Rumor

The rumors from Graham's post are true... we spent almost 24 straight hours together, and we did NOT kill each other. It's a miracle, right? That means the 15 hours of air travel/layovers that we have to endure to get to Europe will be fine. Right?

On the other hand, I am pretty sure I could do some damage with a cam or two. Ya know, if I felt so inclined and were feeling rather creative.

On a side note, I have GOT to teach Graham how to properly ask a girl for her number. He can't even do it right in English... I doubt the facebook message will win over any of those pretty Spanish girls. Though, it may win you over some pretty Spanish boys, Graham, so you might want to stick with it. I promise not to judge you.

Mis amigas and I will just laugh at you when you're not paying attention. :)

From a very sweet connection of Maja's, there is a good possibility that we will be spending an entire week in Sicily in October, climbing to our heart's content. Ciao!
One last side note: I got my camera back last week. The lens broke last Spring, and I just got it fixed. And I have spent this very rainy morning de-rusting my photography skills. And learning how to use all the manual functions on my camera, because it is WAY more powerful than I had ever taken advantage of before.

I hope to be able to take pictures like this once I get to Europe.
White balance, shutter speed, ISO, F-stop, aperture... I am in control now. I have the power.

Just not the skill yet.

Unbridled

The overarching theme of my life as of late has been silence. My need for it, my ignorance in it, my reluctance to pursue it. As I was hiking on Saturday, I was praying, thinking and generally being very noisy in my own head. I stopped and sat on the shoreline for a moment, listening to the waves hit the rocks, and I wondered: Why am I still talking? I had been hiking for 4 miles or so, and I hadn't stopped talking the whole time. I kept praying, asking God for answers, but I never gave him the chance to speak. Silly me.

I opened my bible and read the beatitudes, and one in particular caught my attention: Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. As I said last week, I have recently come to understand what forgiveness really means. However, letting go of that burden made room in my heart for all the emotion I had never felt before. All that sadness that I didn't have room to feel before suddenly had copious amounts of space to exist. It rather caught me by surprise.

Blessed are those who mourn. God does not create sadness, but he does give us the capacity to feel it. God created us in his image, and he is a God who feels. He weeps, he shouts with joy, he is blinded by anger. Can I honestly say I have ever felt emotions this intensely? Not even close. And my bet would be that neither have you.

Because life tells us to rein them in. It's okay to be sad, but not for too long or too obnoxiously. It's okay to be happy, but don't bother anyone with it. It's alright to be angry, but just don't unnerve anyone. Do only what is comfortable, what is expected. But God gave us the capacity to feel as he feels. To love as he loves. To hurt as he hurts.

It is in those moments of complete silence that we realize how short we fall. We know that we are not who we should be. We realize how much our heads distort our hearts. I dramatize, minimize, analyze and explain away every single emotion that I have. Why? I am manipulating, ruining, one of God's greatest gifts.

It is the heart that makes us human. It is our heart that makes us God's. It gives us the ability to love, to hurt, to be angry for ourselves and others. Why do I insist on placing this most precious of gifts into my neat little box? The kind of heart that is fueled by God is unpredictable, wild, and untamed.

God does not tame our hearts, he sets them free.

I spent the rest of the afternoon removing my head from my heart. I let my heart just be what it is, instead of trying to force it to be what I wanted. I embraced the joy, anger, confusion and sadness. Pure and unbridled. Wild at heart.

I felt.

God is so good.

Hiking

Yesterday's plan was the source of much internal debate. I knew that I wanted (or needed, rather) to go hiking for the day. I knew that I needed to be alone. However, I could not seem to decide where I wanted to go or whether or not I wanted to go for more than one day. In the end, I decided that it would be best to make it a day hike because it was a bit soggy outside, and that the best place to do that would be Long Hunter State Park. It turned out to be an extremely wise choice, because I ended up not feeling well last night and was grateful to be in my house.

I am still digesting my thoughts from yesterday, so for now I will just leave you with some photos.

This is where I ended up spending the majority of my day. Not bad, huh?

All You Need is Love

The thread of conversations I have had over the last few days have been anything but coincidence. For those of you who do not know, forgiveness is something that I find easy to preach and incredibly hard to practice. Especially in regards to one individual. For the last few years, I have had it all wrong.

It all started when I was listening to a sermon on forgiveness a few days ago, and there was one simple phrase that has stuck with me. "Who do you think you are?" I found that a strange phrase to include in a sermon about forgiveness, but the more I thought about it, the more I heard its truth. If I honestly believe that "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me," (Gal 2:20) then forgiveness is not mine to give. Because Christ already forgave. He hung on the cross for my enemies and myself alike. God declared that enough. He said it Himself: "It is finished." There is no more that needs to be done. The debt has been paid, the crimson stain washed clean. If I believe this for myself, I believe this for my enemy too.

I've understood that for a while. But on the car ride home last night, my friend posed a very simple question about what God was doing in my life these days, and something finally clicked. I understood that God forgave, but I wasn't ready to forgive yet. I sat back and nursed my wounds, waiting for God to take the anger and pain away so that I could forgive my enemy the way Christ did. But I finally get it. If I love Christ, then I believe that we are one. If I believe that we are one, then I have already forgiven as Christ has already forgiven. How can I say that I'm not ready to forgive yet? Who do I think I am, to demand a higher payment than God? Am I greater than God, that I can declare the death of Jesus as insufficient? The anger and pain that I have from that sin is nothing compared to how God feels about it, and he still declared it finished. Who do I think I am?

And then my sweet friend Kaley shared her heart today about the loss of a friend, and what it means to live for the moment. She spoke with such conviction about not taking life for granted, about living as citizens of heaven and remembering that life is fleeting. Tomorrow is not a given. We were at a work meeting, and we had all brought an item that we felt represented a strength of ours. My strength was compassion. I held my necklace, with its heart, cross and beads resting in my palm, and felt my heart grow heavy. Have I really been living with compassion? What if I woke up tomorrow, and my enemy was gone? Could I honestly stand before God and say that I did everything I could to show Christ's love to them? No. I couldn't.

Because I've been selfish. I've assumed that I could sit around and wait for it to be easy to forgive, to wait for pain and anger to disappear before I chose to love again. I assumed that there would always be tomorrow. My enemy hurt me, so I turned my back on them. I gave up on them. I have kept them at arm's length, for fear of being hurt again, waiting until it is convenient for me to pursue them again. But tomorrow is not a given. How am I loving others as Christ loves me, if I love only when it is easy, if I give up on those who hurt me? I have the answer. I have salvation. I know what they have been so desperately searching for, and I have been denying them their chance to find life because I found it too painful to pursue relationship with them.

Who do I think I am?

Tally

This pretty much sums Graham and me up. It occurred to me today that, along with my tally of how many times I have to drag drunken Graham home, we should keep tally of how often we hit each other. Do we act like little children, constantly fighting and bickering? Absolutely. Do I realize how ridiculous that is? Of course. However, I do think it's inevitable that sometime in Spain, I will stop "hitting" Graham, and HIT Graham. And probably vice versa. But that way sounds worse on Graham's part.

If we started with today, it's Graham 3, Ally 3. But who's counting?

Into the Depths

This pretty much describes my day, in more ways than one. I woke up early this morning after 5 hours of sleep for the second day in a row. It took me ten minutes to get my contacts in, I put on the wrong pair of shoes, and I forgot my coffee. Got into a gold, 15 passenger van and drove to Mammoth Cave, KY. Realized I was wearing the wrong shoes and attempted to hide it, which earned me an extremely dirty look from our tour guide when she called me out for it. Luckily, there was a very nice kid there who had an extra pair of boots that he graciously lent me :) Then, we descended into the depths of the earth for three hours of crawling through dark, muddy tunnels.

Before we left this morning, I prompted our group with a question. And all day, I have been plagued by my own question: What is it that brings light to your darkness? The quick answer is God. And that's true. But my attempt to end the answer at that was thwarted when I came to a realization: I create a lot of my own darkness. More often than not, I choose to hide in and embrace the darkness in my life, because it is far more comfortable than the blinding light of God. And I wonder why my heart is restless and heavy. I wrap myself in ebony comfort, both lamenting and refusing to relinquish it. In a lot of ways, I am the creator of my own misery.

God's light does not brush, persuade or push the darkness away. It completely obliterates it. It is like staring into a floodlight that has been switched on without warning in the depths of a cave. Unexpected, instant, and painful. So it is unsurprising that the familiarity of the darkness is more appealing, when pain and uncertainty are the alternatives. But there is no freedom to be found in the comfort of darkness. Embracing darkness means resigning yourself to it. It dooms you to a life of wandering blindly through the endless tunnels where darkness thrives.

It comes down to a terrifying choice. Choose to remain in the darkness, alone and naive but comfortable. Or choose to obliterate the darkness. It means pain, confusion, and probably some terror too. Who knows what you will see, when your surroundings are finally brought to light? Who knows what horrors have been hiding in that darkness? But that light means you can find your way out. That light promises a day when you will stumble out of the world of rock and mud and darkness. When you will feel the sun on your skin, the wind on your face, the grass under your feet.

It promises freedom.
"I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them." Isaiah 42:16

Luxembourg Garden

This is another one of those really great, beautiful, FREE places that I want to go. Luxembourg Garden in Paris, France. The garden surrounds the the famous Luxembourg Palace, and is apparently constantly filled with French people doing whatever it is that French people do. Eat? Drink wine? Talk? Make fun of Americans? I don't know, but whatever it is, I want in! If only to feel included.


In other news: Graham came close to getting kicked out of 6 hours worth of class this semester....

I can only imagine what will happen when he's on an entirely different continent. I think I am going to take Sam up on her idea: keep a tally or some kind of record (hopefully that includes really embarrassing pictures of Graham) of how many times I have to pull Graham out of a gutter while we are in Europe. It's been a bit of an ongoing joke between us, but there is a decent part of me that knows it'll happen at least once. We'll see.