving God, all the “I”s (I’m tired. I can’t do this. I’m empty, I not the person you want”), they fall to the side and are replaced by a willing Yes.

 Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go: He’s the one who will keep you on track. ~Proverbs 3:6 (MSG)

I know what I am doing.  I have it all planned out: plans to take care of you, not to abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. ~Jeremiah 29:11 (MSG)

Prayer isn’t merely talking to God — it is being transformed by God. And in the praying — it becomes not about what I want — but what God wills. Reminding me to never despair of a situation more than I trust in my Savior. I remember the faithfulness of my God. Time and time again He comes through. This day shall be no different. In recollecting all the goodness’s of God — all the brokenness in me re-collects. I am put back together. In remembering God’s enoughness. I am re-membered. And I find healing in the deepest places of my weary and restless heart.

“As those who are chosen, blessed, broken, and given, we are called to live our lives with a deep inner joy and peace. Imagine that, in the center of your heart, you trust that your smiles and handshakes, your embraces and your kisses are only the early signs of a worldwide community of love and peace. (The Kingdom of God.) We become beautiful people when we give whatever we can give: a smile, a handshake, a kiss, an embrace, a word of love, a present, a part of our life…all of our life. “ ~Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen

I want to do everything well and beautifully with eagerness and delight leaving a trail of loveliness behind. Life is so full. How can I possibly be thankful enough? How can I possibly learn enough? How can I possibly laugh enough? Oh, God knows. God knows. Jesus is the source of my comfort and my enoughness. I am so glad Yeshua holds my heart when I feel so overwhelmed by the mingling of immense beauty and deep heartache of life.

In two months, I will be starting my senior year of college as a nineteen year old. What? How did that happen? Life centered in God’s grace and enoughness is one set-apart, crazy, ridiculous adventure after another. Nothing in my life makes sense other than Jesus has full reign.

In one short month, I will be packing up and moving back to Seattle to start three weeks of training to be an Resident Assistant at SPU. Living on a floor with 45+ girls and charged with the task of build a thriving, life-giving, grace-filled community. Only by God’s grace. God’s enoughness.

 In two weeks, I will be preaching at my church for the third time. I started preaching when I was just fourteen years old! Who in the world would let a fourteen-year-old girl get up in front of a congregation and preach? Only by God’s grace. God’s enoughness.

In 5 days, I get on a plane with my family to look into the face of some of my deepest fears and insecurities—Seminary. I will be visiting and interviewing at Duke Divinity School in North Carolina. It has been a long, hard journey to get to this point. I am nervous, excited, and feeling completely unqualified to even walk on the campus of such an unrivaled, first-rate program. Only by God’s grace. God’s enoughness.

Today, I have an eight-hour day with two boys filled with continuous energy and an unrelenting spirit for testing boundaries before me. I will love on them and teach them about a different way of living. Only by God’s grace. God’s enoughness.

Friends, my prayer for all of you is the same. May you crash into God’s grace and enoughness today no matter where you find yourselves. He is there in the midst of the joy, beauty, blessings, hard, and messy.

The 20 Things I learned at SPU

For some people, small, beautiful moments are what life is all about. There are Eden days—or an Eden year in my case. A year where you pray that the days would linger just a bit longer; wishing that life could be frozen forever in the present moment, these feelings, the incredible people that surround your world. I already miss strolling to class early every morning in a sea of hip looking people with warm coffee in hand.

I smooth out my bed sheets and glance around my “new” and familiar room for the next three months and everything calms, my favorite small Voice stilling my restless heart. This is what I am, what WE are: Blessed, Blessed, Blessed. 

As I look back on this year, the biggest truth I discovered is that setting aside your dreams and instead seeking the will of God with all your heart is always a much better plan. If it’s meant to be, God will make a way. God’s timing is perfect. God has a plan and His plan becomes our stories

The reality of life is that dreams die, plans change, and seasons end, but God is not done yet. The beauty is in this whole process, not just the end results.  Life is a string of ends and beginnings. Those two seem to always come together—like the closest of friends.

Something ends and something begins and I’m missing the sweet memories of junior year and a bit nervous for what is to come. I’m melancholy for what’s behind and what could have been and I have never travelled this road that lies ahead of me. Some days I am even bold enough to say that I am scared — I wonder if bends in the roads can break things…. Can break people?

Roads can twist, bend and turn and the only thing that calms me is that small Voice: “Do not be afraid. I am always with you. Nothing can separate you from My love. I am for you.”

Since I am a Type A personality list person (there is no better feeling then crossing something off a To-Do-List), I grabbed my journal that night and began to dissect and reflect on this past season of my life. Questions, memories, and lessons learned flooded my mind until I spilled out this list of 20 things. My pen stopped, this was the list my heart had been longing to see, the reassurance that God’s fingerprints were covering my entire school year and He would continue to walk right by my side as I enter the next season too: Senior year. As scary as that sounds—as unprepared and unqualified as I feel I am for what God has called me to do next fall. I continue walking down this twisty road because I know that I never walk alone.

So I present to you my list of the top 20 things I learned at my first year at SPU as a junior. My heart is that all things will be done in love, for the glory of God’s name, knowing that He is with me and I am His Beloved.

The 20 Things I Learned at SPU

1.     Ministry is messy. If you want to touch, impact, and leave your mark on the world, you’re going to have to be okay with getting your hands dirty. Every chance I have to love imperfect people (AKA everyone, including myself) is another chance to perfect God’s love in me. We are all messy, broken, recovering sinners drenched in the grace and love of a God who makes beautiful things. Breathe in Grace, Breathe out love.

2.     It’s not our job to change people. It’s our job to love people. Love is what changes us and only God saves. We are advancing HIS kingdom, not our own

3.     The most dangerous people are the ones who don’t believe their actions are affecting the world around them

4.     God is always good and I am always loved.

5.     Let people see you bleed. Be honest. Be vulnerable. Be transparent. If you believe Jesus shines in your weakness, prove it.

6.     God desires for His daughters and His sons to join hands in building His Kingdom. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. I will spend my life fighting shallow theology and restoring God’s vision of a Blessed Alliance between men and women.  Ministry is about spiritual gifts, NOT gender.

7.     The essence of creativity is risk, believing enough to leap into the yet unseen. The theological term for this is faith. When we stop fearing failure, we start being artists. I wrote my first hymn and survived an entire year of 8am Music Theory and Aural Skills! Music has become a constant encouragement for me to find meaning, beauty, and goodness in our world rather than in something beyond it. Escapism is never the answer, nor is it biblical. Jesus is redeeming, restoring, and renewing the world, not destroying it

8.     Living with a belief in God is very different from living as God’s Beloved.

9.     Dear SPU Hipsters, If you attempt to correct my pronunciation of “Bon Iver” one more time I’ll sucker punch your face all the way to France.

10.  I read Genesis 3 and realized one of the reasons sin came was Eve and the Serpent were having a conversation about God without God being there. Convicting…. Grateful for the incredible gift of the Holy Spirit, let’s not neglect to invite Her presence into every healthy debate, study, and conversations we have about God.

11.  Open your eyes—there are still resurrections everyday and we are witnesses.

12.  I am madly in love with Northwest culture: coffee, hipsters, the causal swagger of Seattle and Portland, constant rain, the music scene, and the glorious green nature. One of my dearest friends once told me that; “sharing a cup of coffee with someone you love is one of the greatest moments ever.” This is a truth being lived out daily at SPU.

13.  As a Communication major I like to think that I am studying to be Jesus' PR (Public Relations) manager—since I want to be a pastor and heading to seminary Fall 2013.  Which has led me to recognize that most people think Jesus is either a madman or the Son of God. Also, Plato and Aristotle really screwed up the Theology in the early churches and still impacting the church today.

14.  Character over accomplishments. What we do is not as important as WHO WE ARE.  As children of the King of the Universe we are too blessed to be stressed.

15.  Living in the dorms taught me more than any book could on the Trinity. We are made for community because we were made out of community. We long for fulfilling relationships because we were made in the image of the most perfect relationship: the Trinity. Having to live with others in community, also forced me to realize I am not the most important person in the world

16.  I unexpectedly fell in love with the church, the Bride of Christ. It is vibrant, diverse, messy, multi-voiced, Kingdom advancing, filled with a variety of perspectives and experiences, multi-ethnic, Spirit-led, ancient and historical, beautifully complex groups of people coming together to serve a God who takes broken things and broken people and transforms them into something beautiful and whole. Amazing!

17. The first demon possession, which Jesus drove out, was at a religious event. That says something to me. After attending a Christian university for a year that fact doesn’t shock me as much as it use to. Christians get really offended and horribly mean when other Christians don’t sin the same way they do. (Read Mark 1:21-28)

18.  If I learned anything from attending Mid-Day Prayer all year long was that God has more words then yes, no, or maybe. He has a fully formed vocabulary and can talk. We pray to God like he is a complete idiot and only knows three words (I’m still guilty of doing this). Let me tell you friends, ask God bigger questions and you will be surprised to find bigger conversation with God a reachable reality.

19. The wonderful gift that is the bible because I have never read any religious book or story that is ridiculously vulnerable, completely honest and raw about the downfalls and failures of its heroes than the bible. The story that heals the brokenhearted, romances the lonely, comforts the rejected, and pierces straight through to the messy condition of our hearts. I also know that the bible is not God, a Paper Pope, or part of the Trinity. The power of the Scriptures comes from the Holy Spirit moving and working through it and breathing the words to life.

20.  Following Jesus is purposeful insanity.