It took some time, but she flew back. And when she did, she sang a new song...

{Taken by my friend, Chris Miller, on a local beach in Kona, Hawaii, October 2012.  I spent two glorious weeks ministering with my friends at the YWAM base and to the beautiful people who are giving their lives there.}

Well, I'm slightly embarrassed about this, but here I am: a little over a year later and actually remembering that I had one of these.  Oopsie!  What a difference a year makes, you know?  I think what I like most about this whole blogging thing is the fact that it is very useful, helpful, and quite fun to do when you want to write about your life and all the incredible things about it...but, it will NOT do the work for you.    Perhaps one day, my computer will be able to read my thoughts and record it for me, but that day is not today.  No, it still gives me the amazing power to choose to be intentional, to make stopping and pondering and recording my life a priority...it is inviting me to still choose if my life is worth loving enough to write about.  And that is a great thing.

So....YES!  Here we go, yet again.  This is my choosing to do just that: placing beautiful priority on the absolutely insanely beautiful gift of life that I get to live and open up the window to let you, the reader, peer in to see what all is a-goin' on, in case you are kindly wondering.  And thus, I re-begin...

Over this past year, I truly have lived so much life, or as we like to say around here, carpe diem'd.  I have made many beautiful discoveries about myself, not on my own but with a little help (mostly a whole lotta help) from my friends.  I have had opportunities to create beautiful music with my dearest of friends and family, and each time, I have left those moments with nothing but deep gratitude resounding from my heart: "Thank you, God, that I get to do this for my life!"  I have worshipped with them in the quiet of the woods and had the crazy privilege of leading others to worship God with them in many places around the US and the world.  I have watched thirty-three young adults give their lives completely over to Love Himself, facing their greatest fears and deepest insecurities, flying out of their cages, all being changed forever by His unfailing kindness and grace.  I have laughed with them in moments of revelation and freedom.  I have wept with them in times of shame and deep pain.  I have been a leader in their lives, yet I have been forever marked by what they had to teach me.  I have flown to different states and countries with my friends, sang one of my own songs in two different languages, seen the beauty and joy of God manifested there in cultures different -- and not so different -- from my own. I have been wrecked by the reality and promise of Family in the earth, always remembering that I belong to something far greater than my own little self.  I have made many new friends abroad and watched other dear friends at home fall in love, plan their weddings, and find their first houses!  My heart has been stirred by love, hope, wonder, and beauty; it has been broken by sadness, sorrow, disappointments, and well,..things just not working out the way I thought they would.  I have carried the family weight of prayers, fighting the good fight in hope, exalting the Lord high up on the mountain tops with them in wild dancing, and worshipping Him with broken, tear-filled songs way down low in the valley...only to see, at the end of it all, that He truly IS good and always will be.  

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." - James 1:17, ESV

This has been a very full year, lacking no good and perfect gift from above.  There has been so much more to praise Him and be thankful for than to whine and complain about, honestly.  I am thankful to still be living closely amongst my friends and community that I adore so very much, pouring out the waters of my youth with them on the feet of Jesus through loving one another and loving others that the Father gives to us to disciple together as a family.  I am thankful that I get to create music and travel with my friends, watching the love of God reach out through our sound to the masses we lead and see them get wrecked simply and yet profoundly by worshipping Him.  I am thankful to celebrate life's greatest and most beautiful of joys with this community and even to grieve life's deepest tragedies and sorrows with them, too.  

To actually DO real life with people...just as the Father always intended for it to be.  To be known and seen by people everyday who love me deeply in spite of my selfish, angry, prideful attitudes and ways sometimes.  To be called up higher into who I truly was made to be, as God sees me right here and now.  To be fought for in my weakness and need.  To be celebrated, adored, delighted in, and cherished.  To learn the beautiful power of giving and receiving forgiveness daily...

So, this blog is a mere snapshot into what my life is like in this season.  It would take a very, very long time to tell you everything that I have had the opportunity to taste and see, so I hope that somehow you are able to catch a glimpse of something here.  I hope to share more in the days ahead because 1) I really do love to write, and 2) with all the bad news in the world out there, I would really love to sow hope, joy, peace, and encouragement into the world by letting you, the reader, hear some good news for a change!  

There is just so much beauty out there!  My hope is that my writings in this blog would truly be like a window so that all of us, mainly myself, would get inspired and changed by the One who loves us the most.   As Ken Gire writes in his incredible book Windows of the Soul, we would see and discover what is most precious and dear to God so that it just might become what is most dear and precious to us, too.  

Love and peace, beloved.  More -- and the best -- is surely to come.  

*Perhaps you are have questions as to what I am specifically doing in my life right now on a consistent basis:

        

       I am on staff at a non-profit, support-based ministry called "A Place For The Heart", partnering with other beautiful friends under the leadership of two of my most favorite people and dearest friends named Jonathan David & Melissa Helser.  I am a full-time member of their band, singing harmony and playing piano, keyboards, and the occasional accordion.  I am so grateful to get to be doing what makes my heart come alive most in the whole world with people that I truly consider my family.  

       Not only do I work for "A Place For The Heart", but it is where I call 'home', as well.  I live on the grounds of what we lovingly call "the Farm" with eight other staff members, who really are more like brothers and sisters to me.  We take care of the grounds and facilities together, as well as one another.  We eat meals together, clean buildings together, create and do projects together, worship every morning together, celebrate birthdays, holidays, and weddings (woo hoo!) together, and staff schools and internships together.  We learn how daily how to love one another through living daily life together in deep relationship with one objective: to glorify the name and nature of Jesus, being known only for how we love one another as He said we would be known (John 13:35).

       As someone on staff, I get the most wonderful privilege of helping out with the discipleship of our precious interns (we have six this year!).  As a family and community, we teach them how to live a deeper life in practicing the presence of God through daily creative work as well as serving and working the land on which we live.  We know that being known by community is what changes us because sometimes we don't always have the right perspective of ourselves; so, we need others to help us to see who we really are and call us up and out of fear, insecurity, and hiding through daily life.  Along with another dear brother and friend on staff, I get to teach the interns how to deeply love music, how to encounter the love of God through music, and help them find their own voices through creativity and hearing the heart of God for themselves, watching them discover how much He truly does love them and shake off the fear and insecurity that has held them back.  This is one of the greatest things I believe I could be doing with my life, and I am so proud and grateful to be doing it once again this year!

       From June 1st to July 31st, the whole staff -- along with the interns -- host "The 18 Inch Journey", a creative school of the heart, where students from ages 18-25 come from all over the world and have their lives completely changed by encountering the love of God for themselves through worship, creativity, and community.  The 18 Inch Journey is the journey from the head -- what we think we know and have already experienced of God -- to the heart -- who He really is, letting His love consistently change us over and over again for the rest of our lives.  Not just for worship leaders, not just for artists, writers, photographers, and musicians, not just for those who have been missionaries or involved in full-time ministry work...it is designed for those who have a deep desire to go deeper with God, to know Him as He is truly known, to know themselves as He knows them, and from being extravagantly loved, they learn how to pour out their lives through the beauty as well as the nitty-gritty of life in community.  It is not an easy journey, but it is a journey that is so well worth it!  Again, it is an honor to get to do this once again this year, and I am so thankful.

     For more information and daily updates of what I am doing, please visit these sites.  Thank you!

www.aplacefortheheart.org   www.18inchjourney.com          www.thecagelessbirds.com

And from up out of the woods, a bluebird sang...

“What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose-knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful, that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art. The main requisite, I think, on reading my old volumes, is not to play the part of a censor, but to write as the mood comes or of anything whatever; since I was curious to find how I went for things put in haphazard, and found the significance to lie where I never saw it at the time." - Virginia Woolf

I have but long since considered blogging. Honestly, I have never really been one to jump head first into the popular social trends of my generation. I often find myself like a little kid at the swimming pool on the first day of summer, sticking my big toe in and testing the water's temperature. Is it fear of the unknown? Is it just being annoyed with the quote-unquote status quo? Who knows? At any rate, I am one who waits on trying such things. Consider Facebook for just a moment. Back in college, I heard about the social network through the friends I was making in my classes and wondered what it was. Months later after the buzzing conversations about it had died down to a normal, steady, low-pitched hum, I gave in to it...only to find out that I was not just a few months but a few YEARS behind the times! Oh well.

At any rate, I believe I have learned how to listen to the natural rhythms of my own life, to rise and set like the sun in my own unique cadence, and to trust myself in those things. So, the consideration to blog has certainly been on the back burner of my mind for some time now...and as one of my dear friends said today, "Stop considering. Do it. It's time." He is right. When Grace comes to you and whispers in your ear, inviting you into living fully, one would really be a crazy person to tell her to shut up. Today, I feel the joy to write about my life, so I am not just testing these waters...the time has come to dive straight in.

Why do I even care about blogging? My blog will be about me -- about my insanely beautiful, vibrant, overflowing life. There is just so much to be thankful for, so much to ponder upon, so much to consider...so many graces to count. I write because I must do it. There is a deep compulsion inside of me that says "yes"...you could say it is a calling, or you could call it a beckoning, an urging. Whatever it is, I must answer it. I believe that God has given us so much beauty in our lives...I believe that His love is full and overflowing out of everything that I hold dear and precious to me, even right down to the taste of my daddy's butter-fried eggs. I also believe that there are the graces -- love, joy, peace, hope, faith -- to be found in the places we may not ever think to look...even the mysterious, unknown places that invite us into adventure yet frighten us all at the same time. Could these lovely graces possibly be hidden in such deep, dark places, too? Looking through the pages of my short life's story, I would say "most definitely yes". To be a new soul -- one who has been transformed radically by Love -- on an old journey is to seek out the ancient pathways...how do I live the way I was created to, the way I was made to see it and enjoy it fully in this post-modern age? How do I actually do life?

This is why I want to write...I want to behold Him, in all that He is, to see Him and know Him as He truly is seen and known. The compulsion inside of me to write is the longing, the desire to know Love Himself, no matter what kind of season or time I am in. He is everywhere, and I don't want to miss out on Him at all. Furthermore, I must remember these places where I have found Him. My mind is so small, my attention span so short, my memory so scattered sometimes...and then there's my heart. My heart is very weak and fickle sometimes...she can forget the One she loves very quickly when the weather turns bad. Friends of God long ago built altars of thankfulness, just to remember His goodness, faithfulness and insanely gracious love. So, I suppose in a way, this history book, this journal, this little blog about my own heart's journey with Him is more for me to remain thankful until I take my last shallow breath on this side of Eternity.

It is pretty cool to just tell your story and allow others to see and know who you are and what you are doing with your life. I am pleased to open up the treasure chest of my heart to you, the reader...I pray that something that I am given, something that I stumble upon graciously, something that charges and excites me, something that personally means something to me is like fresh, warm bread to you. Surely, it will be that for me first, and as Papa Ken Helser says, "You cannot give anything that you don't already have." I write for my own heart's need to just know my Love, yet I understand that He likes to invite others to be changed somehow by what has changed you.

And really...at the end of the day, why do I blog? Because I really do love to write.

That's why.