marriage

Marriage seems like it can be an analogy of the Christian walk. Both are gloriously difficult because they are so…for lack of a better word…mundane. Both are about the day-to-day lived realities of conducting your life and less about doing extravagant things like going on mission trips or in one act, radically giving all that you have to the poor. Both are less about the one-time experience that you get when you attend Christian conferences (which I think are extremely isolating and extremely man-centered). And, they are more about the continuous experience that you get in the remaining 99% of your life. In that way, they’re both less of an experience and more of a lifestyle–of managing finances, cleaning the toilet, buying groceries, paying the insurance, etc.

It’s hard because lifestyle = tedious, experience = immediate.

I don’t even know if I want marriage because I want the experience, the extravagant thing.

I guess the closest thing I’ve had to a lifestyle version of marriage is living with L when we come together to discuss utilities or housing related things like where to move the furniture, who will call maintenance, how will we split the toilet paper. The closest thing I’ve had to the experience ideal I have of marriage is when I lived with Joy. We’ve had several one-time experiences that are significantly more memorable than the mundane: we invited our neighbor’s kids over and tutored them, we threw a party for our friends and neighbors, we fostered a dog, we prepared lunches for the homeless ourselves and handed them out in Venice, CA. Yet it was also stressful because didn’t manage our life together well in the non-glorious moments.

Maybe I want a cross of both. How does one achieve that? I was so sure that I could have that with the person I dated last but I was proven wrong and my own pride makes it difficult to accept that.

2016 – a new year. God, bring it. Mold me, make of me as you will. Married or not, let that not matter anymore, may I submit to the life you have called me to and delight in it. You work for my good because You love me and knowing that is enough to live by.

thinking about epicenter

something I love about epicenter (the church not the earthquake term) is that the act of praying is like breathing. 

people pray for each other frequently, in service and out of service. we pray for all the newcomers during hospitality team, we pray for the children before they start Sunday school, we pray together before leading children’s ministry, we pray for each other when we run out of words to say.

and I really believe that it helps out church come into a posture of prostration before God. 

oh the itch

Ever since I found out that an unsuspecting gentleman here had been in prison for 20 years, the need to ask him about it gnaws away.

Today as I handed him mail and as he walked by my cubicle to head home, I wanted nothing more than to say the following:

CAN YOU TELL ME WHY YOU WERE IN PRISON FOR 20 YEARS PLEASE!!!!!

WHAT DID YOU DO?

WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

YOU JUST LOOK LIKE A NORMAL NERDY DUDE.

I’ll just have to fill in the gaps with my imagination for now. And I’ll do so gladly:

CAN YOU TELL ME WHY YOU WERE IN PRISON FOR 20 YEARS PLEASE!!!!!

Why absolutely! I’m so glad you asked. Would you like to sit with me for an hour and ask me unlimited questions about my time in prison? I’ll answer every one of them. And if you’d like to see all my tattoos, do let me know. 

WHAT DID YOU DO?

I once killed a man for drugs. Soon afterwards, I gained rank in my gang and helped ensure that our market-share of cocaine in the Northern Hemisphere continued to expand.

WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

You don’t want to know. 

BUT YOU JUST LOOK LIKE A NORMAL NERDY DUDE WHOSE REALLY POLITE.

You don’t want to know. 

advent

Today I went to church depressed and I left with a renewed hope of the possibility of new life.

Over worship, you can go up to “prayer ministers” and ask them to pray over you. They listen to you explain what’s on your heart and then listen to God and then pray for you, usually offering some kind of image or verse. It’s meant to be prophetic in the sense that they are applying to your life something God has revealed to them through scripture and through the Holy Spirit.

The image my prayer minister shared with me was of a seed that grows out of this dead decay into a new plant. (This is one of my favorite images a la Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which disturbed the living daylights out of me at times. Sethe, the protagonist, describes herself as having a living tree growing out of the dead scar tissue on her back from being whipped *cringe*.) To the unconvinced, sure, these images are vague enough to be generalizable to almost everyone, but still, in the same way that reminding someone that they are treasured can be encouraging, so too is telling to people over and over again that we have the hope of a new life or that God is pulling us out of darkness or [insert generalizable seeming imagery].

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3)

It’s like meditating on truth in a world of lies.

Anyways, here’s to a fresh start rooted in a new hope through Jesus, the way to life.

Here’s to the setting of the old and to the dawn of the new.

 

one day

Although this is not the food of my native peoples, I have been compiling a list over the years and would like to host an evening featuring these foods of our Native peoples:

Succotash, corn pone, hominy soup, sassafras tea, Indian sumac lemonade, okra, grits, wild mustard greens

 

backsliding

I am no longer enjoying the phd program. I would much rather be working full time and spending free time with a significant other, namely that one fool. 

I am backsliding and I can’t fight it.

Lord You are good to me

the sea is wide, my boat is small

and Lord you are good to me!

So thankful for my coworkers. I got moved to a different area due to a new hire coming in and just to keep me close if only for a few hours longer, one of my co-workers gave me her laptop to work on and both let me sit in the desk-space in between them.

What an unforeseen blessing this fellowship has been. As school is slowly destroying my willpower and the dang break-up has still been doing weird things in my heart, this job, worlds away in downtown LA, has been a retreat away from chaos.

So interesting how the pieces fall into place in the most unexpected combinations to display God’s unfailing grace. 

As for me in this moment, it is well with my soul.