just a quick thought from fredrick beakner:

“The child Jesus is born in the night among the sweet breath and steaming dung of beasts, and nothing is ever the same again. Those who believe in God can never, in a way, be sure of him again. Once they see him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear, or to what lengths he will go, or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of human kind.

If holiness and God in all his glory were present in this least auspicious of events–this birth of a peasant’s child–then there is no place or time so lowly and earth-bound, but that holiness can be present there too. If God’s in the straw and the dung, then all events can become holy. And this means that we are never safe and that there are never places we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break into and recreate the human heart, because it is just where God seems most helpless that he is most strong and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully.”

and check out this 2007 article in TIME magazine on rob bell.

i am so incredibly thankful. i’m actually surprised as i look back on my journal the past 3 months to see what i’m thankful for. it seems that God is so good he’s turned what i expected to be bad into something i’m grateful for:

lucy’s expectation/ God’s reality:

13 weeks of commuting to tuscaloosa for school would suck/ i get to spend roughly 8 hours in two days listening to Rob Bell pod casts, praying, and talking to the ones i love most

gas prices would break our budget/ gas is 40 cents cheaper in tuscaloosa

grant signed us up for a bible study i knew nothing about/ i am totally in love with our new bible study, its leaders, and my wonderful husband

grad school would kill me/ so far so good and only 9 more weeks!

working and school would kill me/ love my job, love my hours [up to my discretion], love the money [more than we expected]

staying with people each week would put them out and be inconvenient/ i’ve LOVED having one-on-one time with some of my favorite people

work and school would take me away from grant/ we plan incredible intentional time, dates, and dinners with amazing quality time

the tight budget would kill us/ we get to cook together, eat together, play together

This newly-wed season has taught me so much about turning my expectations upside-down and being aware of what God’s doing without trying to make assumptions about what he’ll do next. I’ve never been happier; i have much to be thankful for.

grant and i had a blast in augusta this weekend, but the real adventure was our labor day fun!

augusta: had THE BEST TIME with his mama and daddy, sister, brother-in-law, and little noel–the new addition to the family. we ate shish kabobs, baked potatoes (my FAVE!) and cheese cake, and cheered the dawgs and the tide to victory. awesome.

labor day: sunday was our three month anniversary, so i decided to plan something fun [a SECRET!] day trip where we could spend quality time together and immerse ourselves in nature.

what we did: drove through most of western north carolina [gorgeous!]
made our way through a local 6 ACRE corn maze [barely! whew!]; SERIOUSLY, the picture is of the maze itself. it was a doozie.

drove the Blue Ridge Parkway

went to Sliding Rock in the Pisgah National Forest and slide down into icy water!

visited several precious lake/ mountain communities including Bat Cave, NC, Cashiers, NC, and Transylvania County, where they dedicate the entire month of October to Halloween and Fall Festivals [now that’s my kinda place!]

checked out the beautiful Looking Glass Falls

loved Brevard

loved even more, the Highlands

hiked the 4,930 ft Whiteside Moutain in the Nantahala National Forest [amazing view from the top]

and stopped last at the Dillard House

hiking waterfalls, viewing cliffs, and taking a roadtrip with my love. could it get any better than that?

ask and it shall be given unto you. welp. ok.

my first of two little nuggets from God hit me today, while driving back from tuscaloosa listening to Rob Bell (oh, how i do love that man). he was talking about honoring people, what that really means, and what that actually looks like. and then rob said two really profound things: 1) you can’t honor them if you are bitter toward them and 2) you’ll only internalize that bitterness, let it fester into hate, then be disgusted and surprised when it takes hold of your life and you suddenly become the very thing(s) that you were rebelling against.

and here’s the nugget: the hate, the bitterness, the frustration with the other person that i can’t forgive, it’s rarely about them. it’s about me. at the heart of the thing i hate most in others is the recognition and rejection of that same disgusting thing in me. ouch. that one hit me like a ton of bricks.

i evaluated the people i had beef with and asked myself why, and it was revolutionary what happened in my soul. it was like i finally confronted what i didn’t know i hated within me, then, having separated the person from the [my] issue i was able to let them off the hook and let go of the bitterness and anger. i realized that all this hating and seeping and raging inside me [that satan cleverly let me overlook and downplay] was really huge and really ugly. and keeping it up was exhausting. the moment i could finally quit blaming them for the hurt in me or the anger in me or the frustration i felt, i was relieved. like i could breathe again. like i didn’t have to keep a running tally of their screw-ups or hang-ups or things that drive me crazy. and i could just be. and deal with the ugliness in me that i didn’t even know was there. and, wow, was there some ugliness. i think satan uses our minds, our intelligence, against us sometimes; plays us against ourselves b/c he knows we’ll lose and fall deeper into his trap all the while, without realizing it at all, though thinking it to death. how can i be so self-aware and full of constant self-evaluation, and yet unable to recognize the ugliness in my heart? AND unable to make the connection between that other person’s faults and MY OWN? speck and plank, for goodness sakes!

but God doesn’t give out freebees without expecting us to take the knowledge and apply it to our lives [shoot.]. so, i’ve decided to tell them i’ve been harboring stuff against them, that’s its my fault and my judgment and my own stuff from the beginning, not them, and ask them for forgiveness because i have truly wronged them in my heart.

nugget number two: i cannot gain wisdom without forgiveness of others/ self; if i can’t realize my own stuff and call it what it is and deal with it healthily, it’s like i can skim the top of the water, but never dive into wisdom.

so, i mentioned i was cleaning house. i truly am. i’m throwing out bitterness, hatred, anger, and blame. i’m cleaning out the ugliness in me, [only] with God’s grace. and i’m replacing that crap with forgiveness, ready for God to dwell richly in my newer, cleaner space and teach me a few more nuggets about wisdom.

ps: rob quoted colossians 3:13, 16: “13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. 16 Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.” amen, sister friend!

what do y’all think? xoxo

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