Hipsters are cool, right?

Hipster (n.) - a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter.

That is, according to Urban dictionary. I had to look it up because I'm sitting in a coffee shop called Greenberry's on a Sunday, writing this post and I'm surrounded by these so-called hipsters. And I feel like I'm one of them. 
....we accept her, we accept her, one of us, one of us....
one of us  - immediately what I thought of. 

Maybe I am a freak, and maybe it's not so bad.
"You never read Spider-Man? Accepting your true identity means understanding that you are a stranger to this world. A freak, ostracized by the very people you want to help." -Ted Dekker.  
Sometimes it's strange to be surrounded by people and still feel alone. Then add wanting to help and serve people on top of that. You become a chameleon. You become what people need you to be whenever they need it. And as a result you feel used, exhausted and invisible.  And I think I've been looking at this the wrong way for a while.

Service should be pouring out my life to the very last drop for others.  It has nothing to do with being superior, and it doesn't matter if I get praise or blame.  My main motivation should not be love for others. 
It's NOT about love for others. At all.
My main motivation should be love for the Lord. 
If I devote myself to serving humanity, I get defeated and broken hearted. And I get a great deal of ingratitude from people. 
But if I am motivated by my love for God - then no amount of ingratitude can stop me from serving others. 
And if I go a layer deeper, Jesus served me to the depths of my selfishness and sin. And nothing I encounter from others can exhaust my determination for serve others for His sake. He came not to be served, but to serve.
It really is all about love, as cliche as that sounds.
Love should take me beyond myself. It's NOT cautious, wise, sensible, shrewd. It is taken to extremes. 
And what's really cool is that I'm actually of value to God and I can give simple, human things to Him. Sometimes I feel like He watches me to see if I'm going to give Him small gifts of surrender. Because surrendering to Him is greater than anything else. 

I have to stop asking myself if I'm of any use. Of course I'm not. It's not about being of use. It's about being of value. 
And I am of value when I surrender and am unafraid of the consequences. 

Perfect Love casts out fear.

It's when I refuse to believe that our Hero is going to be conquered. I think I have this fear deep, deep down in the dark places of my heart that love, justice, forgiveness and kindness won't win in the end. 

And don't get me wrong, it's stressful. It's stressful to wait for God. And it's scary. And to be honest, it feels like drudgery. And I wonder what I'm really doing here on earth that truly matters. 

But from what I've heard, drudgery is the best test to determine the character of someone. Doing work that is far removed from anything we think of as ideal work. It's hard, menial and tiresome. *cough* nursing school *cough* 
But I always come back to this: Jesus washed my feet, so I ought to wash others' feet. It's as simple and difficult as that. 

 "We all have many dreams and aspirations when we are young, but sooner or later we realize we have no power to accomplish them. We cannot do the things we long to do, so our tendency is to think of our dreams and aspirations as dead. But God comes to us and says to us - Arise from the dead."  -Oswald Chambers

I'd be lying to myself if I said nursing school was everything I ever hoped and dreamed to do. I want so much more than this. And I must hold on the hope that there is more, so much more waiting for me.  

And I think it's ok to question, be unsettled and even wrestle with God. Heck, Jacob wrestled with God and his hip was injured because of it. 

I've kept up with my reading for the week as I've been reconciling my faith with who God tells us He is in His Word. I've heard many arguments, how can God be so cruel, how can God hate gay people, how can He be so harsh etc. as evidenced in the Old Testament. 

Well, when I read the Old Testament, I see God desiring mercy. Not sacrifice. I see God blessing the descendents of Jacob. God says to consecrate ourselves and be holy, because He is holy. I see God staying with Joseph in prison when his brothers sold him and giving him favor. Joseph, what a cool guy. Joseph also said to his brothers that it was not them who sent him to Egypt, it was God, to preserve life. God literally sent him to prison to save his family's life. It reminds me of Acts 9 when Saul/Paul was a chosen instrument and Jesus says He will show how much he must suffer for the sake of His name.

I even see God's mercy in Leviticus, as painful as it is to read sometimes. Again, drudgery. But in Leviticus 16 there is an atonement day, it's a day made to cleanse yourself to be clean before the Lord from all sins once a year. And the way we atone from sin is through the shedding of blood. The life of flesh is in the blood, and it is given to us by God on the altar to make atonement for ourselves. God desires mercy. Also in Leviticus, God tells the Israelite's to leave food for the poor. To love your neighbor as yourself. To treat strangers well, because they were once strangers in Egypt. 
I see a God who desires holiness, and also mercy.  Not hate.

Sidenote: Acts 7 is the best summary of the Old Testament, ever. Fastforwarding 2,000 years, then the fun really begins in Acts 10 when the Gentiles can receive the Holy Spirit. That. Is. Life. Changing. What complete joy. Like the story Jesus told about the kingdom of heaven being like a hidden treasure in a field. There is so much joy because you sell all you have and buy the field. That is Acts 10, and it's so cool. 

 It's so funny when I start a post and all the negative stuff comes out then by the end it's pretty positive. So maybe I'm a hipster, a stranger, a freak. I think it's ok and maybe even how it's supposed to be. Maybe I'm not supposed to be completely satisfied, maybe there's something much bigger waiting for me. 

"You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! For He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and He has not hidden His face from him, but has heard, when he cried to Him." -Ps. 22:23-24

~GRATEFULNESS LIST~

• Giving tours of the nursing building, who knew I'd be doing that 3 years ago
• Having money to deposit in the bank, even though it's a hastle
• Seeing a bad example of a doctor at clinical and seeing how that affects a patient negatively 
• Seeing a good example of a social worker at clinical that challenged me to think and problem solve
• Having kind and patient nurses that take the time to teach me
• Sleeping after being awake for 20 hours, it's a truly beautiful thing 
• Good food and company meeting with Jamaica trip participants 
• Sweet red wine and finding the most wonderful friends in nursing school
• The app Heads-up
• Having our first Kenya trip meeting and being so overwhelmed and excited I can't even handle it
• That God is so merciful 
• That Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timerlake bestowed us with History of Rap 5. I'll just leave this here. 

Cheers,

 

Tell me more, tell me more

It's a Saturday night, I'm sitting on my couch watching Grease (hence, the title) and avoiding writing a paper about ethics for one of my nursing classes. I digress. 

There's 16 inches of snow covering the Shenandoah Valley.  2 days of classes were cancelled because of it. I'd never seen so much snow in my life, at least not that I remember. 

It was pretty for the first hour or so. Now I'm ready for spring. 

~GRATEFULNESS LIST~

• that the movie Grease exists
• big coffee shops in Crozet
• visiting my best friend at UVA
• that someone one day decided that rum and coke should be mixed together 
• snow days and not leaving the apartment for 2 days
• my car being dug out of the snow by my roommate's boyfriend
• combining Chipotle and Chickfila milkshakes on Valentine's Day with a wonderful friend 
• VA's gay marriage ban was overturned by a federal judge, just in time for Valentine's Day too! 
•  not having class for 12 days, that's right, 12 DAYS
• OLYMPIC CURLING, and getting a good laugh about the Russian team's pants
• that the Braveheart movie soundtrack exists, and the movie too, for that matter ("FREEDOM!") 
• learning more about who God is through the Bible 

Now that I'm looking at it, that's a really random gratefulness list. But I kind of like it, I think it accurately portrays my life these days.  

I'm going to write a little more about what I've been learning about God these days. 
I've read through Genesis before, and every time it strikes me how much I try to put God in this little box and shove it in the back of my closet. But God is majestic, great and mighty.  He remembers Noah and keeps His promises to never destroy the earth again.  God constantly reassures Abraham (it gets kind of annoying) that He will have a son and as many descendents as stars in the sky. God foretells the 400 year slavery of Abraham's descendents. God finds Hagar, the mother of Abraham's son, Ishmael, because He heard her affliction and promises to make a nation of Ishmael (God was with him as he grew up, how cool). God is merciful - He sent 2 angels to tell Lot and his family to leave Sodom before it was destroyed.  God provides a ram to sacrifice instead of Abraham sacrificing his only son (foreshadowing?).  God uses dreams, like Jacob's dream of the ladder and God saying He is with Jacob wherever he goes.  

I could go on. I think the Old Testament is helping me understand who God is on a deeper level, not that the New Testament isn't deep, it's just different.  I say, you can't understand where you're going until you know where you're coming from.  Not that the Bible is easily understood, because it isn't.  But I think it's important to cultivate your mind and not just blindly believe something.  

My mind is something I've always prided myself on.  It is the greatest gift God has given me, given all of us.  And it should be devoted to Him entirely. While the heart is important, for me, I think my mind has to come to God first.  Knowing that I belong to God and that my life is devoted to serving God, everything makes so much more sense.  And in order to know that, I must constantly learn more about who God is. It's a journey.  It's about listening, hearing and really hearing, staying quiet in the darkness, being devoted in the right areas of my life and constantly looking to God.  

How willing am I to spend all my energy toward serving God? I don't believe that God left us on this earth just to be saved and sanctified.  I believe He left us on this earth to be of service and work for Him.  And I'm still figuring out what that means.    

Maybe I should re-name this blog "A 20-something reading through the Bible and trying to make sense of something that the world hasn't made sense of for thousands of years." Yeah, that sounds about right. 
*getting off of soapbox now

I spent part of the snowpocalypse of February 2014 watching Braveheart, I regret nothing. This quote really stuck with me: 

"It's all for nothing if you don't have freedom."  

I imagine this is what Team USA  thought after their heartbreaking loss in curling to the Russians. And it's just a great life quote. 

Finally, here's one of my current obsessions:
Let It Go (Africanized Tribal Cover)


Cheers,

"Where are you?"

I'm going to start making a conscious effort to blog once a week.  This week was a rocky one with quite a few ups and downs. But this week was also pretty great, and here's why.

I had some cool and tough realizations this week:
I'm realizing who I am and it's mattering less and less what other people think about that.
I have some wonderful people I can really count on.
I don't think about things the way a lot of other people do.
I have opinions and it's okay to share them. 
I don't take time to be grateful. 
I love to learn, even if that doesn't necessarily reflect in my grades
I like to be liked, and that's dangerous sometimes. 
I'm committed to God, but not super confident in Him right now

I visited a new church recently on what was apparently "sanctity of life Sunday" and needless to say their political affiliation was very apparent.  Even in their prayer they literally said, "Lord, we pray that one day Roe v. Wade will be overturned."  After the initial shock and thinking seriously about getting up and leaving, I decided to stay. I heard them out, even though I don't agree with mixing politics and the church, and I could tell this was a very tight knit community that genuinely loved each other and believed wholeheartedly the same thing. And I realized I don't have that.  No matter where I am or what group I am a part of, we don't always line up with what we think.  And I think that's a reason I've fallen away from the church over the past few months.  Because I haven't felt accepted due to thinking differently, which may be due to Harrisonburg's southern baptist tendencies, or maybe the church in general needs a wake up call.  I think I'm at a point in my life where I'm searching and questioning.  And not for a second am I doubting my faith, but I'm doubting more the way the church presents itself to others (i.e. women who had an abortion, gays, the non-Caucasian population, anyone other than a middle aged white male, women who desire leadership positions and can't have them etc.) I could write a very long blog post about this, maybe I will later. 

In other news, this week I was aware of all the wonderful people I am surrounded by.  I went to a nursing convention last weekend that I know I couldn't have gotten through without these ladies.

We had our 2nd group meeting for Jamaica and I am continually impressed by those girls. I can tell they are so looking forward to serving the homeless mentally ill population there in just a few short weeks.
I met my best friend halfway between our colleges yesterday for coffee and studying, which was much needed. We both just needed to get out of our college towns for an afternoon.  There's just something about being a stranger in a random small town, it's a small kind of freedom. 

My psych clinical was a little rough this week, but I made it.  I have to get used to this different population of patients.  I also have to get used to not being liked by my patients.  Many of them have schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, mood disorders etc. and they're not going to like me very much.  And I have to not take that personally, which is hard for me.  I like getting positive reinforcement, I like being told I'm doing a good job, I like to be liked, essentially. I am not going to get that from my patients in psych. But I'm learning about new medical conditions and I'm enjoying it so far. 

I want to start taking more time to talk about my joys.  So many times I talk about my trials and what I'm struggling with in life. Instead of complaining so much, I want to start writing a list of things I'm grateful for and posting them here so I can always look back and remember them.  Here's some from this week:

~GRATEFULNESS LIST~

• Hot tea - it makes life better sometimes
• Hearing exciting news from a new friend
• Best friends that will drive halfway to meet you for coffee to talk about life
• Strangers in Starbucks that ask your opinion on a project and also give you relationship advice
• Cracker Barrel and deep conversation over hash brown casserole
• Finishing the first day of psych clinical and sleeping
• Being in nursing school, even though I complain about it a lot, and having options for my future
• Doing yoga at 7 am with a good friend and feeling like a champ
• Paying the final deposit on my service trip to Jamaica
• Failing a test by 2 points, because it can only go up from here 
• That donating blood can save lives
• The nice ladies at Va Blood Services who took care of me when I got lightheaded while donating blood 
• God, and that I live in a country where I can get to know Him better through reading the Bible and not live in fear

I'm getting back into reading the Bible. And even though it's just for me, I want to share some things I'm learning or even just reminded of as I go along.
God doesn't accuse us, He gives us the chance to tell Him our side of the story.  "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" Gen. 3:10-11.  Do I think God asked this just cause He was wondering? Because He didn't know?  Heck no, He knew what Adam and Eve had done, but He wanted to hear it from them in their own words.  Even before that when Adam and Eve hid themselves from God and God says, "Where are you?"  God knows exactly where we are, and we hide, but He always comes looking for us. And He waits for us to come to Him. So many times I feel like God gets twisted into a condemning, strict Being who has to always lay down the law.  But God's message is NOT condemnation. Even from the beginning, God is unassuming, He comes looking for us, He asks us questions, He is full of grace and mercy. Beautiful. 

I wonder what it was like for God to walk through the garden in the cool of the day. It probably wasn't like this.

It's safe to say I am NOT grateful for the polar vortex. But I'm definitely looking forward to garden-walking-in weather.

If God was walking through a garden with me and asked me "Where are you?" I'm not sure what I would say at this point.  I'm in between a lot of places trying to figure things out. But I don't want to hide.  Psalm 16:2 "I say to the Lord, 'You are my Lord: I have no good apart from you.'"


My obsession with film scores continues. I love the chorus, and it's from LOTR, so there's that.
~Mornie utulie (Darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornie alantie (Darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now~
May It Be - Enya 

Cheers, until next time.