Slowly, the Holy Spirit is working within me to make me feel better about what is going on. I’m actually feeling like I want the adventure of not knowing where I’ll be living in five months. I am also slowly sorting through my feelings at being moved. Mom reminded me today that this is like living in corporate America — they don’t really care about your feelings and they’ll move you where they need a person.

I am feeling pretty angry at our Contextual Ed person for not caring about how I was feeling. They made Jon out to be incredibly problematic as an intern which I thought was untrue and that we were really treated badly because we are both so young. There really is no equality between the ages here — the older person tends to win because “they have more life experience”. I’ve had more life experience than some of the older people here after having fought depression and still managed to graduate early and keep my faith with God.

Right now, I am just wondering where God wants to take me next year. It would be cool to be in Minnesota or Wisconsin or maybe even Iowa or the Daks. The East Coast would be interesting as well as would someplace like North Carolina. Montana would be cool but that’s about the extent of where I’d like to travel. I do have to move furniture and stuff to wherever the internship site is.

My focus right now is also on trusting my Father to put me where He wants me. I know that my life is in His hands and that I will never be put in a place where He cannot protect me. This is a comforting thing, especially since I feel like the only stable things left in life are Jon and the Lord. C/S

I was prepared to make this a reflection on how much I am looking forward to Lent. Instead, this is where I am working out my feelings regarding how I am feeling about what has happened today.

Jon’s pre-Internship interview was today and it is important because Internship basically decides if you’ll be ordained, especially if it’s a terminal internship like Jon’s is. At the meeting, they broke the news to us that they would not be able to keep Jon in the Columbus area and give him a site that would benefit him the most. Since I am the most flexible, they asked me if I might want to take a year off of school and go wherever Jon needs to go for his site. (He needs a good site because there are factors like age and his previous experience that are not in his favor as far as being called to a parish.) I commented that I would be OK with dropping seminary for a year so that Jon could go on Internship. They told us to talk about it and pray about it and get back to them at the second interview on February 26th.

Truth be told, I would be OK with taking a year off because I need the break. I have squeezed 18 years of school into 17 and it would enable me to rest and have them find out what is so wrong with my stomach. However, this morning pulled everything stable in my life out from under me with the exception of Jon and God, and I think I do have a valid reason to be upset about that. I was looking forward to seeing Ed and Thuan again after Internship and having another year with Karen and Joene and Julie and everyone else in my class. I’ll miss Darby and having Dr. Petersen and Dr. Schroeder for Church History and possibly Dr. Taylor for NT II. I was looking forward to working with Carol and Dr. Ramseth on the Christmas party next year.

Yes, I know that they could very easily find Jon something that’s an hour away and he can commute to Internship and that would be my wish; but I also know that when I promised to go where God led me, God really wanted me to keep my end of the bargain. I have been in tears for much of the day as I have no ****ing idea where I will be in 5 months — just that I will be with God and with Jon. That is really scary for someone who has never lived in one place less than 3 years and who grew up in the same house from birth until high school.

I know that God will not put me in a place where His grace cannot protect me but I am still really hurting. Please keep me and Jon in your prayers though I feel like I’m the one getting shafted by what just came up today. We have to give them our answer on February 26th and this process needs to be accompanied by a lot of prayer and discussion. C/S

If you have watched the news lately, you’ll see that they have shown a video of Osama bin Laden that predicts more pain and evil will come upon the U.S. and that this is in response to the prayers of Palestinian mothers. That video sickens me as does the commentary which is mostly pro-Israel and not much in favor of the Palestinians. Ariel Sharon commented that he wishes that he had killed Yassir Arafat twenty years ago, which was probably not the best thing to say. My friend Brian has commented frequently on the hopelessness of the situation and I’m starting to see his point very clearly.

The painful part spiritually is that we are all worshipping the same deity and it breaks my heart into pieces every time I hear someone invoke God’s name in these fights. This is a God who wants us to come to Him and who wants us to love our neighbors as ourselves. I cannot fathom a God who does not consider it justice to treat one’s neighbors with dignity even if they are not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish like everyone else. Granted, we are called to spread the Gospel to all nations but we are to do this lovingly and not by the sword. We are called to deal justly with people and if you’ve looked at the history of the land battle in Israel, you do have to agree that the Palestinians have been dealt with less than justly. In 1948, they stood to have about 58% of the land in “Israel” and that has shrunk dramatically. It’s like owning a room of a house but not being able to go out into the hall because your enemy owns the hall.

A lot of my criticism of bin Laden is the fact that Islam preaches that there is no compulsion in religion. (I’m not sure of the surah where that is found in the Qur’an.) Bin Laden wants us out of Saudi Arabia (which is not an unreasonable demand) but his reasoning is that we are polluting the Holy Land because we are a non-Muslim presence on Muslim soil. It’s kind of interesting to me that Jews and Christians lived in that land for 1200 years without engaging in conflict with the Muslim populations there. I feel that bin Laden wants all of us to become Muslim because it’s all about spreading the message of Islam. His tactics however violate the concept of non-compulsion. Most (and I mean all non-Wahhabi) Muslims consider us equal to them in the eyes of God and believe that if we are faithful to our religion, we will be in Paradise with them. It saddens me that a small percentage are so violent just as it saddens me that such a small percentage of evangelical Christians like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Fred Phelps spoil the view of Christianity for the rest of us.

The other thing I am just struggling with is the events of September 11th. I really never fully dealt with them and the day just seemed so surreal because I was in so much shock. I never believed that people could be so evil as to fly a plane with innocent people on it into a building where thousands of people worked!!! It saddens me that evil could be so present in one person like bin Laden who rejoiced at seeing all of this take place. Granted, we are a rich and spoiled country and we really need to evaluate the way we use resources and promote materialism but… does that really warrant killing thousands of innocent people as a protest??? Now, bin Laden is saying that this level of terror will continue to punish the USA. At first it seemed like the attacks were a personification of 1 Corinthians 1:27 where it says that God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong. I’m not saying that the events of 9/11 were God’s punitive attacks on the U.S.A. but one has to admit that the plans were not that technologically advanced. They took away our national security (which would have been better placed had it been in the LORD than in our fancy weaponry) and it is awful to live in fear of such attacks happening again.

Sometimes my life just don’t make sense at all/ When the mountains look so big /And my faith just seems so small/ So hold me Jesus ’cause I’m shaking like a leaf/ You have been King of my glory/ Won’t you be my Prince of peace/ And I wake up in the night and feel the dark/ It’s so hot inside my soul I swear/ There must be blisters on my heart/ So hold me Jesus ’cause I’m shaking like a leaf/ You have been King of my glory/ Won’t you be my Prince of peace/ Surrender don’t come natural to me/ I’d rather fight You for something I don’t really want/ Then to take what You give that I need/ And I’ve beat my head against so many walls/ I’m falling down, I’m falling on my knees/ And this Salvation Army band is playing this hymn/ And your grace rings out so deep/ It makes my resistance seem so thin/ So hold me Jesus ’cause I’m shaking like a leaf/ You have been King of my glory/ Won’t you be my Prince of peace?
-“Hold Me Jesus” — Rich Mullins

C/S

There’s more that rises in the morning than the sun/ And more that shines in the night than just the moon/ It’s more than just this fire here that keeps me warm/ In a shelter that is larger than this room/ And there’s a loyalty that’s deeper than mere sentiments/ And a music higher than the songs that I can sing/ The stuff of Earth competes for the allegiance/I owe only to the Giver of all good things/ So if I stand let me stand on the promise that you will pull me through/ And if I can’t, let me fall on the grace_ that first brought me to You/ And if I sing let me sing for the joy that has born in me these songs/ And if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for his home/ There’s more than dances on the prairies than the wind/ More that pulses in the ocean than the tide/ There’s a love that is fiercer than the love between friends/ More gently than a mother’s when her baby’s at her side/ And there’s a loyalty that’s deeper than mere sentiments/ And a music higher than the songs that I can sing/ The stuff of Earth competes for the allegiance/I owe only to the Giver of all good things/ So if I stand let me stand on the promise that you will pull me through/ And if I can’t, let me fall on the grace_ that first brought me to You/ And if I sing let me sing for the joy that has born in me these songs/ And if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for his home. –Rich Mullins, “If I Stand”

I really see the Gospel in this song. It’s like someone saying, there is more behind all of these things than their mere existence. There is a force of life behind the wind that sweeps across the prairies and more to the force of the tide in the ocean. There is so much more power in the love between friends and the love of a mother for her child. I cannot abide by the people who say love is just a biological function — there is such a divine element to love — God is love — He created it and He gives us the ability to love others.

The chorus, So if I stand let me stand on the promise that you will pull me through/ And if I can’t, let me fall on the grace_ that first brought me to You/ And if I sing let me sing for the joy that has born in me these songs/ And if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for his home, brings me to tears because it really shows my walk with God. The promise that He will bring me through everything is what I live for much of the time, and I cherish the promise that I can fall on God’s grace_ when I cannot stand on my own. I love to sing religious music because it reflects the connection I have with my Heavenly Father. Sad songs show my ability to come to Him for solace and the more joyful ones allow me to praise Him for the works He has done in my life. I also am thankful every day that I can come to Him when I am weeping because the things of earth have saddened me (an occurrence that happens more and more these days). C/S