Into Marvelous Light We Are Running

Last year I said, “Bring it 2011, just try to beat 2010. I dare you.” 2010 was one of the all around best years I can ever remember, and 2011 was far from that. It was full of heartache in the lives of loved ones and in my own life. One of the things I’ve learned during the past few months is that life happens in seasons and there is a time for everything. That is totally cliche and if I heard someone tell me that a few months ago, I would have had an anger urge to punch them. It’s easy to be hopeful when your life is going the way you want. When life feels completely out of control is when your faith is tested and refined, but as your perseverance is perfected you will be able to remain hopeful despite your seemingly bad circumstances. 

I saw this the other day and thought, Absalootely. 2011 clearly did not take me up on my dare. I’m a naturally negative person, so I could only think of all the difficulties of this year. Then my hope muscle kicked in and said (yeah, my muscles talk to me) don’t you remember... And then all of the good things that happened this year came to mind. 

Yes, this wasn’t exactly the best year, but even in the darkness there was growth. You could even say that because of the darkness there was growth. Because of that I feel hope and anticipation over what will happen as this darkness is overcome by the Light.

Psalm 18:29

You, Lord, give light to my lamp;

my God brightens the darkness about me.

Stupid Tibiofibular Joint, I Don't Want to Rest

Rest is a concept that I don’t understand. Not one bit. Productivity is where it’s at. If I’m getting stuff done, then I feel like I’m serving a purpose. When I sit around with nothing to do I feel useless, and then I get restless trying to find something to work on. 

Now I do have days where I have zero motivation to do anything, and end up watching movies for an entire afternoon. Unfortunately those only happen because I get burned out, and cannot possibly complete one more task. Even more unfortunate is the fact that I’m not even relaxed during these moments of rest. My mind is still going over all of the things I need to get done. 

I know this is wrong and that no matter how much I push myself, at some point I have to take a break. This semester I was going nonstop every day, and in some twisted way I loved it. If I’m busy, then I’m getting stuff done, which makes me feel accomplished, and that makes me happy. And being the lame human that I am, I will do the things that make me happy. 

Running makes me happy. I would run three or four days a week because I didn’t want to wreck my legs and end up getting hurt. That strategy worked well until right before thanksgiving. I went a couple weeks without running because I don’t know why, but I’m sure it was a good reason at the time. Then I got home for thanksgiving and went all out with the running. It felt amazing and I was good for a while. Then right before Christmas break my knee starting hurting like a mother bear. So during break I told myself, “self, take it easy on the running.” I did, but it didn’t help. 

I hate going to the doctor, because most of the time nothing good comes out of it. But the only reason I agreed to go was because I want to run. Turns out I really did something to my knee, but luckily it’s fixable and will hopefully be okay in a couple weeks. 

Know how I did it? Overuse. Know the best way to make it better? Rest. Know how I feel about it? I hate it. 

I’ve gone a week without any physical activity besides walking the dog, and the only thing keeping me from running is the fear of messing it up more and not being able to run for a longer amount of time.

Through this I know that I’m supposed to be learning how to rest and be still. Not just with running but in my relationship with God too. That is painfully evident right now, and I’m just starting to explore this whole resting idea. I have no idea what to do. Doing nothing doesn’t make sense. How will I learn anything without working? Am I not supposed to be moving towards a goal? 

This is incredibly frustrating because the past few months I’ve been reading everything I could, running, introspecting to the point of exhaustion, and fighting. Now it’s like God is just telling me to stop everything that I've been doing, which just seems crazy. I'm confused and don't know what I'm supposed to do now, and all I want to do is go for a run.

Psalm 46:11

Be still and know that I am God!

The Beautiful Fight

As I was traveling home I was reading a book about breaking free of spiritual bondage, and one part was about becoming the person God created us to be. He has given us a name, and within that name is our purpose. 

Michelle and Michael mean who is like God? One time I heard that is what the angel Michael was yelling as he was fighting satan and sending him into hell. That got me thinking about Saint Michael, and how he is a warrior and fighter for God’s Kingdom. And since my name comes from his, then I too am a fighter for God. 

This entire semester seemed like a fight, so this realization at 30,000 feet was incredible and brought me to tears. Not just because I am continually being reminded of God’s power and attention to every detail in my life, but mostly because of a note that I wrote at the beginning of the semester. It was in my Bible while I was flying, but it has also found itself on my door, in my pocket, and as a bookmark over the past three months. 

When I wrote it I honestly didn't know what I was fighting for, but I knew it was something that had to happen. Now it makes sense why I wanted to fight, because it's what I was made to do. Praise God my parents didn’t name me Mallory like they were planning to, because it means unlucky or unfortunate. 

1 Timothy 6:12

Fight the good fight of the faith. 

Be Thyself Our King of Peace

Since it’s the season and all, I’ve been listening to Christmas music lately. We’ve all heard these songs probably hundreds of times, but have you ever stopped and actually thought about the words? And I’m not talking about Jingle Bells and other annoying songs that make you wish it was January. I’m thinking about the songs that are actually about Christmas. 

Take O Come, O Come, Emmanuel for example. This has always been one of my favorites simply because I thought it sounded pretty. I never really understood what it was saying, because as a kid I remember thinking that Israel was one person, so that just makes the song even more confusing. My kid logic: this Israel guy must be pretty sad about something if we’re singing to him on Christmas when we should be singing about baby Jesus. 

Well, as it turns out, Israel isn’t one person but an entire nation of God’s chosen people. Throughout their history God was dumping blessings and miracles on them, protecting them, leading them to safety, keeping every promise He made to them, and He was in their midst. And what did the Israelites do? The rebelled against God. They were unfaithful and started worshipping other idols. They forgot everything that God had done for them. They forsook the Lord. So what did God do about that? He looked past all of their mistakes and promised them redemption, salvation, healing, and a Prince of Peace that would help bring them into a Kingdom better than anything they could possibly imagine. All He wanted them to do was turn away from their sin and come back to Him.

So really, Israel is sad. They’re being held captive by their sin, and are trying to use anything they can (besides God) to take away their pain and feelings of exile. God sees past their unfaithfulness, and only wants them to come back and be in a healthy relationship with Him. So He promises them Emmanuel aka Jesus. When God is with them, they will be free. 

Here’s the challenge: Go back and instead of thinking about a nation of people, think of Israel as one person. Then, don’t think of Israel as some person from some ancient land, think of Israel as you.

Isaiah 41:13

For I am the Lord, your God, who grasp your right hand; It is I who say to you, “Fear not, I will help you.”

Muchas Gracias

Here’s some more stuff on the list of things I’m grateful for today:

-Pumpkin spice coffee creamer

-Having a job, let alone two that I love. This was the last week of chem labs, which was a perfect job for me. I’ll only be helping with one class next semester, but at least it’s something to keep me in lab. I’m also realizing how much I enjoy tutoring. It’s pretty cool to watch people learn. I’ve also had a couple people admit they like math or chemistry now, and they didn’t at the beginning of the semester. I’ve always said I could never be a teacher, but I’ve changed my mind.

-Enjoying school despite it’s stressfulness

-Journaling

-God continuing to reveal Himself even though I’m exhausted and don’t know what to do with everything He’s showing me.

-Singing in the car

-Talking about God and drinking mint hot chocolate with friends

-$0.49 rentals at blockbuster. I got five movies, popcorn, and a soda for $4.35. That is fantastic. It has been far too long since I’ve just sat and watched a movie without multitasking. Well, I’m blogging right now. But that makes me happy, so it’s a win-win situation.

-Starbucks holiday happy hour

-Snow. That sounds ridiculous because I’ve been dreading winter since May. I’m not excited about the cold, but for some reason watching the snow was incredibly calming tonight. Driving in it? Not so much.


-Having normal roommates, and not the crazy ones you hear horror stories about 

-Sweatpants and moccasins

-The excitement that comes with knowing I’ll be home this time next week


-Having halloween sugar cookies made by Gramma and Grampa in the freezer


-The fact that I'm going to sleep in tomorrow

-Feeling content watching movies and eating popcorn, even though I have an obscene amount of homework. For the time being I simply need to relax and enjoy the moment.

Silly Little Tree

Today is important to me, so I went back and read this. Did I really write that? Apparently I did, and I vaguely remember doing so. After reading it, I wish I felt energized to go out and live life to the full. Not so much. I’m angry with myself for giving up all of that gratefulness and hope and joy that I had last year. At first I thought it was stolen from me, because there was no way I would have been willing to give up those things that brought me so much life. Who in their right mind would trade happiness for discontent? This girl, right here. 

Here’s how I picture the tradeoff: I gave God my heart. I surrendered, and He filled my hands with goodness. They were overflowing with life, and I was satisfied. Then He started doing some stuff that I didn’t particularly enjoy, and I lost faith in His plan. So I took back my heart, and gave up the goodness that was in my life. All in exchange for having control, because I didn’t think God knew what He was doing. And my heart became hardened in my own hands. The really unfortunate part about this is that I had no idea this little tradeoff happened. It was sometime over the summer, and I knew something was going terribly wrong in my soul, but I’m just now seeing what the problem is. And so here I sit asking myself, “If tomorrow doesn’t come, will you be happy with who you were today?” Nope. Not at all. 

The other day I read a blog that asked if Truth could be tiring. After only reading the title my response was- of course it can be! Jesus is wearing me out right now. Turns out that’s not what the entry was about, but sometimes when your mind takes things out of context, you realize what you’re truly thinking. Anyways, shortly following my immediate answer I quickly realized I’m the one making myself tired. I’m resisting Jesus. You know the I am a tree bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy line from How He Loves? I’m the tree. A ridiculously stubborn tree who won’t just fall over already so Jesus can build me up and change me in such a way that will bring Him glory.

So the obvious thing for me to do is to just surrender, right? Well, yeah, but that’s really hard. Here’s what I see in my mind right now: Jesus and I were hanging out just fine until life started to get a little crazy and chaotic. I saw that junk more than I could see Him, and I ran away to find other comforters (not the blankets) and anything that would bring me peace. So now the craziness is separating me from Jesus, but He is the only One who can bring me the peace I’m desperately seeking and needing. The problem is, I’m going to have to step into the chaos before getting to Him. As I’m walking through it, He’ll rescue me. Side note: a synonym of chaos is hell. 

Taking that step sounds easy and well worth it. But I don’t know what all is going to happen when I let go and try to cross the chasm, so I'm scared of the disorder I'm going to experience. Instead of having faith, I’m white-knuckled trying to hold on to as much control in my life that I possibly can. It’s literally a death grip, because I’m killing my own soul. I’m quenching the Spirit. 

I’m aware that this all sounds really bad. But honestly, I’m tired of pretending that I have everything together. Sometimes following Jesus is hard, and I’m not going to leave those parts out of my story. But you know what the weird thing is? There is still this part of me that knows good will come out of this. I guess that's the small part of the Spirit still living in my hardened heart. 

So today I’m going to be more grateful, and hopefully tonight I will feel content. What’s first on my list of things to be thankful for? God’s patience. 

Galatians 5:7-8

You were running well, who hindered you from following the truth? That enticement does not come from the one who called you.

Introducing Mr. Phillips

If you’ve never heard of Preson Phillips, well that’s ok. But go here and you can get his music for free. I highly recommend doing so. These songs have been on repeat for the past couple weeks. They’re simple, full of peace and hope, and beautiful, which are things my heart could use a little of right now. 

Deuteronomy 31:6

Be brave and steadfast; have no fear or dread of them, for it is the Lord, your God, who marches with you; he will never fail you or forsake you.

More Than You Think You Are

One of my favorite ways to hear God is through lyrics. Especially from songs that are secular and I’ve heard before. I realize that this mostly happens with love songs, but God is in love with us, so it makes sense. Last night I was listening to Matchbox Twenty, because I was in the mood for one of my favorite albums. And this is what I heard...

I’m here for the hard times 

the straight to your heart times

whenever it ain’t easy

you can stand up against me

and maybe rely on me

and cry on me

Praise God for knowing how to tell me something exactly when I need to hear it. Then two songs later one of my favorites came on. Who knows how many times I’ve heard it before. But tonight it took on a completely different meaning, and it ended up turning into a crazy drama about me chasing God, His response, the enemy lying to me, and a choir joined in at one point. Pretty insane. 

That explanation does this experience no justice, but as Mr. Thomas later said in another song, “somehow the right thing to say just won’t come out.” I’ve been having that problem recently. With all of the things going through my mind you’d think I’d have a lot to say, but when I finally have the chance, I don’t even know what to talk about. It’s weird, and frustrating. But I realized that I don’t always speak my mind because I’m afraid that nobody will understand me, which would prove that it’s up to me to figure stuff out. So then I don’t say anything, and end up working through things on my own anyways. I confuse myself sometimes. 

i wonder how you sleep

i wonder what you think of me

if i could go back, would you have ever been with me?

i want you to be uneased

i want you to remember

i want you to believe in me

i want you on my side

come on and lay it down

i’ve always been with you

here and now

give all that’s within you

be my savior

and i’ll be your downfall

here we go again

ashamed of being broken in

we’re getting off track

i want to get you back again

i want you to trouble me

i wanted you to linger

i want you to agree with me

i want so much so bad

come on and lay it down

i’ve always been with you

here and now

give all that’s within you

be my savior

and i’ll be your downfall

be my savior

Only Love Can Save Us Now

Come Lay Me Down

Only Love Can Save Us Now

i’ll be your downfall

Only Love Can Save Us Now

Love Save Me Now

lay it down

i’ve always been with you

hear me now

with all that’s within you

be my savior

and i’ll be your downfall

now i’m back on my own

lift my feet, they’re like made of stone

i’ll make you go where i go

it’s killing me

can i take you home?

well i’m coming home on my back

is it me or is she painted black?

let me be your downfall

let me be your downfall, baby

i'm running to Your arms

People often refer to their Christian life as their walk with Jesus. Right now it doesn’t seem like I’m walking with Him at all. I’m running after Him, and He’s at the top of a massive hill. 

Lately I've been noticing something when I run, and I don't get it at all. While most people hate hills, I love them. It’s like the hill is challenging me and trying to slow me down, and I refuse to let that happen. But it’s more than me just wanting to reach the top without stopping. I start to run faster. Sometimes I’m practically sprinting. I may be exhausted by the end of a run, but I feel accomplished. It’s like I’ve proven my strength or something. Why am I willing to run hard to beat a hill, an inanimate object, but so unwilling to run up a hill to chase God, the creator of mountains?

Psalm 65:7

You are robed in power, you set up the mountains by your might.

This is difficult for me to understand, because isn’t He always supposed to be by your side? If anything shouldn’t He be carrying me up the hill? As I was thinking about this yesterday I remembered something I saw the other day at church. There was this guy holding his son, who was around one and just mastering the art of walking. The dad set him down in the front, and let the kid roam around even though he was on the edge of falling down the entire time. Then I started thinking about the process of learning to walk. First, your parent sets you down. They stop carrying you. Then they go across the room and call you to them. 

For a while Jesus was running next to me, motivating and encouraging me. For whatever reason that I don’t understand, He decided to run ahead of me and make me come after Him. The idea that I need to prove my desire to be with Him is new to me. It makes sense, but it’s just something that I’ve never thought of before. I still don’t really get it, but seek and you shall find, right?

Proverbs 18:10

The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the just run to it and are safe.

You are the light to my soul

I’ve been wanting to write for a while now, but the problem was that I had no clue how to put my thoughts into words. My brain, but mostly my heart, was on an information overload. In the past month or so I have found myself in a weird spot in my relationship with God. I’m in the middle of a desert season/dark night of the soul/dry season/whatever you want to call it. This is something that I’ve never experienced before, but I will let you know right now that it is freaking me out a little bit. Don’t let the name trick you though. It’s not a time of despair or depression. It’s a restlessness because I can’t see where God is or where I’m going. You know, because it’s dark. What I wouldn't give for a flashlight right about now.

As much as I hate it, I know this really is a good thing. God is teaching me more about Him than I ever knew before. Turns out, He’s pretty big. Far bigger than the box that I thought my tiny human mind could contain him in. Numerous times during this night season I’ve asked God where He was and told Him I couldn’t see or hear Him anymore. Well in the past month or two His response has been, “Yeah, michelle? You can’t see or hear me? Well check this out!” And He then proceeded to bombard me with His Word, different lyrics, and words spoken in conversations with others, all of which has left me amazed and overwhelmed by His depth and perfection. He has also been using this as a time for me to learn more about myself. I’ve discovered the reasons behind why I do almost everything, and I’ve been feeling pretty humbled lately. 

Over the past year the concept of faith has been coming up in almost every single religious activity I’ve attended. It was a little ridiculous. So me, being the studious and logical person that I am, attempted to understand what faith was. Warning: the Bible doesn’t contain one definition for faith. During that time I thought it kept coming up because I needed more faith before my life could improve or in order for my prayers to be answered. Yeah, I was wrong about that one. Having faith is trusting that God is taking care of you even when He doesn’t do things the way you think He should. I think faith was coming up (and continues to come up) because God was trying to show me that I was going to need it in the months to come. And I do need it. Desperately. So this night that my soul is currently in is a deepening of faith.

I want more of God. I want Him to show me more about His heart, and what that means about my own heart. I want to learn as much as possible, and experience Him in new ways. The problem is that my faith needs to grow first, which means that it needs to be tested. That test is by fire, and that means that the proving of my faith is going to hurt. Some days I refuse to let God test me because I’m afraid of how much it will hurt, or my heart is just too tired to endure another beating. And so I don’t surrender myself to Him. I don’t understand what he’s doing, so I find it incredibly difficult to just hand myself over. But if I have true faith, then I will be more than willing to let Him use me in any way that will show others who He is. When morning finally breaks, I hope that my heart will be at peace with that kind of faith keeping it alive.

Micah 7:8

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will arise; though I sit in darkness, the Lord is my light.

Joy

Mi Familia Loca

This past weekend was amazing. First off, I ran my first official 10K. I will write about that at a later time, because all I can think about right now is the fact that my family was standing at the finish line. I did wonder if maybe a friend might be willing to get up early on a saturday morning and drive 20 minutes to where the race was. Turns out my family was crazy enough to do that. And their trip was a little bit longer.

Most people think they're crazy,
but I think they're the most loving people I've ever met.

Later saturday night we saw some friends at subzero (go there right now if you haven’t been there yet). They commented on how cool it was that my family came, and my mom responded with, “Well, how could we have not been there for her first race?” I hate to tell you mom, but there were a lot of reasons why you could’ve missed it. Such as: you would have to drive two hours to get to phoenix, fly to salt lake, get a rental car, stay the night in salt lake, get up early and then drive 30 minutes to the race. That’s about 800 miles, and who knows how much travel time. Not to mention my race wasn’t really that long. It’s not like it was a marathon or anything. So there were numerous reasons why coming here was a little illogical. But for reasons I don’t understand, your love is far bigger than any of those inconveniences. And I can only hope that my heart is capable is loving someone so much that one day it will seem like doing something completely ridiculous is the only reasonable option.

Why the Delay?

Because I have to spend my time writing things like, "Met-enkephalin and leu-enkephalin are two endogenous opiate peptide neurotransmitters. From previous studies, it is known that RLS patients may be dopamine and iron deficient in the substantia nigra. Low iron levels have been known to lead to the death of dopaminergic cells in animal models of RLS. All of this information implies that iron, dopamine and opioids are all factors in the onset of RLS" or, "A lack of endogenous thalamic opioids causes pain stimuli from spinothalamic levels to be changed and the body feels an urge to move, which is the characterizing symptom of RLS. Since the levels of tyrosine hydroxylase in the substantia nigra were the same in RLS patients and the control group, RLS must not change dopaminergic activity in that brain area" instead of telling you about my life. And if I did try to write about the million things going on in my head at the present time, it would probably sound like I was talking about enkephalins and endogenous thalamic opioids anyways. At least I'm off to go paint for enhancing creativity, which has so far been one of my favorite classes.

Love is...

Compliments of eight-year-old Robert

1 John 4:7-8

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.

Galumphing. All the Cool Kids are Doing it

Each semester I have to take an honors course. Last year I took the english classes, remember? This fall I registered for Perspectives in the Creative Arts because it sounded slightly more interesting than Great Ideas of the East. I was surprised to find on the first day that the class was actually Enhancing Creativity. 

The class looks like it's going to be a lot of work, but I’m actually excited. First, we were able to choose which textbook we wanted to use. I picked the one that is somewhat spiritual, because I think it’s nearly impossible to understand yourself or anything without questioning your spiritual beliefs. We have to go through the text on our own time and journal all the exercises we do. Then during the semester we have to complete two large creative projects and journal during the process. 

My favorite activity that we have to do each week is called galumphing. It is something we do simply because we want to. It can’t benefit us or anyone else, or be something that we’ve had on our to-do list for months. Coloring would be an example. Or as one student did, buy a red leather dress and test drive a ferrari.

Galumph: a joyful, celebratory, or just for fun activity; preparation for adulthood

As our professor was explaining galumphing, people (including me) were already freaking out about how they don’t have time to waste on something that really has no purpose. How sad is that? We are all so focused on accomplishing tasks that we have forgotten how to have fun without having an agenda. 

Our professor told us to be selfish when we were thinking about what our galumphs would be. The suggestion that made me think the most was that it could be something we no longer do because we realized we weren’t as good as someone else. 

Can you think of an activity you used to love, but stopped doing because you weren’t the best?

There are many times when I find myself wishing I could just be young again. If only I were playing at my grandparents house or in my backyard with my dog, I would be much happier. I would be content with life. I think everyone feels that way at some point. Except at that time a person has two options: they can either find some way to experience that satisfaction with life again, or believe that it’s only attainable in childhood and then continue to live a oftentimes miserable adult life. 

From what I’ve read so far, this class isn’t really about becoming an artist. I’m not expecting to become Picasso in 12 weeks. I think it’s more about finding the dreams you’ve buried, because at one point the world told you it was a dumb idea, and you listened. Silly world, everyone should keep their dreams alive.

Otown Chapter 2

Well I’m back in Ogden, and it’s crazy how quickly you settle right back into the routine of going to school. I’m not exactly thrilled about the idea of spending hours on homework, but that’s just how things work at college. Unless you’re the student who doesn’t do any studying or work. Why are they even going to school in the first place? Did they just have a few thousand dollars lying around that they didn’t know what to do with? 

On top of school, I’m working as an academic tutor and chemistry lab assistant. Those don’t start until next week, and I’m pretty excited. Mostly because I get to be in a chem lab six hours a week, and a majority of the people who come for tutoring need it in math and chemistry. Both of which happen to be my favorite classes. 


I am slightly concerned about trying to balance everything, but it won't be impossible. I do think this year will be tougher than the last though. I'm going to be stretched and tested, because I simply will have a lot to do. So much that I'm feeling overwhelmed just thinking about it.

Enjoy the various pictures from around town and my dorm. And the cactus? His name is Javier.

1 Peter 1:6-7

In this you rejoice, although now for a little while you may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire, may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.