Bee Keeper

This morning I was amongst a lovely group of people who get up early to laugh and eat fresh strawberries and buttery crumpets and drink copious amounts of real coffee then pray together for this beloved city and our neighbors. Today was yet another in a string of positively gorgeous days; therefore, we had the windows all fully open and the curtains drawn proudly back. Because of our exuberance to get some much needed vitamin D, a bee managed to make its way into the flat and decided it'd be a perfect time to show off its flying capabilities and volume of its buzzing. So during our whole prayer gathering, this bee was flinging itself about the ceiling in a very show-off-ish manner.

I kept getting annoyed at the poor thing until God seemed to tap me on the shoulder and said, "Oh, honey, you do realize that bee is you...."

Both in my prayer life and while trying to practice meditation, my mind is JUST like that bee. I am zooming around at 100 mph and show no signs of stopping--even for God. Throughout the day, my mind is just roaming over my to-do list or pondering one person I care about to another...but never He who I love most. During worship, my mind quickly starts to flutter about the ceiling and drag in where I left my cell phone and if my apartment is locked. During prayer, my mind buzzes on and on about that latest episode of SKINS and if I should call my mom since I haven't in over a month and whether or not I would look good in canary yellow shorts.

One of the fruits of the Spirit is self control, and holy crap does that one directly apply to my bee-like mind. As we continued on in the morning prayer, we repeated a few beautiful phrases about all the different parts of ourselves with which we love God. My thought process went a little like this as the whole group was speaking out loud:

I will love God with all my heart... YES! I got that one! I'm a hopeless romantic. Reeeeaaally big, sloppy lover when it comes to the Lord. I could go on for ages about God's love. In this jacked up world?!? I can only cope BY loving God and also accepting His love. Basically the Bible is one big romance novel between the Trinity and humanity!! YESSS LOVE IT!!!! Boom. Givin' my heart to Him.

I will love God with all my soul... NAILED IT! My soul is as strained and shredded as it has ever been in my whole life. So, let's just say, I turned that one over to the Big Man Upstairs a looong time ago. My soul felt like a weeping willow for ages and ages. I give Him my soul every day or else I would've committed suicide a long time ago! *awkward internal laugh* Good thing no one can hear these thoughts anywho....

I will love God with all my strength... Really? Is that even an issue? I'm kind of a pansy anyways so I don't really understand how this applies to those of us who aren't Schwarzenegger...but, hey, I'll go ahead and say it. Jesus, you can have all of my puny little blond woman strength! Actually, wait, I am strong aren't I? God, you spent the past six months teaching me how I can be strong because I'm reliant on Your strength--which never fails. Oh....I almost forgot about that lesson...well, this is awkward...OK YOU HAVE ALL MY STRENGTH! Whooo nice save.

I will love God with all my mind....Shit.

The rest of my thoughts basically deteriorated from there on out as I realized how my mind wanders far from God even when He is trying to pull me closest to Him. I become obsessed with thoughts that do anything but help me focus on the joy and peace of the Spirit. I have very little control when my mind begins to drag me down into the dark, scary pits which rehashes every painful memory and my own soul's ugliness for all it really is. Or, on a lighter note, I have very little self control when my mind begins to uplift me way higher than I deserve; thus, I'm walking around like a proud, self absorbed jerk.

It's very hard to love God with all your mind. We want to focus on so many other things than Him. We are bees fluttering about, making all kinds of noise and bumping into a hard white ceiling that's never going to give no matter how much we slam our tiny bodies into it. There's nothing wrong with having thoughts that aren't 24-7 "religious." The danger is when we have no self control over those thoughts; not to mention, when our mind can never sit still and focus on God's goodness or the things He may be trying to say to us.

So I've decided to become a bee keeper (metaphorically). God gave us the mind and our intellect--we should use it! However, learning to keep the bees in check is the tricky, mature thing. Thank goodness we love a God who is so patient and gracious towards us...cause in all reality, He's the Master Bee Keeper.


On a totally unrelated note, here are pics from Wimbledon haha :) I love my church community!

We were tickle monsters...be very afraid

Breathtaking

Sometimes we have these moments where we just look out at things and say, "Damn...life is good."

I've had my fair share of those moments this past week. Life is suddenly bursting at the seams with beauty and laughter and surprises and mistakes and lessons learned and lessons ignored and adventure. In some odd version of an American coming of age story which I'm sure Salinger would enjoy, I have finally stumbled upon the fact that this literally is the time of my life. Here I am, in my youth, living my dream in all the non-cliched forms of that phrase. I'm startled to blink since I may open my eyes and find myself thirty years down the road looking back on these gloriously crazy times.

Right now is a gift God's given you. Right now is the time of your life. Don't let it pass you by. I was a fool once to think my life had somehow ended or that there wasn't better things yet to come.

Look out at your life and allow it to take your breath away.

The ever so gorgeous Edinburgh

At the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Eternally a sucker for good smelling books

The view from the top of Arthur's Seat

I just drool over the architecture of this city

Three's the charm?

Courtesy of Roo Inn's Photography

Red White N Blue, Baby

Happy 4th of July!! MURRRRICAAA!! In all seriousness, I was so blessed to be born in a free and prosperous country. And as much as our lovely land is filled with problems, we should never take for granted its blessings nor the people who died to achieve such things.

Even though I'm across the pond, today was absolutely gorgeously celebrated and filled with friends, ministry, God's grace, an ice cold coke, and a good book.... and also some tiny red bugs which I thought were cute lil friends until I realized they were baby spiders aka NOT my friends.

Enjoy my favorite rock n roll song bout the beautiful red, white, and blue. Love and laugh today!

I had to get a pic to gush bout the lovely weather here! Thank you, mother England :)

Pilgrimage

I've been considering the idea of pilgrimage quite a lot this past month after doing a wee bit of traveling within the UK as well as having my birthday (wohooo I'm a big kid now in both European and US culture!) this past week. My weird tangents and train of thoughts all bubble down to a simple idea: every man's life is a pilgrimage. We take a journey filled with God only knows what--no joke intended--until the final destination of passing away into another life. However, when referring to heaven I honestly would shy away from using pilgrimage imagery for a pilgrim implies the hard, dusty foot traveled way of this life...which doesn't really suit any talk of living in perfect harmony with God and man that will be the absolutely unimaginable experience we have in heaven. So what's better imagery for that? Fat cheeked cherub babies carrying puny cupid arrows? Meh. Not my style. That's just as unsuitable as pilgrimage imagery.

One of my absolute favorite musicians in the whole world, Brooke Fraser, created an entire album off the basic idea of pilgrimage. She says that all people go through this world marking the land and territories with their own flags. As people die or move away, new life is brought into the land and new flags are raised. I think this is stunning, and will simply not go on about how much of a genius she is because then I'd have to be wiping some drool from my keyboard. Her concept has really resonated with me as I've met such an array of characters throughout the UK, as well as even just being introduced to vastly different landscapes that seem to tell their own stories of pilgrimage even though they never move.

So where does that leave us? If we know that life is a pilgrimage, it implies that the road may be rocky, mountainous, vast, lonesome, packed without air or elbow room, breathtaking, smelly, boring, dull and grey, colorful, joyful, or even simply stir nearly nothing in us at all. I think the ideal is to focus less on where your pilgrimage currently is, for there will always be a swift change around the corner. Rather, I'd like to see what pilgrims are traveling alongside me. For after all, if we are all headed to the same destination and we all are constantly being tossed by our surroundings, I think it's quite fitting that we should support and love one another along the journey. It makes perfect sense why the greatest commandment after loving God with your whole heart is to then love your neighbor. God knows we are His pilgrims, facing one hell of a road ahead. So for this month, I'm learning to thank Him so much for the people He brings alongside us.

Pilgrim God,
our shoes might be filled with stones,
our feet are telling us we have walked,
our faces are marked with the fresh air.
As we arrive may we know Your presence
in us and our companions
just as we met You
in the journey of our pilgrimage. Amen.
~Southwell pilgrimage Anglican prayer

The Road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can, pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.
~J.R.R Tolkien

Liverpool

Southwell diocese

Favorite old man! With his barn owl named Kim and lil white dog named Lucy

In another life, I'd want to be a woodland fairy. I admit it!

Found a lover's lock with my initials :) thanks for that, Liverpool

English summer nights are quickly stealin my Southern heart

Johnny Cash

This title is a wee bit misleading because this post has very little to do with our beloved Johnny Cash. He serves more of an inspirational than topical role. So here is the tale of how I arrived in a foreign European city and played a show in the local music scene within a week of me being there. I can feel the suspense building!! Dun dun dunnnnn....

I had been out with one of the church families exploring a cycling festival. Naturally, men in very tight bike shorts and BMXers with crazy tricks was all good and fun BUT the night got even better. We passed by a cafe that was packed out and stopped to hear the really wonderful musicians who were part of a local music festival also going through town. I ended up staying for the whole performance and, in my foolishness, decided to ask the cafe's music manager if I could possibly take part in any upcoming open mic nights or shows. Then he said, "Ok, you want to play here? Get up right now." I thought this was some form of blunt and slightly awkward British humor....it wasn't. So lo and behold I had to play in the middle of this festival while I was still sick and jetlagged.

BUT apparently these beautiful Brits loved it because they asked me to play another three songs. I introduced one of my songs as my "Johnny Cash wanna be" (because, honestly, every musician would give their right pink finger to be a songwriter of his caliber). This eventually lead to another musician joining me on stage, a waiter coming up who played the harmonica, and an entire bar full of lovely English accents howling away to "Ring of Fire." This was one of those beautiful memories in life that you just want to take by the shoulders and give a sloppy wet kiss to in gratitude for having experienced them.

Then I was booked for an actual show at the end of that week, and got to have this lovely experience all over again! There is something so purely joyful about sharing your music with people for the first time...because in all honesty, a musician shares their soul with you when they play anything they've written. Even if a tune is dumb or a lyric unexciting, that person is showing you a wee bit of their brain. And how interesting that we get to look into the brains of musical people--probably some of the most weird and jacked up and funny and confusing bunch this earth has to offer!

There was a certain strength I could feel filling my lungs when I was able to just lay everything on the table to a packed out room full of people I've never met. What I have been hinting at in the past few posts about finding my song and my voice again was manifested in a really literal sense.

Being completely brokenhearted is not some lofty emotional ideal. You feel things physically. Tangibly.

Very literally my voice was weak and small for so long just as the very color of my eyes seemed to fade to a dimmer shade. I'm sure that room full of strangers had no idea what it meant to me to be able to have the strength to sing those thoughts so loudly...to not feel afraid to speak the truth. To have no fear about my past walking through the door in the middle of my struggle and beating me down to ground zero all over again. Nope! Not this time. This time I could feel strength in my lungs and voice. This time I could maybe give Johnny Cash a run for his money....JUST KIDDING. That's a ridiculous idea if there ever was one. If anything, I'm coming out of a ring of fire rather than going into one.

The French nihilist philosopher Albert Camus penned this: Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été...In the middle of winter, I found in me an invincible summer.

That has been music for me. An invincible summer from within.

A lil adventure in the main Square on the day of the show!

My lovely rommate!

Skaters in the Square