not good at

Found this whilst blog-surfing:

Be silent.
Be still.
Alone.
Empty
Before your God.
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be silent.
Be still.
Let your God look upon you.
That is all.
God knows.
God understands.
God loves you
With an enormous love,
And only wants
To look upon you
With that love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.

Let your God--
Love you.

~~Edwina Gately

flashbacks

I'm finally getting iTunes up and running on the new computer and am currently going through my CD collection... almost entirely made up of CDs purchased in the 5-6 yr period of late high school and early college. This collection is comprised of what was hottest in CCM, Family Christian Bookstore, etc. at the time (roughly 8 yrs ago). Needless to say (then why am I saying it?), my music tastes have changed somewhat since then, but it still is quite the journey. I'm letting myself listen to the first track or two on each CD as it is downloading and that's been quite enough to bring me back, thank you very much. Yikes.

nothing but

Conviction about something I need to do has been growing for a while now to the point that I can no longer avoid the truth about it. It all started with this quote:

"Do not be surprised, therefore, when you have yielded your
service, given your affection, and poured out your heart to that pleasure of
yours, your idol, your own lust and mischief--do not be surprised, then, if you
have no appetite for Christ, or for that heavenly food." --Robert
Bruce

Then I heard Dallas Willard speak and something he said got under my skin and hasn't left. He talked about how the mind of the flesh stops at things that are natural to us. And we use this as an excuse all the time for our words, actions, etc. "Oh, that's just what comes naturally to me." or "that's just how I am." Well, guess what, if we claim to have the Spirit of God, natural is no longer where we're allowed to settle. We need to expect the supernatural. From ourselves and from God.

Then all of a sudden it was the beginning of Lent and I briefly wondered about giving this thing (or these things) up because I had read about someone else who had found herself needing to do it.

Then one of the Lectionary passages from a week ago was about the Samarian woman at the well that asks Jesus to give her water that would never make her thirsty again and he said to her, "whoever drinks the water I give her will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give her will become in her a spring of water willing up to eternal life" (Jn 4:14). And I realized that I was not satiating the thirst I have with the Living Water but with the cheapo stuff that won't ever really satisfy.

Then last night I watched a documentary of sorts about community revival and transformation. And I knew that some things needed to change in my life. I couldn't just look for the small obedience anymore.

So.... drum roll please.... even though Lent is almost over and Easter is quickly approaching, I'm giving up books for awhile. No reading. No reading anything but the Word of God. When I'm thirsty for words, for stories, for companionship between pages, I need to be reading my Bible. When I satisfy this hunger with anything but God, I've essentially said that God doesn't count. And there's nothing true about that.

This seems silly as I type it. It's more drastic in my heart than I could make it on 'paper.' But I'm going for it. Who knows where it will take me...

to catch up

1. I finished A Year of Living Biblically. I was kind of disappointed by the end.

2. Started and didn't finish a considerable number of really bad books.

3. Fell in love with books by Adriana Trigiani. She writes about a charming fictional town in the mountains of Virginia called Big Stone Gap, and the people who live there are normal: they use bad grammar, can't maintain consistently healthy relationship and screw up in a variety of other ways. In other words, not so neat and clean, but the writing is.

4. I also started reading both Wild at Heart and Captivating, both by John Eldredge with input from his wife Stasi. I don't completely hate either one of them yet, but I don't buy everything either. Though I think that's probably what I feel about most things I read.

5. Having it be sunny today makes me feel like someone took the lid off the tin can of my world.

pathetic (or, the books i read/have read)

To start: As I look at it, that title might be difficult for those learning English. Why do we put them through that?

The middle: I wish that I had started keeping track of the books I've read since Jan 1. That seems like it would have been a good time to start. But I'm going to start today instead. Suffice it to say that I've read an extrordinarily high number of books in the last month and a half. That's just what I do. Especially since I've done something I didn't allow myself to do for the last three years:

I got a real library card (as opposed to the 'fake' one for my college library).

And I started with 'A.'

Bliss, let me tell you.

So, I started this today: A Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs

It's fantastic.

I'm also reading this in little bits and pieces: Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper

Also fantastic.

The end: Right now I'm listening to a Counting Crows CD I found in my cousin's room. Undoubtably this is the sound of high school for me. This and Oasis. But I wasn't allowed to listen to them, so I guess it's the sound of high school from anywhere but my own home.

note to my future self:

Next time it's going to be this cold for this long, take the beer out of the back seat of the car 'cause it's going to freeze, explode and make the car smell. Though there are worse things for a car to smell like than beer, at least until it gets warmer out. Then there will be a problem.

think about it...

Two small things I learned about common phrases lately which may or may not say something about the state of my brain. (I think it says that I think too fast and don't stop often enough to think about things)

1. Say you've lost something and are looking everywhere for it. And then you find it. And then someone asks you where you found it and you say, "in the last place I thought to look." I used to think this meant that it never occured to you to look in that particular place, but what it really means is exactly what it says: I found it there (wherever "there" is) and then didn't have to look anywhere else, so no matter where "there" is, the place you found is it the last place you thought to look. Get it?

2. When a weather person says with authority that the snowfall for the day has a 50% chance of being above average, we all ought to respond with a resounding "duh" rather than with admiration for the weatherperson's uncanny ability to forecast the weather. Because no matter what the snowfall, it will always be either below or above average (unless in a strange case it falls exactly on the average), because it's an average, not an exact number. Get it?

I didn't, but now I do.