Fierce Loyalty.

Do you ever have those times when your heart just physically hurts?

Not like a greasy, chunked up, arteries screaming to a halt because of the 3/4 lb bbq bacon cheeseburger you just ate kinda hurt...

but like a cumbersome, heavy, emotional entrapment where your heart just can't beat freely. It seems a bit ludicrous, maybe I'm crazy...

needless to say, that's what I got goin' on right now. An emotionally strangled heart.

For the past couple years I've been a free spirit, what you'd call adventurous, for lack of a better word. Hence the name of the blog. I do what I want, when I want. I dream big. And then I take steps to make those dreams come true. I've had people ask me many a time, 'how do you do it?' 'What's it like?' 'I wish I were you.' 'I wish I had that freedom.' But it's not all it's cracked up to be.

The past couple days we've been talking about stories in our devotionals. Our lives are stories. There are main characters. There are supporting characters. There is conflict. There is resolution. There is an author. There is an editor. There's comic relief and there's melodrama and sometimes there's just word fluff to describe the times in our lives where nothing much happened.

We are a story.

People always fret about having a 'boring' story. They think 'My story doesn't mean anything to anyone if there's not this incessant drama careening out of control all the time.' A good story, a 'meaningful' story, has drugs and violence, neglect, abuse, sex and alcohol, loneliness and despair, ending in a climactic revelation that there is a God and He does love the homely and forgotten. Right? I'm gonna go with wrong on that one.

My story is riddled with a few of those ugly words and my story is anything but good. All I've ever wanted is a 'boring' story...to have lived a 'normal' childhood...to be shackled by the bonds of a loving family.

And here's where we tie in the whole freedom issue. Yes, I have freedom. I believe that I will live the life of a nomad, a wanderer. And that is because I struggle with belonging. We all long to belong. And my whole life, those I'm 'supposed' to belong to, either refused to take up that responsibility, or drastically abused it.

I've always loved stories. I'm an English major. I have an incessantly growing library. From an early age, I sought refuge in the lives of characters in novels. I found solace alone in my room with the pages of a book as my companions. I would check out 30 books at a time from the library, only because that was the limit they imposed upon me. I spent my entire middle school career volunteering at the Arlington Public Library. And this was before you were made to volunteer to get community service hours to graduate. I just loved books that much. They were my escape from the dismal reality of my own story.

And now as the daunting day approaches, I'm struggling to figure out how to present my story to my new community, in a way that won't be an instantaneous invitation to a pity party. My biggest fear is that people will feel sorry for me. How do I overcome that?

And here's where Mr. Jesus comes in. Today's been one of those days where God doesn't have a still small voice. He has a belligerent, raucous, outrageous, and unavoidable shout goin' on. Yes, I just referred to God as belligerent, a word most often used in reference to a drunk person, when really it just means aggressive. We serve a jealous God and sometimes He has to swing a rope and lasso us to get our attention, and we may get a little rope burn or whiplash in the process, but at least we get the picture...

So anyway, it's been one of those days. God's been shouting at me about fear today. The command used most frequently in the Bible is "Do not be afraid." And now I must include an excerpt from the book we're reading with our intern group-"The irony of this surprising command is that, though it's what we really want to hear, we have as much difficulty, if not more, in obeying this command, as any other. We all cherish fear so closely that we find we can't shed it even when we're told to do so."

Welp. That about sums it up huh. We all have fears. We cherish them. We cling tight to them. They bring some sick sense of comfort. I wish I could just type in the whole chapter from the book. I wish I could refrain from making my blog that much longer by including these next few little blurbs, but I feel like I just have to share 'em..."The good news: there is just one command this time, not even ten. The bad news: this one command tells you not to be afraid, and we haven't a clue how to obey it. We don't like fear, but it's the air we breathe. We don't know any other way to live. This, actually, is why people imagine God as a God who is always giving orders and getting cross with people. We project our fears, yes, and our hatred, up on to the creator of the universe; we call this object, this idol, 'God;' and we are afraid of, and resent, the God we have thus made in our own mirror-image."

Take a moment to digest that one and then check this out...

"Depression is what happens when one particular little clutch of fears get together in a circle, and it forces us to go round and round the circle, worrying about one thing, which leads us to blame ourselves for the next thing, which leads us to be anxious about the third thing, which takes us conveniently back to the start of the circle, and round we go again."

Depression. It's become as frequent as sunsets these days. Everyday there's a new drug to sedate it, but it's still there, dormant, hibernating, festering, just waiting for the days when it gets to wreak havoc on your life.

My mom is "clinically depressed." But really, what does that even mean. It's an inability to face fears. Simply stated. And in her inability to face fears, I've developed this catacomb of wretched fears of my own. One of them being...

I'm afraid to share my life story. What?!

All that said...

I have two closing thoughts...

Thought 1. When's the last time you did something fiercely? I think that might be one of my new life goals. To be described as fierce in some capacity. Our intern coordinator was praying for Sonia today in our small group after Sonia had finished sharing her life story. She referred to a 'fierce loyalty' and I just can't get it out of my head. I get stuck on words sometimes and fierce is my word of the day. My prayer is that you would find something that ignites your heart, something you might do fiercely.

Thought 2. Bill Palmaymesa. A man of eloquent and powerful words. Bill gave a talk tonight about David and Goliath. David had five rocks, but he only needed one rock to take down the giant. Cling tightly to the one rock. The God rock. We all have giants that linger in our lives. We sometimes like to dwell in their shadows. We have giant fears, giant insecurities, giant doubts, giant voids of emptiness.

And now I'll leave you with what I wish were my own words of encouragement...

"Go kill that giant. I know you got rocks in your pocket. Now go kill that giant."

Pieces of Peace.

I love that God has a sense of humor. He's silly and fun and has no boundaries. He lives in the margins. Spends his time outside the lines. He's not rigid or full of rules and regulations. He floats. He frolics. He shimmers. He dwells in the details. And He conjures up sometimes the most ludicrous schemes, just to get us to understand Him a little bit more.

So how do I put this? God "spoke" to me tonight. And I bring out the quotes because I've never really been a fan of that expression. Mainly because it makes me feel inadequate. I don't think I've ever really "heard" God "speak" to me so I've just never felt "Christian" enough to use that expression. All those quotes to say, I think that God teaches me through showing me, not through speaking to me. So actually, God showed me a little somethin' somethin' today.

And it's funny.

Silly actually.

Krista and I have become a bit infatuated with a certain cardboardy toy. They are cheap and they are plenty and we can't get enough of them.

They come in many different shapes and sizes. They have the ability to consume you and they can gobble up your time.

They can be solitary or communal. And they bring hundreds upon hundreds of instant gratifications.

Sometimes they're jagged but easy. Sometimes they're all the same and incredibly complex. They can be vibrant and colorful. Or they can be bland and obscure.

I've never been so agitated, and yet so content, as when I'm playing with one.

They are papery and placid.

They are puzzles.

And I'm obsessed.

Krista and I discovered that we have a sincere passion for the art of puzzling. We spent our entire weekend playing with puzzles. Legitimately. Our entire weekend. We finished three and started a new one. Two 1,000 piecers and a 500 piecer. Shalacked and ready to hang on the wall.

We've created a community puzzle space. Our upstairs common room. We intend on hanging our completed puzzles around the room, so that everyday we might rejoice in our accomplishment. Our petty time, pondering puzzles. HAAAAA!! EPIC!

So tonight I had a little revelation, if you will, a moment where God just flashed a little light on a tidbit of Himself that He really wanted me to see.

Our lives are a myriad of puzzles. Our hearts are puzzles. Our minds are puzzles. Our bodies are puzzles. The God we serve is a puzzle. Quzzical. Unfathomable. Mind-bending.

So then I got to thinking...let's run with the metaphor. If everything is a puzzle, there are bound to be countless pieces. Scattered. Jagged. Sometimes colorful. Sometimes dark. And if there are countless pieces, then there are bound to be some missing ones. Hiding. Lost. Waiting to be found in the most obscure of locations. Let your mind wander and think about where all the missing puzzle pieces of this world now reside. Not the metaphorical ones. The legitimate pieces of cardboard. Where are they? The last puzzle we finished is missing three pieces because we got it for 50 cents at a thrift store. Where are those three pieces hiding. Ok back to the metaphorical pieces. They all fit together. Knit together. But when we discover a void in our hearts, in our minds, in our bodies, in our lives, we like to cram the wrong piece in it's place.

Krista has a knack for trying to shove pieces into places where they don't belong. The actual, not metaphorical. We're doing this really gnarley puzzle right now where all of the pieces are some shade of green and she struggled with getting just the edges together because they all seemed the same. There was frustration and agitation. And I feel like this is a perfect image of the way we fill our lives. We discover these voids, these missing pieces in our lives, and incessantly, we attempt to cram the wrong piece in its place.

One of our intern leaders painted the most beautiful picture for us at our intern retreat a couple weeks ago. She had been walking on the coast, not the beach, and discovered a shattered sand dollar. It had been crushed by the tire of a car. Apparently, at the coast, random cars are allowed to meander around at all hours of the day. Tangential. All of the pieces were there but there was an imperfection present in the simple brokenness of the sand dollar. We are broken into pieces. Shattered. Scattered. But God has chosen to fill and flow through those cracks. Replenish. Revive. Rejuvenate. He takes up the voids that constitute our missing pieces.

So here I am, this broken little girl, heart riddled with missing pieces. Begging to know worthiness. To know perfect love. To know fulfillment. Falling at the feet of my selfish pride, my shame, my covetous existence. Begging to allow Him entry, allow Him to invade, allow Him the instant gratification of plugging Himself into my missing pieces.

And here I find pieces of peace.

Thanks God, for the silly ways you teach me.

Man Time in the Mini Van

This blog should have been posted nearly a decade ago, ok more like 3 weeks ago...I just wanted to spend a little more quality time with my internies before I let you indulge...

There's something truly magical about riding 5 hours in a minivan with 3 grown men listening to them sing their little hearts out to Dave Matthews, The Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, The Police, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Today is a good day.

Rewind. Sunday afternoon after a short day at work, the interns and our leadership group headed out to the Oregon Coast, not to be confused with the beach, for a little bitty intern retreat. There was lots of quality time had with Jesus by the water, I wrote a letter to myself to be opened in a year, and we bickered and bantered over our mission statement and non-negotiables for our time at the canyon. Twas epic.

My main reason for writing this blog was to introduce you to my new interny friends. They're really great and you will love them. Eventually we're going to get tired of each other considering we live, work, and play together...but for now, we are blissed out.

Without further ado...meet Sonia Danae Malmquist, hailing from Neenah, Wisconsin. I know her middle name only because she doodles it on every scrap within her reach. She loves single french braids, mom butts, and taking pictures from the unfortunate angle. Every time I am in her presence, I can't help but giggle uncontrollably. She's witty, awkward, and makes everyone uncomfortable on purpose. She has a phenomenal voice and sings freely everywhere. She was also in show choir and gymnastics so sometimes she dances and splits for us. It's magical. She's pushing 5'1'' and is the first of The Little Women. We shall call her The Entertainer.

Then there's Ashley Whiteside straight out of metropolitan Georgia. She's lived in the south her whole life. She's been trying to master making sweet tea here in the Northwest and hasn't been too successful yet. She has these crazy blue green eyes and she also makes up a third of The Little Women. She's 5'1'' as well. And she loves to laugh. We shall call her The Giggler.

The remaining portion of The Little Women is Deanna Marie Driscoll. She's also just over five feet tall, but her energy speaks otherwise. She's feisty and spunky oh, and married. You'll meet her husband Darren in a bit. Deanna is from Bogota, Columbia and was adopted when she was around 2yrs old. She doesn't have a proper birth certificate so her adopted parents decided her birthday for her. She is a woman of many voices including that of a chain smoking old man, which is my personal favorite. Just the other day Deanna and I were cubbie buddies. We had to clean all the cubbies throughout all the camper rooms. We experienced a chemical high that should probably be prohibited but as it was part of our job we sucked it up and endured. After spraying the infamous "orange" on hundreds of cubbies to "dust" them, we were undoubtedly a little loopy. Deanna got low. I got high. I'm talking about the cubbies silly. By the end of it all we were making up words, hacking up lungs, and feeling just slightly light-headed. But it's all for the good of the kingdom huh?

So Deanna's husband Darren is pretty legit too I guess. He's already done the year long internship once but he loved it so much he just had to come back for round deuce...and he brought along a wife this time. Darren likes to play with grass and dirt and ride lawn mowers for hours and hours. He's a fifth of the crew that makes campy landscape look immaculate. He also hates having wet socks on. Hates it. Fun fact... I met Darren and Deanna when they met each other three and a half years ago at Malibu Club, a younglife property up in Canada. Makes me feel a little special...and it's magical to watch things come full circle and now I get to spend their first year of marriage with them :)

Then there's Kyle Kuiper from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He's really into photography probably because he's really really good at it. He and Mr. Nick Graves, another intern, have a picture bizz together called AdventurousDesign. Kyle is also a piece of the landscape puzzle and likes to play in the grass. He has an extravagant movie collection that he let's us interns borrow from. It's almost like we he have our very own neighborhood Blockbuster. Oh and he also loves him some Mountain Dew. I witnessed a conversation of adoration between Kyle and Sonia about just how much they love Mountain Dew. Twas epic.

Nick Graves, newlywed and handy man, hails from Indiana and has also done the internship before but came back to do it again with a wife. He likes to fix stuff around camp, hence the job title of maintenance man. Nick just had a birthday and as an intern community we threw him a surprise birthday extravaganza involving terriyaki chicken and a despicable game of dodgeball. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth as people were pelted with countless spongey balls. It was ruthless and let's just say I was pitifully sore the next morning. Oh back to Nick...he's a photo/video guru. Very wise. Very talented.

Miss Stacy Graves is from Chico, California...my lone California native. But she's spent the last four years of her life in New York sooo sometimes I forget she's actually a Golden Stater just like me. Stacy plays the piano and sings and is just too beautiful and too talented. She and Nick got married three days before moving to camp. What?! And

their initials are SAG and NAG. Happy couple. :) Stacy is the Sassy intern. Meaning that she works in the Sarsaparilla, which is our very own sweet shop. Side note, I don't like the word sarsaparilla, mainly because it doesn't sound at all the way it looks, and that's just bothersome. Her maiden name is Book so we're destined to be friends.

Daniel Warncke. 21 yr old from Orlando, Florida. Orlando, not to ever be confused with or compared to Miami. Daniel once told me that when he walks down the street in Miami, he wants to light everyone on fire. Wow. I would say that he doesn't much care for Miami. Daniel claims that everyone at home calls him Mad Dawg and he thinks it's absurd that the name hasn't caught on here in the canyon. Keep in mind, Daniel is tall and slender, incredibly goofy, carefree, and constantly smiling. What about that description screams Mad Dawg? Hence the reason he is known only as Daniel or Dan here in this new world of ours. Dan's in landscape and absolutely loves it, although he's gotten a bit beat up by some of the lawn mowers. Apparently they have personalities of their own, to go with the names they've been given. There's Al, and Doris, and Walker, and the Godfather, and I don't remember the others. Oh and Daniel loves Taco Bell. Loves it.

Josh Ranew. He's from a town in Alabama that apparently is pretty much Georgia so he pretends he's from Georgia, but just has Alabama license plates. What?! Josh is what you'd call a kidder. He kids. A lot. He runs. He eats healthy. He likes to play soccer. And he drinks a Pepsi a day. He's very tidy. We know this because he borrows our vacuum cleaner daily. And he wins the award for the fastest bathroom cleaner. He cleans two in the time it takes me to clean one. What?!

Last but certainly not least is Miss Krista. We joke about how we're the same person. But it almost can't be considered a joke anymore. She's tall. She's active. She's adventurous. She's teaching me how to crochet. I'm teaching her how to run a marathon. We love sweets together. We love puzzles together. We love peanut butter and pickle sandwiches together. We hike together. We run together. We bike together. We read out loud together and we digest life together. So I've never been much of a question asker. Mainly out of fear. Fear of what people will think of me, fear of inadequacy. I should know everything, right? There should be no room for questions in this infallible brain of mine, right? Sense the sarcasm. Every time I have a question, I convince myself that it's not a good one and that I shouldn't ask it. For some reason when I'm with Krista, my questions just pop out. And she doesn't always have answers but we talk my questions out and we've had some of the richest conversations due to questions. Sometimes simple, sometimes complex.

Kids ask 125 probing questions a day. Adults ask 6. Somewhere along the lines of life we lose our curiosity. Or we just develop an inquisitive impediment. The father I nannied for these past two years would, every day without fail, encourage his kids to ask questions and be curious as we would walk out the door to head to school. I would encourage you to do the same. Not to your children, but to yourselves. Be curious. Ask questions. I'm not a fan of the expression, "there's no such thing as a stupid question." There are certainly stupid questions. Just google stupid questions and you will find some great examples. But the thing is, you can't let the fear of asking a stupid question impede you. I know. I've let it for far too long. So now you know a little bit more about my intern community, and a little bit more about what I'm learning. Jesus' disciples asked some pretty stupid questions. But they weren't afraid. They asked and because they asked, we are able to know some pretty fantastic nuggets of knowledge from Mr. Jesus Christ Himself.

So go ask a question. Just for the sake of knowing.

Swollen Nodes and Strong Forearms.

I have a swollen lymph node.

It's on the right hand side. It's big. And it's sensitive. And supposedly this means I'm getting sick. Gee golly, I'm so excited.

I am also experiencing a bit of an over-developed forearm. It's also on the right side. It's due to excessive spray bottle sniping. Soon I'm going to create a tally chart on my left arm and record how many times I fire a chemical bottle in one day. It might just blow your mind....what with toilets, showers, mirrors, counters, baseboards, cubbies, walls, light switches, and doorknobs, I might be incriminated for all the bacterial homicide I'm committing.

So those are my dilemmas right now...as for excitement and adventure...welp...I ventured out into the big wide world last night and I'm here in Spokane, Washington right now...as east as you can get before you end up in Potatoland Idaho.

We got off work yesterday a little after 3. Miracle. And Krista and I hit the open road. 6 hours to Spokane. A little over halfway through our trip we stopped at a gas station...one of the most epic experiences of my life. I go inside to take a tinkle and the bathroom is literally one of the most disgusting bathrooms I've ever seen, yet it smelled soooo good. I'm not gonna lie, I lingered as long as I could just to smell it. What?!

By the time I finally pried myself away Krista had pumped and parked and was deciding what kind of treat she wanted and grabbing some caffeine for the rest of the trip. And here's where the fun starts. We meandered through the aisles for approximately 10 minutes scavenging. I ended up with a bag of peach rings, a 32 oz. coke, and a bag of maui onion kettle chips. The 32 oz'er was only .89 cents. I had to do it. Krista ended up with a black coffee and the biggest glazed twist donut I have ever seen. It was literally over a foot long. No exaggeration. We ate pretty much all of it before we reached Spokane and then as soon as we arrived in town we met up with Krista's friends Doug and Ally and hit up the local Shari's and had ice cream and pie. Doug treated at Shari's. Krista treated at the gas station. I consumed about 7,000 calories without spending a dime. Lucky me.

Krista and I have been joking about being fat kids for awhile now. Let's talk a little bit about gluttony. The word just sounds foul. And it's definitely my vice. Let's just say I love food. And Krista does too. So we eat. Together. A lot. But we run too. So we try to justify it that way but it's still not ok...here are a few qualities about us that might constitute "fat kid syndrome."

You know you're a fat kid when you give directions according to what fast food restaurants are nearby.

You know you're a fat kid when you wake up in the morning after a night of gas station binge eating, and all you want is one more little tootsie roll.

You know you're a fat kid when you eat your dessert before every meal to make certain that you have room for it.

You know you're a fat kid when you eat a glazed donut the size of a small child.

You know you're a fat kid when you drink the equivalent of three cans of coke in one sitting.

You know you're a fat kid when you find that you have chips and peach rings in your mouth at the same time.

You know you're a fat kid when there's a basket of free candy on the gas station counter and you take seven, rather than one.

You know you're a fat kid when you eat an entire boysenberry scone the size of your head and then start munching on your neighbors.

And these are just from this weekend. More to come.

Life is good. Food is good. Go indulge. Eat a donut.