Stage Fright?

I got a little cold feet when putting together this blog (re: since putting together this blog). I started second-guessing if I really wanted to show people my thoughts or make a part of my life privy to an uncontrollable public. I'm still not ready to make it "public" quite yet but I've decided that with all the changes, I should have a space where I'm held accountable to growth and to really acknowledging that growth.

“Forget the former things; 

do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland."

Isaiah 43:18-19

So much of this summer has been a clash of comfortable and familiar, with the planning and talking of incredibly drastic changes. They're coming. Like a freight train or fresh air, they'll happen regardless. And some days I am scared out my mind, but mostly I am excited. Excited to see what God has in store for my life for not just the future, but every day I choose to be present; fully present. It is so easy to gain a rhythm. Which don't get me wrong, is not all bad. I am the queen of scheduling and planning, and in a healthy way it keeps me level-headed. But I am excited to get out of that routine, to create a new routine. I am excited for student teaching, for the last hurrah of college life, to live life with quality friends before I learn how to live life with my very best friend and husband. 

I have such a habit of 'dwelling on the past,' like Isaiah 43 cautions against. I start thinking, all of those 'well this is what happened last time' or 'what if I do this again' or 'this happened then so it will probably happen again so queue freakout accordingly.' But God is going ahead of me. God knows both the good and the bad.

God is doing so many new things 

and I need to be able to recognize that.

I am ecstatic for not only the new things and places, but for the growing. I am (tentative) but willing to share them with the people I care about, the people who support and advise me. Because no matter how large or how insignificant, changes happen. Changes bring about a whole new range of emotions and memories. New things and places and people and experiences are terrifying and exhilarating.

I want to recognize...and maybe document those.

This will be fun. 

Living a Life of Eucharisteo.

"Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world." - John Milton. 

I've recently picked up the book One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp. If you've never heard of or read this book, I highly recommend adding it to your list or getting it as soon as you can. It was recommended to me by a few differing people and I have had it on "my list" for a very long time. I impulsively picked it up at the library the other day and am now wishing I just ordered it. Borrowing books from the library is fabulous, but I am a highlighter...er. I am an active reader and margin-notetaker. That's how I fully absorb books to my core. That, or reflect and write on them. So here works, right? 

I guess I should probably tell you how I started this writing thing. 

I am a writer. 

I have always been a writer. I write my emotions, my desires, my anxieties, my fears. It's not something I flaunt or publicize. But I've come to realize and accept that it's a gift I've been given. Something comfortable, something to be used. I'm not sure yet. I'm not always eloquent and sometimes the way I start writing doesn't actually come full circle when I'm finished. Sometimes I cannot wrap it up in a neat little bow. It's messy. But it's cathartic for me. The way writing feels to me is difficult to explain, but it's easier for me to explain something to you writing it out than by speaking. I might as well just plaster the expression, "I write better than I speak,"  somewhere visible on myself for the rest of my life. Regardless, this little corner of the internet is for my writing, thoughts I am choosing to make public. Something kind of scary for me. But I feel called to display my thoughts, not in a way of performance, but reflection and means of community. Sometimes, I wish more people shared their thoughts. Granted, sometimes I do wish people withheld their thoughts...However, that's another story.

So about that book I was telling you about. In her book, Ann Voskamp writes passionately about a few things. From the very beginning, connecting to the purpose of her title "One Thousand Gifts," she talks about this idea of gratitude and being present and reverent towards all the little things God has provided to us. She says that God grants us thousands of blessings we often miss because we're too busy reading books with titles like "1000 Places to See Before You Die." Her first chapter, titled "an emptier, fuller life" she says,

"We are hungry. We eat. We are filled...and emptied. And still, we look at the fruit and see only the material means to fill our emptiness. We don't see the material world for what it is meant to be: as the means to communion with God." (p.16). 

Voskamp's book is a testimony and a plea of a emptier, fuller life. Her journey causes her to start a list of simple blessings; morning shadows across old floors, bare toes in early light, clean sheets smelling like wind. Voskamp rings the bell to the message we've always heard, but maybe never listened fully to.
But she goes deeper than cries or lists of thankfulness.

"I, too, had read it often, the oft-quoted verse: 'And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ' (Ephesians 5:20). And I, too, would nod and say straight-faced, 'I'm thankful for everything.' But in this counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discovered that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life. A lifetime of sermons on 'thanks in all things' and the shelves sagging with books on these things and I testify: life-changing gratitude does not fasten to a life unless nailed through with one very specific nail at a time."

She addresses this new idea. Although with the roots of these words being Greek, I hardly think it's new. New to me then maybe. Voskamp talks about this idea of Eucharist (thanksgiving). She says that

"in Luke 22:19, "He took bread, and gave thanks." Eucharisteo. The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning "grace." Jesus took the bread and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be gift and gave thanks. But there is more, and I read it. Eucharisteo, thanksgiving, envelopes the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word chara, meaning 'joy.' 

So now we have these three words to juggle; grace, joy and thanksgiving.

I really encourage you to pick up Ann Voskamp's book and unpack for yourself the ideas and insights she has to offer. I've only just hit Chapter 3 and I wish I physically had more time to dive into the words all at once.

So, if you're still reading...

Let's talk about this little "grow where we are planted" deal.

For right now, the "we" is me. I'm doing the growing. I'm doing the reflecting and learning and reading and everyday living. Which won't stop when the next chapter happens, but for right now; the we is me. However, in about a year, I will get married. Through circumstances, I will move about halfway across the country to live life and start a life with the person I happen to love. Hence, "grow where we are planted." This space will shift a little bit. The purpose will include a means to keep our friends and families up-to-date on our growth, what we're up to, and new and exciting things we're living out and working through! This is new to me, but the sole intention for this space is a means of cultivating community. Wherever I/we are, physically and metaphorically. Genuine community. 

The place I/we are planted will change. You could look at it physically (here now, moving across the country for a big change eventually). You could view it emotionally, metaphorically. Everyone who reads this or writes things, and honestly wishes to share is in very different places. Seeing peoples' different views or thoughts or insights through the words they share and the attitude in which they share it, I think, is beautiful.

So as far as the whole "circling around to the start" deal. I want to use One Thousand Gifts and Ann Voskamp's idea of eucharisteo (grace, joy and thanksgiving) to base the growth off of where I'm planted; now and in the future. Wherever that is, physically or metaphorically speaking, it should be the attitude in which you desire to grow.