Archive for June, 2010

“I imagine that being in a relationship is like learning to play the piano, or any instrument for that matter. There is no sheet music for life. You hit a couple of notes and sometimes you get lucky and they actually sound pretty good together. But more often than not, you immediately forget everything that you just did and in searching for the same sequence of notes you actually stumble upon a completely different melody that is even better than the original.”

(Clayton Austin, Hammers and Strings)

can i have a someday to be in a picture like this? it doesn’t have to have a piano. but i think i’d like to keep the clouds.

He is jealous  for me
Love’s like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy
When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for me.

Oh, how He loves us so
Oh, how He loves us
How He loves us so.

Yeah, He loves us
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves.

So we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean we’re all sinking
So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way

That he loves us,
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves

He loves us,
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves

[Whispered]: Well, I thought about You the day Stephen died and You met me between my breaking
I know that I still love You, God, despite the agony
…they want to tell me You’re cruel
But if Stephen could sing, he’d say it’s not true, cause…[voice breaks]…

Cause He loves us,
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves

Yeah, He loves us
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves us
Woah, how He loves

(Jesus Culture)

How does one recap the 60 days that I’ve spent in intense and intentional Godspotting? John Burke (author of Soul Revolution, where I got the 60-60 experiment from) stated at the beginning that I would fail more than succeed in the 60 days. I thought, “How hard can it be? I’ve got my alarm set to go off every hour, it shouldn’t be too hard to say a prayer whenever it does.”  Right. When work got too urgent, or the days filled up with a lot of fun and activities, it was a lot easier to just turn off the alarm and keep on doing what I was doing, thinking, “oh, I’ll pray as soon as I get this sentence/game/talk/lecture/interview/run done.” So yes, I think I did fail more than I succeeded.

But you know what? God didn’t fail. Not one bit. Not even as I intentionally faltered and put things off, He even stepped it up some more and challenged my heart and my desire to get closer to Him.

So what have I learned in the past 60 days? Gosh, so much. I think I’m going to be updating this list in the days to come. I’ve already made notes in my journal, but even now, as I’m writing this, more lessons are coming to mind. But I’ll try to sum them up here (in no particular order).

Giving up perfection– or at least the appearance of it. Authenticity. I’ve found that the more I let go of appearances, the better my walk and work become. Instead on working on looking “Ok,” God has made me more than “Ok”– so much so that people take one look at me and they are convinced. Once I had given up on looking the part, I became it. Which is connected to the next lesson:

Giving up being right. This is one of the hardest things, really. Because, being the big sister, I always have this compulsion to tell people what to do (yes, I’m a bossypants), and tell them what they’re doing wrong and this is what they should do. All for the sake of being right, and being in control, or changing somebody. It sounds so annoying that it should be easy to give up doing, right? Er, not really… Not if you can see your friend or loved one heading down self-destruction, or about to make a mistake that you’ve already done before so you know that it won’t be good.

I’m not saying that I’m going to stop speaking the truth or stop intervening when I see something wrong– but I’m learning to do it from a place of love, and not from the place of just being right. I need to stop being judgmental and start loving people in all their beautiful messy glory. God’s teaching me a lot about grace, and having faith in His love for people, in His ways and His process, even if I don’t understand. It’s hard to make a call on the results in the middle of a game, how much more in life? Which leads to the next lesson:

He has made me brave. I posted on Day 31 (so long status quo) about being brave, but God has begun His work long before that. See, before, I was deathly afraid to get hurt. Sure, all my childhood mishaps and accidents (2nd degree burn, sprains and a broken wrist) and rollerblading back in high school have already raised my pain threshold for falls and cuts and bruises, but I would still be afraid to get hurt (…here). Every relationship, friendship, job always scared me because of the risk of being wrong, rejected, of failing and damaging things beyond repair. Yes, I got good at faking my way through all of them, but it was only lately that I found enough security to actually be brave.

It’s God’s love. I’ve finally recognized this pure, powerful, unfailing, amazing, extravagant, magnificent LOVE that God has wrapped me in all throughout my life. But I was just so focused on myself and the things that I couldn’t do, all the things I lacked, that I totally missed it. Oh, it’s so warm and strong! I feel it holding me up whenever I want to succumb to weakness, intentionally make mistakes. It keeps me from wallowing and giving up. His love drives me forward, even if the answers I get aren’t the ones I’m looking for. It gives me the courage to admit when I’m wrong or if I can’t do something. It fills me with hope in every step I take. His love reassures me that even if and when I fall down or make mistakes or fail to measure up, I am still loved.

It was a cliche until I recognized it as true.

and this leads to the next lesson:

Keep moving forward! Yes, I find God in Meet the Robinsons too. hehe. Failures and triumphs should be both celebrated because everything is a process. It’s deciding what to do from there that counts the most. Every day, I marvel at how I feel like I’m being driven forward by this force that I know that’s beyond me. It’s like riding a wave, I just have to hang on. Because, it’s only been a few months since the breakup, but my heart is whole and intact, and it’s just me who keeps on looking back and insisting (sometimes) that maybe I’m still not all that ok. But over it or not, my feet are taking me to places where my heart doesn’t feel like going because it just wants to crawl into a hole to savor all the phantom pains for a while.

Thank God that my heart doesn’t control my feet, or else, I’d never get anywhere.

I’m finding that if I’m tuned in to God all the time, I’ll find His voice and His presence anywhere. And that was my prayer from the beginning:

“One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” (Psalm 24:7)

This is just the beginning really, 60-60 does not end here. It’s more like a warm up for a lifestyle of a more intentional pursuit of God and His will in my life. We’re all being called to a life of intimacy with our Creator– this is why Jesus came to this earth to pay for our sins. This is the reason for grace– so we could go to Him just as we are, His love is so big and generous and encompassing that it covers all our sins, no matter how big and messed up we have become.

I’ve been a Christian all my life (seriously… from the womb! hahahaha!), and I’m still learning about the scope of God’s love and grace. It’s been a really great adventure so far.

Thus starts Stef’s 60-infinity.

Dear friend,

This is my prayer for you today:

For God to reveal Himself to you today in a way that He never has before.
I pray for a unique encounter everyday with our Creator for you, but most especially TODAY.

Keep your eyes peeled
ears ready
arms wide open
heart expectant.

Have a blessed Godspotting day ahead!

For this Truth Thursday, that’s what I challenge you to do– find God in the most mundane, unexpected place today. And blog about it.

For those who are new to Truth Thursdays, it goes like this:

Remember, you don’t have to directly answer the question, you could just be “inspired” by it. but better if you do directly address the prompt/question. remember the mechanics:

1. Every Thursday, i will post a question or a prompt on this blog and participants will write something that answers the question or was inspired by it. (or post pictures or artworks!)
2. Participants who wrote something for that Thursday must leave a link on the comment box of that day’s prompt to let people know that they have posted.
3. TRUTH THURSDAY must be on the Title of your entry, followed by the question (so people will know).
4. This does not have to be emo– although these things tend to be a bit on the emo side, but TRUTH THURSDAYS are meant to be a fun way to bond through blog, and to get people writing and posting something meaningful and real. (disclaimer: this isn’t to say that you’re not doing so already!)
5. No pressure. Just be inspired and post something!
6. Be TRUTHFUL!

This would have to be short. It’s been a really busy few weeks, and I haven’t had the time to sit down and gather my thoughts– there are a lot of them. I’ve finished a couple of books since I last posted, bought a few dresses, driven a few hundred kilometers, met new people, finished more than a handful of articles, celebrated, cried, sang, danced and ate a lot of good food.

God’s been filling up my days like it’s nobody’s business. Sometimes I still remember to stick to the 60-60 program, sometimes. It’s just that I’ve been moving almost non-stop, moving from one task to another with such urgency that I’ve never felt before. Like I just have to keep on going and going and going.

But there’s no panic, just this energy that I couldn’t explain. My recklessness is back ten-fold, but this time it doesn’t feel like I’m just free falling and bracing myself to hit the ground.

Quite the opposite, really.

One day I just stopped and saw what’s happening to me these past weeks into the 60-60 experiment. I’ve been learning a lot about God’s love– for me, for everyone in this world. And while I have been drilled with all the Bible stories and verses about God’s love, this time, it’s like I’m being shown a new dimension of it. I’m experiencing it in a way that it gives me a greater sense of security in my position as His daughter. For someone who’s been a Christian all her life, this isn’t supposed to be something new, right? But it feels so new, and exciting! And it’s not the security that gives me permission to be complacent, but it all the more gives me reason to keep on moving, keep on exploring, finding new adventures in this life. It’s the love that gives me the courage to jump, knowing that even if I fall, I can get back up.

It’s all so awesome!

Unfortunately, I have to go now. It’s nearly 2am and I have to get up at 4am for a team building thing later. Today was a full day too… I hope I get to blog about it. I took notes. haha! anyway. gotta go. I’ll leave you with some pictures from my last few weeks just to show how it’s been really crazyfuninteresting over this side of the world.