Be Still

“Be still and know that I am God.” ~Psalm 46:10

Upon arriving home from college with a 34-day break ahead of me, finals completed and no new syllabi in sight, I pictured long days propped on the couch with a good book, sipping hot cocoa….contentedly happy to do something I haven’t done in a while: relax.

Well, those dreams were short-lived.  

 

The day after I got home, I made an extensive to-do list. It’s not as though relaxing didn’t sound enticing, I just had a lot to accomplish. There were people to see, drawers to organize, applications to fill out….

When I sent my college registrar a series of emails a few days before Christmas asking about the academic calendar, room numbers, course schedules, and other probably-insignificant scheduling concerns, he finally responded, “This is the LAST email I’m sending you before Christmas…you’re supposed to take time off and not worry about this stuff until after Christmas!!!”  Great. Now even my school registrar thinks I’m maniacally over-planned.

Whatever the case, after an incredibly enjoyable month spent visiting with all my friends, shopping, singing Les Mis until my voice was hoarse, perfecting my resume, writing cover letters, filling out applications, scheduling my Spring semester down to the minute, investing in a mutual fund, securing an on-campus job for the coming semester, organizing every file on my computer, reading seven books, begging professors for syllabi and adding exam dates to my calendar, and performing hundreds of other random organizational tasks that I, for some unknown reason, felt the need to accomplish, I  decided I could spare one day to relax.

Having never before been bored or at a loss for what to do (as confirmed by my mom), this  day was a confounding new phenomenon. I wrote “Relax” on my calendar, but it just looked too empty. Somehow, between writing "relax" and the arrival of the day itself, other tasks began appearing. “Practice piano.” “Call Mrs. Muniz." “Finish reading Catch 22.” “Paint toenails.” "Workout." They were things I enjoyed doing, relaxing things even. Yet, something was wrong. The purpose of the day was to try living without a to-do list. To just see what it felt like to have nothing to do. It wasn't working.

On the assigned day, I woke up bewildered. I couldn’t decide what to do with myself. I yearned for structure, crossing things off a list. I wanted someone to tell me to organize their desk drawers or plan their schedule. Helplessly, I realized I didn't know how to relax. In fact, stranger still, I didn't like to relax.

Interestingly, at this same time, I finished reading Francis Chan’s Forgotten God. Chan’s point was the importance of relying on the Holy Spirit. When we try to be “good Christians” without surrendering to the Holy Spirit, we are simply living off our own skills and abilities, and people only see us and glorify us. Yet, when we surrender to Him and let Him live through us, we are able to live supernaturally. When we live like this, there is no other explanation for how we live than Jesus, and people glorify Him.

It all sounded good in theory, but I struggled to picture what living this supernatural life really looked like until I thought about one of my friends from school. My friend works harder than anyone else I know--she is constantly studying, and she's pulled so many all-nighters this semester. Yet, she never mentions herself, but is constantly asking how I'm doing and commiserating with me about how hard I work...which is nothing in comparison to her. I've never once heard her complain. She is one of the most cheerful people I've ever met. Yet her family lives far away from school and she rarely gets to see them, and she is continually exhausted. One day I told her how inspiring she is to me and how I am so amazed by her never-endingly joyful spirit. At the point of this conversation, it was the middle of finals week, and she had pulled about three all-nighters in a row, and had at least one exam the next day and several after that. I cannot describe the utter exhaustion and brokenness with which she replied--'This--anything you see in me--it's not me. It's Him, all Him.' The girl who replied to me was about to collapse from exhaustion, had giant dark circles under her eyes, and could barely form a sentence. But through her surrender to Christ's Spirit inside, she is one of the most beautiful, joyful, alive people I've ever met. She lives a life she couldn't live on her own.

That’s what I want. That’s what living supernaturally, by the Spirit looks like...living so incredibly that there's no explanation but God. Only He gets the glory. When I think of living like this, I start planning ways I can be better, live more faithfully. And then I realize that’s defeating the whole purpose! There is no possible way I can get there on my own...only God can get me there. As hard as it for me-- always in control, doing something, never letting go, relaxing--to learn,  It’s when I surrender to Him in prayer, learn let go, give him control, stop planning and coming up with endless goals and strategies to live more Christ-like and start praying, surrendering, being still, realizing He's God and I'm not—that things start changing.  For me, the girl who can’t even let go for a day—it’s hard to let go of my whole life. Yet when we live through His power alone, that's when He's glorified in us. And really—what's more awesome than God living through us?!  

What I love.

I've spent this whole past week saying goodbye to some of the people I love most in this world. But today, I think, hurt most of all.

Today was my last day of work. 

And I have the best job in the world.

Over the past few years I have been so incredibly immensely blessed to get to spend several hours a week teaching some of the most wonderful kids to play an instrument I've fallen in love with. Teaching piano has been my dream job, something I've loved from the day I started and have never stopped loving.

Altogether, I've taught piano to over 20 kids. I can't even begin to tell you all the things these kids have taught me, or the impact they've had on my life. They've helped me learn things like patience. Like how to be encouraging yet firm. How to be a good teacher, to make the confusing understandable. How to make learning bar lines and measures interesting, enjoyable even.  How to be flexibile.

They've taught me about sports (I finally learned that baseball games don't have an intermission after multiple elementary-school boys rolled their eyes at me. Yes. Thanks to them I now know the meaning of a "Seventh-inning stretch"). They've taught me creativity (who knew that Musical Mother May I could be one one of the most effective ways to master new notes?). They've taught me how to run a business (juggling my own schedule plus the crazy schedules of multiple children? Sending out regular studio update emails to parents? Doing my own accounting, keeping track of everyone's bills? Learning marketing techniques to get new students? Things I definitely wouldn't have learned otherwise). They've fostered my sense of humor, helped me laugh at myself.  And most of all, they've taught me joy. I just can't not be happy after teaching one of these guys a lesson. They are just soo enthusiastic.

("I love piano I shouted on the mountain!")

I would be happy if my students had half as much fun learning as I have teaching them. I get so much joy and fulfillment out of teaching. The kids are so funny, I absolutely love spending time with them. They let me into their lives for a half hour every week. They tell me how their week went. They get so excited and proud when they master a new song. They put their own touches into each piece they play. I get to learn about their individual personalities and how to help them learn best, and I get to try to think like them and look at music through their eyes and figure out new ways to teach them things. It is one of the best gifts I've been given, to have these kids looking up to me and to be able to give them just a little part of me and to hopefully help them see how wonderful music really is and how enjoyable it can be.

And trust me, we have a lot of fun in the process. I don't know if I ever laugh as much as I do while I'm teaching. The kids love to make fun of my utter lack of sports knowlege, my horrible drawing skills, the way I always forget the date.

I love it when they come to a lesson soo excited because they practiced a lot this week and they know I'll be so proud. Or when their moms tell me they won a contest at their school because they knew so much about the different music periods and composers. Or when they go home and teach their whole family everything they've just learned about time signiatures. Or when they write their own song and bring it to the lesson, every note precisely placed on an oh-so-carefully drawn staff.

I'm so proud of all of them. I'll miss them all so much. And my heart almost broke in two today when 7 of my current students and I had a final group lesson, and everyone was giving me cards and flowers and hug after hug and telling me, "I'll miss you so much, Miss Alaina," and not believing me when I told them the absolute truth, that, "I'll miss you more!"

 So to my absolutely wonderful piano teacher of 10 years who has spent so much time giving me her expert advice on piano teaching, introducing me to fabulous curriculum, always so wisely answering all my questions, and giving me everything from business tips to piano magazines to books for my students...

To my parents who have so generously allowed their den to become a piano studio complete with shelves of books and a giant whiteboard and have listened to Old-MacDonald, Row-Row-Row Your Boat, Hot Cross Buns, and so many others countless times...

To the very first neighbor mom who so very bravely let my middle-school-aged, very inexperienced self teach her daughter piano, just for fun (never once thinking that I'd take more students or that eventually, this would be my job)....

Thank you. I've been so blessed.

Without Words

“Preach always, use words when necessary.”

 

Behind me is a gang building. Broken glass litters the sidewalk, bullet holes decorate the windows and doors, gang symbols, names, and foul language are scribbled on every brick. We are in the middle of inner-city St. Louis, poverty abounds. Last night I talked to a homeless man who told me the secret of staying warm on the streets in winter. I ate breakfast with a well-educated lady who used to teach study-skills classes and now relies on a soup kitchen’s grits and turkey sandwiches for her daily bread. I just gave a piggy back ride to a 5-year old little girl who is the main caretaker of her 14-year old sister’s 1-month-old baby boy. And that sweet boy who keeps trying to hold my hand tells me everyone hates him because he’s fat. He gets McDonald’s for dinner every night. He’s 7 years old and weighs 130 pounds. He keeps coughing up stuff, I wonder if he’s been to the doctor.
It’s the picture of poverty and sadness, yet around me, I see joy.

So much joy, in fact, that even though it must be 100 degrees out and I’ve given more piggy back rides in a day than I thought humanly possible and I’m so exhausted I almost fall asleep while eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I just can’t stop smiling.

In the field in front of the broken-down building, Keigan has given a little boy his hat and the kid is running around with a gleeful smile on his face. Another boy wears Sarabeth’s sunglasses with a look of pride. Mr. Vinstra has two little boys on his back, all 3 are laughing, so happy. I tell a girl she has beautiful hair and her face lights up. Shelby lifts up a little boy and he lays his head on her shoulder. My youth group has come to St. Louis to give all the love we can to these kids, kids who are sometimes hard to love, who scream nasty words at each other, stick their finger out when they get annoyed, constantly get in fistfights. But these little boys and girls who are so thirsty for love, so deprived of it, somehow return the love we give them and multiply it a hundred times. When they see us every day, they scream and run toward us and hug us and won’t let go. They just want to sit in our laps and hold our hands and play with our hair and have us carry them. They call us by name. They offer to fill my water bottle and carry my bag. Every day, they don’t want to say goodbye to us. On the last day they cry, won’t go back inside because they don’t want to stop hugging us. We don’t want to stop hugging them either, and we cry, too.

No, we weren’t quoting Bible verses or sharing our testimonies this week, but sometimes actions speak louder than words. Sometimes showing a child the first love they’ve seen-- the first gentleness in the midst of anger, patience in the face of frustration—can impact more deeply than any sermon could.

And isn’t this so often true in our lives?  Sometimes I think we compartmentalize our Christian life—“There’s no way to bring up Christ in this situation, so I guess I don’t need to witness,” or “I can’t spend more than a little time in prayer each morning, so I guess I won’t be able to pray for all these prayer requests.” But shouldn’t living for Christ be more than just actions? It’s not about how many people you can witness to our how long you can spend in prayer every morning. Although these things are extremely important, we call ourselves Christians because we want to be “little Christs,” to live as Jesus lived, in everything. Yes, evangelize with words, spend time on your knees in prayer. But live like this all the time. Sometimes we can witness best by giving a piggy back ride. Sometimes the most fervent prayer time comes while cleaning the bathroom.  

It’s a lifestyle.

We get this crazy love from God and we are loved to love and we give that love to others and I've never been so blessed.

“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” ~1 Corinthians 10:31

Surprised by Joy

"She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful and life was so short.”           {Brian Andreas}

Dear God,

Thank You for little girls

who paint polka-dots on my toes
For a mom and dad,
who've been married 22 years today
For summer days
made for wearing white capris
For dearest friends
with whom I could never tire of talking.

Thank you for notes so sweet

I cry tears of beauty
For swinging on park swings
eating bakery cookies with a lifelong friend
For summer days
of picnics and waterparks
For buying dorm supplies
and growing more and more excited for a brand new life

For laying awake at night

so filled with joy I can do nothing but write down praise

Thank You for a new month
in which to explore more of Your daily mercies
For Sunday afternoons
meant for swimming in lake with dear neighbors
For hundreds of voices
raised in highest praise to Lord of all, forgetting all else

For the fresh smell of a brand new planner

in which to record the never-ending adventures contained in each new week.

Thank you for sweet emails

from a future friend

For finishing countless thank-you notes
to dear friends who left heartfelt notes and generous gifts
For lively discussions with friends
which encourage my faith
For little black dresses
made for happy red-headed girls in July

Thank You for good talks
with dearly-loved friends
For red white and blue nails
painted by a little girl who sees the joy in everything
For sweet snappeas
eaten over dinner with joyful family
For pool full of happy friends
basking in freedom and fellowship and sunshine
For man so frail carrying flag in parade
who fought for my freedom

 Thank You for uncle and cousin

leaning close over castle in sand

For flocks of seagulls

flying cross sunset
For bare toes
digging deep in wet sand
For singing oldies loud on beach
with family

 Thank You for nestling under white sheets in bright-lit bunked

writing praise

For little boy in blue goggles

giggling as he splashes in sun-kissed waves

For the simple joy

of snapping pictures of heaven-sent beauty

For summer mornings spent on bright red rocking chair

reading C.S. Lewis

Thank you for summer nights

curled in lamp-lit bunk bed

For the evident love

of a young husband and wife

For texting my best friend

of the beauty in today

For campfires with family

on a lake Michigan beach, watching the sunset

For a tiny poodle

with sand up her nose.

Surprised by joy. This is how I want to live each day. Knowing I am small, expecting nothing, but overwhelmed by the grace, the endless gifts, of my big God. Finding joy in things I too often overlook. Choosing to live my life as a constant prayer of thanks to my Savior. Not just when it's 4th of July or I'm on vacation or when things seem to be going well, but even on days when life seems like a train wreck.

"So our hope is in the Lord.

He is our help, our shield to protect us.

We rejoice in Him,

because we trust His holy name.

Lord, show Your love to us

As we put our hope in You."

 ~Psalm 30:20-22

I'm finding that sometimes when life isn't perfect, when I have to trust, put my hope in Him alone, His love is most evident. When I fully rely on Him, open up to His grace, search for His gifts, I am surprised, overwhelmed.

I want to live my life an endless prayer of thanks.

(AWESOME video--watch til the end)

On Too Long Days

These days, time moves slow, too slow. I have bad dreams and I wake up tired and then the day starts and the house is falling down around me and how will I ever get this mold-smell out of the basement for my open house and I feel unprepared for the VBS lesson I'm supposed to teach tomorrow and pictures keep falling off my display board and I don't have time for this and my friend's too busy to talk to me and we don't have the kind of bread I like and I squabble with my mom about something that doesn't matter and will this day ever end?

And sometimes I wonder why this is happening to me, these things, rotting house and no insurance and unsteady income and broken down car. These things don't happen to Alaina, girl of big white house on lake and happy family and large closet full of clothes. These things happen to far-distant people I meet on mission trips and mail checks to.

Yes, it all seems unreal right now, and yes, in the midst of long days I let myself get stressed and frustrated and I don't act at all like one should act who's bought with the grace of Christ Jesus and I am ashamed and discouraged.

Yet, daily, I see Him in this. In the way He led me to carefully learn joy in small things right before I needed it in the big. In the encouragement, kind words, prayers, offers of help, and even bouquets of flowers from so many dear friends. In verse after verse I read in His word about His plans, in how I find Him to be Enough, even now.

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost. 
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.

 Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David. 
See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a ruler and commander of the peoples.
Surely you will summon nations you know not,
and nations you do not know will come running to you,
because of the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor.”

Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.

 Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. 
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,  
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.  
Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
for an everlasting sign,
that will endure forever.”
~Isaiah 55

I have found Him, this God of wisdom and purpose and faithfulness, over and over again in these too long days, and have been refreshed in Him. I've learned so many wonderful new things about Him, and have been awed again and again by Him, and yes, have even been filled with His joy.

How perfect are His ways, how unendingly glad I am to know Him.

I'm closing with a story I found on Ann Voksamp's wonderful, wonderful blog, aholyexperience.com. I hope you'll share it with anyone else you know who's living too-long days right now.

A white stallion had rode into the paddocks of an old man and all the villagers had congratulated him on such good fortune.

And the old man had only offered this: “Is it a curse or a blessing? All we can see is a sliver. Who can see what will come next?”

When the white horse ran off, the townsfolk were convinced the white stallion had been a curse. The old man lived surrendered and satisfied in the will of God alone: “I cannot see as He sees.”

And when the horse returned with a dozen more horses, the townsfolk declared it a blessing, yet the old man said only, “It is as He wills and I give thanks for His will.”

Then the man’s only son broke his leg when thrown from the white stallion. The town folk all bemoaned the bad fortune of that white stallion. And the old man had only offered, “We’ll see. We’ll see. It is as He wills and I give thanks for His will.”

When a draft for a war took all the young men off to battle but the son with the broken leg, the villagers all proclaimed the good fortune of that white horse. And the old man said but this, “We see only a sliver of the sum. We cannot see how the bad might be good. God is sovereign and He is good and He sees and work all things together for good.”

How He's shown me this the past few weeks: All is grace. And in too-long days, how glad I am to know how much bigger than me He is.

The Here & Now

I roll out of bed this morning early and we make a special birthday breakfast for my mom. I am already all gloriously-happy from sweet time with family and cinnamon rolls and strawberries when I open the window and discover that today is the perfect bike-riding day. So after the dishes are done I'm out the door pedaling along the path I've pedaled so many times before. Yet today is especially glorious: and I can't help noticing little intricacies I too often miss: the way spring-morning air smells like roses, and how fluffy white clouds make delicate curlycues in bright blue sky, and the little flutterings of tiny yellow godfinch in a pink-blossom rose bush. And I smile the whole ride, thank my Jesus for these little blessings.

Suddenly I remember something, something rather absent-mindedly forgotten in the midst of birthday-celebrating and blessing-counting: Today is Memorial Day.

And in the midst of rose-smell and blue sky and yellow birds, I stop smiling. Men, young men, are fighting right now. Dying for me. Dying so I can have this bike ride. So I can notice flowers. So I can live life free.

Suddenly, I feel ashamed of my joy, of my happy little bike ride. Joy, yes, easy for me today, girl living in wealthy America, free to spend her day as she chooses, to spend her life as she chooses. Girl whose worst problems are stress and arguments. But if I lived as those men, soldiers, do? A world where daily I must watch my friends, brothers, die around me? A world where I must kill another woman's brother, friend, husband? Could I possibly be joyful, find blessings, then?

I, fragile girl, girl who can't bear to watch her dog get a shot at the vet, who gets queasy at the site of roller coasters, whose knees shake every time she gives a speech, joy might be difficult there, on a battlefield.

This answer, my own fragility in joy, dismays me. My own struggle to find joy seems so childlike in comparison to the quest others must make.

Yet, I realize something. Because this world is broken, full of sorrow and death, should I be broken also? My Jesus commands joy, and this joy, joy in my Savior, is what will heal a broken world, not more brokenness.

Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world.

~Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts (page 58)

 This is my Here and Now, a world of bike rides and freedom and flowers. What an incredible gift, to be able to learn joy here. My task is to be faithful here, to practice joy daily. And through this, my Jesus will prepare my heart for joy in a world of bigger brokenness, a world where fragile me is at the end of herself. I trust in His promise to prepare the hearts of those faithful in small tasks:

You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. ~Mathew 25:21

My job is the Here and Now.

Eyes wide open

*This post was inspired by probably the most beautiful book I've ever read, Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, which I just finished reading*

Today, I wake smiling. The sweet chirping of birds drifts through my window, I read a chapter of Lord of the Rings while I eat the parfait-and-toast breakfast my sweet momma prepared for me,  I plant little pink Impatiens, cool brown earth on my fingers, and wind through my hair. I wear my favorite shirt, look forward to a weekend up north with family….Today, joy is easy to find, always waiting for me.

Today, I want to live long. I write Bucket Lists, laid carefully on my desk. Ride a gondola in Venice, see the Eifel Tower…there is so much I want to do, so many things to see.

Today, I get to live.

Isn’t that enough to inspire joy in me?

Yet ever the  daily struggle of Now, not often as joy-filled as today….Now where I can’t see beauty, only unfinished schoolwork, high school drama, petty conflicts….and too often I wake frowning, dreading the day to come. Now where mommas in Africa watch their babies starve to death, where little children are abused, where fathers with many mouths to feed die from cancer. Now where often, all I can see is life’s disappointments.

In Philippians 4:11-12, Paul writes, “I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything.  I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.” Joy is not just something we find on good days. Joy, thankfulness, must be learned, practiced, daily, in the good and the bad, in the disappointments.

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?
~GK Chesterton

This living, this is grace. Why do I feel I must see the splendor of Venice and Paris to fully grasp the world’s magnificence? His grace is here, now, in little pink Impatients and a momma humbly serving. In receiving another day to live! I am still learning to recognize grace, to feel joy, on days without flowers and favorite shirts. On days of clouds and arguments and stress. He is always God, and isn’t His grace also evident in chances of new mercies and the healing of brokenness?

All is grace. Praying without ceasing is praying with eyes wide open, looking for this grace, thanking Him for it. Won't you join me, with eyes open wide?