I Trust You Guys

I do. So I'm going to tell you about something.

I met a woman in South Africa. I really like her and she's sweet. But she's asked me for a car.

For me to be able to do that, I would have to drain my savings account, sell my possessions and probably move in with family.

So why do I still feel so guilty?

I know that Jesus tells us to give to all who asks of us and I feel like telling her no is going against that. Ugh.

And I'm just worrying and spinning!!!! I know I need to be still. It feels like it's all coming at once.

But it will be okay. It will all be worked for good and it will be okay.

But what do you think?

What A Week

Work until midnight every night.
Lists.
Lists.
Lists.


Sexual harassment.


I'm tired.

And I'm starting to discuss things with my husband that I always wanted, but never thought would happen.

And it feels like there are quotes on people's sites that maybe God put there to give me comfort:
‎"...maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves."
‎"When God is at work, bitter hopelessness can be the beginning of some surprising good." Robert Hubbard

I have pictures and things to tell you, but I'll save that for another day.

Matthew 11:25-30
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Love Is Still A Worthy Cause

Have you listed all the times you've tried
Do you call on all your alibis
When somebody asks the question why are you hiding

did you feel the pull, did you hear a call
did you take a chance and lose it all
do you fear there's no collateral left for trying

Friend I know your heart is raw
But love is still a worthy cause
Picking up and pressing on
Oh love is still a worthy cause
It's the touch that starts the thaw
Love is still a worthy cause
or the word that breaks the pause
Love

It's the beauty in the tales we tell
It's the pushing through and ending well
and finding strength to give ourselves away

in the midst of passing bravery
in the face of our own injury
It's the constant generosity of grace

Friend I know your heart is raw
But love is still a worthy cause
Picking up and pressing on
Oh love is still a worthy cause
It's the touch that starts the thaw
Love is still a worthy cause
or the word that breaks the pause
Love

I love because he loved me
when I had nothing
I love because he loved me
when I had nothing
I love because he loved me
when I had nothing
- Sara Groves

"When God is at work, bitter hopelessness can be the beginning of some surprising good." Robert Hubbard

The Cold Winds

This is a song for you, to carry in your pocket
take all our love with you in all the paths you walk in
I can't say your life will always go like it should
but I can say that God is always good

and when the cold wind blows like I know it will
and when you feel alone like I know you will
and when the cold wind blows like we know it will

Don't let your love grow
Don't let your love grow
Don't let your love grow cold
"Song for My Sons" by Sara Groves

Welcome To The World, Ila!

Ila (ila) was born today at 10:35am. 6 lbs, 4 oz. and 20 inches long (is that super long?)

That's my brother-in-law holding his new, little lady.

AAH!! She's Coming!!

I was supposed to be in Ohio right now. Actually, I would have been boarding a plane to come home after my sister-in-law's baby shower.

Instead, they moved the baby shower to today and I couldn't make it.

Instead...

Her water broke and she's on the way to the hospital.

Baby Ila is making her way into the world...would you please pray for her?

A Prayer Request

I know that God answers our prayers. I totally know that. But sometimes I feel like I should keep things private. But maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I need to ask for help.

So...if you'd be willing...

Could you please PLEASE pray that Steve gets a job interview soon? We've both been pretty down about our jobs and he has a possible opportunity that would be amazing...I can't get TOO specific, but it would be SUPER amazing if Steve got an interview.

He interviewed with this company three years ago and ALMOST got the job. I've been praying about it, but I could always use the help.

If you could also please let anyone and everyone know, I would really appreciate that! :)

I love you!

I love you today. Really, I love you everyday. And I'm sorry I've been so tired. I can't even explain it. So depressed that my bones ached when I moved and even when I didn't.

But there's always hope, even when you forget about it.

So I love you.

And hopefully my bones will ache from dancing soon.

My Dream

I rarely have dreams that make sense to me or ever fill me with a sense of anything.

But this weekend, I had a dream and I wrote it down quickly so I would remember it. Please excuse the rambling nature. I'm editing it a little, but I was in a frenzy when I wrote it down:

I was sitting with Lauren (A friend of mine) in a library and she was pointing to these two girls and telling me how annoying they were. I would look over at the girls and they could hear her talking and were looking directly at us. Nicky (my best friend in 4th grade) came up and was talking to me and Lauren said something else and Nicky was like, 'whats' your problem?' and I asked Lauren to stop talking about the girls and she did. One of them walked up and took the food from my hands (you know how in dreams things just happen? Yes. Here is one of those things) and told me to follow her. And I tried to, but we were walking through a fair on Ashland's campus (this is where I went to college) and I couldn't catch up and I lost her. Then someone else holding food walked by and I asked if she knew where the other girl was, but she didn't. She led me in a different direction and I just wandered around. People were trying to tell me which way to go, until finally I picked up a watch that wasn't mine. I figured out that I had picked up the wrong watch and went to return it to the man who owned it and he said, 'Everyone is waiitng for you outside! It's a French dinner out on the lawn!' And he started to direct me towards the door and I kept saying, 'But I'm not dressed nice enough! I didn't bring any clothes nicer than this!' And he's telling me about how nice the dinner is going to be and that he understands that girls don't share, but that it'll be okay and just kept walking me towards the door while I tried to tell him I could find something to change into so that I would like better. And then I woke up.

When I woke up, I had this intense feeling that God was telling me that I would know what I wanted to know soon. That I would understand what I was doing or where I was going.

Then I started to think about it and I was like, 'Maybe it means I'm going to die? Maybe Heaven is the nice dinner party?' But I think I may have been over thinking that part of it. Of course, I can't overlook the part where I'm telling the man that I don't look nice enough.

Have you ever woken up from a dream and just felt overwhelmed with emotion?

Tattoos On The Heart by Gregory Boyle

Father Gregory Boyle will be in New York City doing a book reading/signing and I am ECSTATIC. His book is wonderful. I've read it twice...both times in under a week (the first time in two days). I recommend it! Here's a page and a half of the book below:
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

At Camp Paige, a county detention facility near Glendora, I was getting to know fifteen-year-old Rigo, who was about to make his first communion. The Catholic volunteers had found him a white shirt and black tie. We still had some fifteen minutes before the other incarcerated youth would join us for Mass in the gym, and I'm asking Rigo the basic stuff about his family and his life. I ask about his father.

"Oh," he says, "he's a heroin addict and never really been in my life. Used to always beat my ass. Fact, he's in prison right now. Barely ever lived with us."

Then something kind of snaps in him--an image brings him to attention.

"I think I was in fourth grade," he begins. "I came home. Sent home in the middle of the day. Got into some pedo at school. Can't remember what. When I got home, my jefito was there. He was hardly ever there. My dad says, 'Why they send you home?' And cuz my dad always beat me, I said, 'If I tell you, promise you won't hit me?' He just said, 'I'm your father. 'Course I'm not gonna hit you.' So I told him."

Rigo is caught short in the telling. He begins to cry, and in moments he's wailing and rocking back and forth. I put my arm around him. He is inconsolable. When he is able to speak and barely so, he says only, "He beat me with a pipe...with...a pipe."

When Rigo composes himself, I ask, "And your mom?" He points some distance from where we are to a tiny woman standing by the gym's entrance.

"That's her over there." He pauses for a beat, "There's no one like her." Again, some slide appears in his mind, and a thought occurs.

"I've been locked up for more than a year and a half. She comes to see me every Sunday. You know how many buses she takes every Sunday--to see my sorry ass?"

Then quite unexpectedly he sobs with the same ferocity as before. Again, it takes him some time to reclaim breath and an ability to speak. Then he does, gasping through his tears. "Seven buses. She takes...seven...buses. Imagine."

How, then, to imagine, the expansive heart of this God--greater than God--who takes seven buses, just to arrive at us. We settle sometimes for less intimacy with God when all God longs for is this solidarity with us. In Spanish, when you speak of your great friend, you describe the union and kinship as being de una y mugre--our friendship is like the fingernail and the dirt under it. Our image of who God is and what's on God's mind is more tiny than it is troubled. It trips more on our puny sense of God than over conflicting creedal statements or theological considerations.

The desire of God's heart is immeasurably larger than our imaginations can conjure. This longing of God's to give peace and assurance and a sense of well-being only awaits our willingness to cooperate with God's limitless magnanimity.

Happy July 4th!

Ben Franklin's beautiful self-composed epitaph: ""THE BODY of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Printer: Like the cover of an old book, Its contents torn out, And stripped of its lettering and gilding Lies here, food for worms; Yet the work itself shall not be lost, For it will (as he believed) appear once more, In a new, And more beautiful edition, Corrected and amended By the AUTHOR."

Happy July 4th! Enjoy your weekend!!

Unpopular...

So I've been thinking a lot about different things...and this may or may not be unpopular...but that's okay.

Someone posted on Baby Be Blessed's blog page to pray that the Reproductive Health Bill is opposed in New York this week.

I've been going back and forth on these things, but I think I'm starting to feel that I am pro-life...that I believe abortion is wrong...but here's where I don't know what to feel...

I also feel that outlawing it may do more harm then good.

I don't think we should go back to it being illegal because it makes it dirty again. You know that people won't stop having abortions because they are illegal. It will kill and scar more women who will fear retribution for what they've done, leaving them farther from society and God's love and leaving them with a self-hatred they may never have had before.

Have you ever seen the movie 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days? It's a Romanian film about abortion during the Communist era. It's a highly disturbing film.

I don't know.

There's a billboard in Pennsylvania that I always used to pass when I was driving to my grandparents house. It was a picture of Jesus standing with his arms open and it said, 'Hurting from an abortion? We want to help.' And it was a church. And I always thought that was so great because women hurt from those things too. We all make mistakes, even if we think we aren't at the time. Even if we think it's the right choice.

I'm still on a journey, a very slow journey, to God's heart. I will not always be right and I will often change my mind as I wrestle with things. But I want to be pro-life. And not just with babies...but with people who don't deserve to live and people who do. I want to be pro-life with people in Africa, down the street, in jail and around the world.

I'm just glad that God is willing to walk with me.