Naptown's Reminders

1. A Reminder of Joy

Over the past few weeks, I have rediscovered what it feels like to be overcome with joy. I would honestly say that this is a feeling that has been missing for quite sometime in my life. I have been happy and I have even seen glimpses of joy, but being overwhelmed with joy has been out of the question. However, through being in Indy and having the chance to really take a breath for the first time in a long time, I have found this sweet joy that I have been missing for so long. 

The truth of the matter is that happiness is nothing without joy. It's funny to think that I have been told that for so long, but it took a period of time without it for me to completely understand it. Now that I have felt joy again, I need to not take it for granted, but instead keep ahold of it. I need to keep ahold of it not only in the times that are happy, but also in the times that are rough. Joy is something that we all connect with happiness, but the reality of the matter is that joy comes from the Lord. This means that even in the toughest times, we can feel true joy if we are rooted in the Lord. 

2. A Reminder of True Community

 Community was something that was completely lacking in my life over the past year. I had a bit of a community in Muncie, but I only partially felt a part of it. I was going through some rough times that I had no one to really work through with me. Since being here in Indy I have not only been a part of one great community, but two great communities.

Going to Indy Metro has helped me to see what church community looks like. For the longest time I have forgotten the beauty of community within the church. My old church had it, but I never felt fully a part of the community. I have felt fully a part of the church since I first started going to Indy Metro two months ago. The group of people that I have met there have been encouraging, uplifting, challenging, and some of the greatest people that I have ever known. It's definitely been a blessing to be a part of a group where I feel like I can be real about life with them 

Aside from that I have found great community in the group of women that I work with at Starbucks. Since being here I have already seen God working in me through them. I have been able to be open and honest with them. I have already walked through struggle and challenges with them since being here. We have laughed together and cried together which is a weird thing for me to ever admit. The reality is that they have encouraged me and they have challenged me. They push for me to be a better person not only in the work place, but also in life. 

3. A Reminder of Passion

I haven't allowed my passion to truly come out in a while. I have felt that it's been stunted by my lack of joy or even lack of desire. I have been afraid to seek out my passion or to even feel it because I know how much it hurts when it's no longer there. Such a typical human reaction to lack of something to not seek it out because they won't want to lose it once it's there. Looking at that now I see how ridiculous that is, but I am human so I am quite ridiculous to begin with. 

Two weeks ago in my interview with Wheeler, my passion started to really be ignited again. Talking through things that I love and care for in the interview. Being open and honest about how excited I get when human beings start to see their true meaning stirred up something great in me. But to be completely honest, this was the question that was the actual game changer, "If there is one thing that you could tell these women, what would it be?" With that question, I felt the Spirit of the Lord come over me. This was the breaking point and it's about time.

My passion was restored as I answered with how my soul longs for people to see their true worth. I desire for the women that I come in contact with (and anyone else for that matter) to see themselves as God sees them. I desire for people to diffuse the lies of the world that are being thrown at them and to rise up and become who they were designed to be. I wish for all the hope that has been destroyed to be restored and for them to see that this can be a hopeful place. That within all of the darkness there is some bit of light that shines through. I wish for all people to see that in all the brokenness there is hope for something greater to rise up. 

It's through these three reminders that God has really pursued me since I have been in Indy. I have truly felt his presence and I have truly been challenged by his Spirit. It has been rough at times, but it has been amazing at the same time. The truth of it all is that I am starting to realize what it feel like to be alive again. It is something that has been so refreshing and I am so blessed by it. I am blessed by this time in my life and most of all by the people that God has put in my life. 

An Unorganized Rambling

We are in this constant battle of understanding God and his permission of sin, death, and tragedy. The question of "How does such a great God permit such terrible things" is something that haunts not only  non Christians but Christians as well. To think that we, as Christians, do not question this is nothing but a lie. We struggle with the same question and we at times do not see God in the midst of chaos. It is purely human nature, we flee and find something to fill the void. However, God is there in the midst of chaos and though reason to tragedy may not be understood we can still find him there.

God hates to see his children in pain and suffering. He hates that sin brings his children into pain and suffering. He hates that sin leads to death and destruction. This is where we, as humans, get confused. We do not understand why God would allow something that he hates to happen in our lives. If he hates it and if he is the God of the universe then why not make it stop? This question is often where we allow destruction within ourselves.

As I was reading through one of my former professor's blogs today I came across this quote, "God permits what he hates in order to accomplish what he loves."Sin came into this world and there is no reversing of that. We are all tainted and we all live in sinful nature, but there is some beauty in that. God permits for pain to happen so that he can accomplish even greater things in our lives and in the world. It is through our pain and suffering that God truly shows up. It is through our pain and suffering that we are humbled and that God shows us that we cannot do it on our own. Though it may seem unfair to us that we have to go through certain things, the reality is that these are the things that build us and strengthen us.

The challenges and struggles that we go through only make us into greater people. If we never went through hardships how would we be prepared for our next phases in life? How great would our God be if he just made everything easy for us and protected us against everything? If we never fail and we never hurt, then we will never learn. We must not look at this with the idea of God bringing on hardships in our lives, but instead in the light of him allowing us to go through them.

To know this and to practice this mindset are two completely different things. I know that God is there in the midst of chaos and I know that my struggles will help me later on, but it doesn't make it any easier at the time. It still brings on confusion and it still hurts, but I know that there is beauty in the end of all of it. I know that when I get through it that there will be something that comes from all of it and all I can do is press on. With that being said, here's to pressing on in 2013 and continuing to find the beauty of God's plan even in the darkest hours. 

Naptown's Life Lessons

Since living in Indy, I have been challenged extremely by what grace really looks like in my life. I have grown to understand that there is such a thing as grace, but it gets a little blurry when I continue to fall into the same rut. As a human I know that I will fail and that there is grace, but even so I am not always convinced by the concept.

I have always been mocked by my friends about the way that I challenge myself on small things. I challenge myself in illogical ways that will only bring me to my failure. I don't start small and build up, but instead I go to the extreme. This has been something that I have always done mainly because I feel that if I don't set the bar too high I won't actually try to accomplish it. It's not a challenge if the bar isn't high enough. This issue of mine has seemed to seep through on a much larger scale over the years, however. It's no longer a challenge of not saying a specific phrase for a month or not being sarcastic for a day, but has transferred into personal goals of building my character.

This idea of unrealistic challenges is not something that I would say is necessarily a bad thing, but it has to be handled properly when dealing with real life. I am a person who wants to continually challenge who I am because I know that there is always room for growth. If I am not growing and becoming more like my creator, then I am clearly not living out the life I am supposed to. I see these flaws in myself that I need to fix and then I attempt to do so. I make unrealistic challenges to myself because I have conditioned my mind to only think in that way. After this, I fall short and feel like a complete failure. With that failure comes confusion, pain, and the challenge of understanding grace.

With humanity comes failure and I am fully aware of that, but it is hard to hear truth within failure. Any person who grew up in a church that spoke the true Gospel knows that we all fall short and God gives us grace. However, knowing is nothing without understanding. Grace is a beautiful thing once we learn how to let it cover us and then to grow from it, but it's not always that easy. For me, failure paralyzes me and all I can believe are the lies thrown my way. I can't move on and move forward because I allow myself to believe that I do not deserve the grace that is given to me. I allow room for conviction, but no room for grace and healing.

The beautiful thing about God is that even in our greatest disbeliefs, he doesn't give up on us. The reality of the matter is that I am human and I am going to fail. I am going to make the same promises and say that I will change, but I know that I will fall short sometimes. Even in those failures, I know that God is still there and he hasn't given up. His grace will continue to pour out on me, but it is what I decide to do with the grace that is poured on me. I can either move forward and let it change me or I can continue to be in this contentment of failure. God's pursuing me on this and though I am scared, I am also excited to see where it goes.

The "I'm Fine" Dilemma

The New Year often brings in a "new you" mentality amongst most people in the world. It's a new year, a time to become that person that one has always dreamed of. It's the time to become a better person, a more fit person, a more adventurous person. However, most people make unreasonable goals that cannot be achieved and often times fail at whatever goal is set out to achieve.

Typically, I am not one to set up New Years resolutions for myself. Not that I have something against people doing it, but more so because I don't have a strong desire to do so. I have a lack of motivation in making a major goal for myself to accomplish just because it is a new year. However, as of recently, I have decided that there is one thing that I do not want to carry on into 2013. That one thing is something that I would like to call the, "I'm Fine" Dilemma.

The need to always be fine is the inability to give up whatever is not making a person "fine" or even better than that, "good." This inability is not always a conscious decision, but typically is not knowing how to do so. Whatever it is that cripples a person has most likely been doing so for his or her entire life and in that case it is hard to see a solution. It has become a part of life and has brainwashed it's way into normal. 

The other side to the inability of surrendering this burden is not being able to give up control. Being in control of the situation and taking matters into one's own hands is a comforting feeling. If things do not go well, there is no vulnerability involved, just logical explanations. No one else is in charge and there is no one else to converse with about the topic. The only response needed is, "I'm fine" and time to move on. 

The "I'm Fine" Dilemma is something that I have struggled with my entire life. I want to be real with people, but at the same time I do not want to be a burden so my response, "I'm fine. It's fine. No big deal." The reality of the matter is that it is not fine and I am not fine. In order to truly move into 2013, I need to discover what makes me not fine and what I really need to deal with. 

In John 5:7, Jesus asks a paralyzed man a simple question, "Do you want to get well?" The man's reply is, "I can't, sir." While reading this, I get a bit confused. This man had been lying there for 35 years. He has not moved from that spot, he is looked down on, and is not a considered a valid part of society. And even within that, he said that he could not be healed? He knew nothing else than where he was at. He had nothing within him that thought that healing was even a possibility. He was simply, "fine."

I have been asked this same question, "Do you want to get well?" and I have responded in the same way, "I can't." However, this is something that I want to leave in 2012. The reality of the matter is that if I ever want to look like my God, my creator, I need to admit that I am not fine. This year is the search of what makes me not fine and how to allow the Lord to make me well. In order to do this, it is to be real with those around me and to be honest. I am not well, but the Lord is going to make me well. 

Fearless

I don't normally talk about spiritual warfare with my friends. It is not because I don't want to, but it is more so because I don't feel that they want to. I suppose that it comes down to beliefs and understanding of it and I don't want to step on anyone's toes. This is odd for me as I am a very honest person on many topics. The other night I was sitting in a bar getting to know someone who I have known for many years and this conversation topic came up. It is funny, first of all, how God works and also who I was having this conversation with. 

My understanding of the spiritual realm comes from when I was in high school. My friends favorite pastime was to go "ghost hunting" in abandoned houses. To most high school students this was a thrill to go somewhere that they weren't supposed to, but to me it was an invitation to darkness. As time went on, I started to realize that if we were going in order to be terrified, the devil would use that to his advantage. I knew that through fear I was putting myself in direct line of spiritual battle. I was opening myself up to all sorts of attacks from the devil.

Though I started to understand the spiritual realm and warfare during high school, it never became much of a conversation topic. There were always those random times when it was brought up and I chimed in, but other than that it stayed hush hush. It doesn't make sense to me that we don't talk about it more as we live in the middle of a warzone. We talk about our struggles and sins, but completely disregard the outside forces that are fighting us. We make sense out of demons that people see or the oppression that is heavy on people as they can't sleep at night. We admit that there is bad in the world, but when it comes to the army that is rising up against us, it becomes a difficult conversation. 

The reality of the matter is that there are forces out there. There is something that we are fighting against and we should not just ignore it. We ignore it because ignorance allows us to get by without having to fight. We don't have to deal with something that "we don't know" is there. We are called to fight the battle and to live our lives in the name of the Lord. By not ignoring the fact that there is indeed a spiritual war going on, we are becoming tools of the devil. He wants us to be ignorant to it as he can do his best work in ignorance. It is our call to rise up and take this on. We should be open, willing to talk, and ready to come together as a body to fight against it. 

Fear is of the devil and to live this life in ignorance is showing that we are fearful. The truth of the matter is that the war has already been won. We have been shown how this all goes down in the end and that is how we should fight. We should fight with confidence that the Lord has already taken this all on. He has already won this for us, it is our job to now step up. It is funny how God brings on conversations like this through the most random people. This is a conversation that I don't have with my closest friends because I am nervous to, but I can talk to someone who I barely know about it. It is funny how he stirs up things in us through the most random situations. 

Voice of God

The voice of God is always an interesting topic to talk about with others. As I have been in this transition phase of life, the voice of God has been more intriguing to me than ever before. The main reason for this is because I want to know what the next step is in my life. I want to hear God's voice and know where I am being pointed. However, this has been a constant battle within in my head as I am trying to understand what God is saying to me or what his voice sounds like. It all hit me yesterday as I was sitting in church and listening to the pastor speak about the voice of God. We have it so misconstrued sometimes and we aren't really listening.

First of all, it is so easy to fall into the trap of spending too much time on how to hear God's voice instead of listening to God's voice. This is a device that the devil likes to use as God starts to speak to us. We think that God is being silent because we are searching for how to hear his voice, but the reality of the matter is that we need to just listen. None of us hear God in the same way and we don't even always hear God in the same way. God is speaking, it is just a matter of listening.

Aside from the problem of how to hear God's voice, we are trying to hard to interpret what he is saying instead of just following his directions. The truth is that sometimes we just don't want to hear what God is saying. We want to find another meaning in it or we want to go in another direction. The biggest reason behind this is because we are afraid of what might happen if we follow his direction. We don't want to be pushed out of our comfort zone because it might lead us down a road that we are not willing to take. This leads us to "not hearing" the voice of God. 

We tend to forget the fact that we already know the voice of God. It is the same voice that called us to follow him. It's the same voice that called us his children and offered a place in his home for us. It's a familiar voice that we all know but often forget when life gets crazy and hectic. The reality of the matter is that in order to hear the voice, we must be close enough to the person is speaking. In order to have a relationship in which the voice can be clearly heard, it is important to spend intimate time with the Lord. The reality of the matter is when life gets crazy and busy it is easy to put that relationship on the back burner. When this happens every other voice gets much louder and it is those voices that we hear.

God does not stop speaking contrary to popular belief. In order to actual hear him, we have to actually be listening. The truth of the matter is that when we are searching, it is easy to forget how to hear his voice. It is easy to do what we want instead of following his plan. It is easy to forget what his voice sounds like. It is knowing these things about ourselves and then changing them that will help us to hear God's voice. God is speaking, he wants us to hear him and it's our choice to do so.

A Continued Lesson

Over the last few weeks, I have started to understand my fears. I come off as a pretty confident person or so I like to believe. Nothing really scares me, I am willing to do anything, and to be honest I am ready to go anywhere and do anything. However, as these last few weeks have come straight at me, I realize that I am not that person. As I am in this phase of life, a college graduate working at Starbucks, I have felt my confidence starting to dwindle down.

I have a degree and for the past year, I have been working with that degree. However, the place that I have been put in has not allowed me to really see that. I feel like the fact that I work so much at Starbucks makes me feel like I have done nothing. I am constantly attacked with the thoughts of rejection as I am only a barista in Gas City, Indiana. The reality of the matter is that no matter how many times I hear the truth, the lies are so much louder. It's this fear of amounting to nothing that has got me stuck in a rut.

When in this position, I feel like the best decision to make is to run away. Not literally...my friends won't let me do that, but to retreat from the current setting that I am in. It is necessary to take a break from my (pointless) life and go to a place where I can clear my head. What better place to do this than Chicago, Illinois? I have spent the last couple of days with no agenda relaxing at my adopted parent's apartment in the city. It is through this break that I have had the chance to really hear out the truth that I need to hear. More so, hear out the truth that I have been speaking to people.

As graduates, we fall into this place where we don't feel accomplished if we are not where we always pictured ourselves to be. As Christian graduates, we continue to say that we will go wherever God wants us to, but deep down have a plan of our own. We have an idea of where we want to go and what we want to do and if that is not where we are, we have failed. We lose confidence that we will become anything because we our life is of no significance to us. We aren't changing the world and aren't accomplishing major goals. Our main purpose in life is to work, make money, pay bills, repeat. This isn't the ideal life that we painted for ourselves.

However, it is all based on perspective. My friend Sarah Tabb can assure you that I do love talking on the topic of perspective. From my perspective, I should be out there doing something crazy and living life in a big city or another country. I should be changing lives in crazy ways and having an incredible impact on those around me. My gifts should be put to use in a completely different setting than I have been cursed with for the past year. This life that I have lived was never on my radar nor did I ever wish for it to be my life.

However, this is merely my perspective on my life. When looking through the eyes of God and others who have surrounded me over this past year I have realized that I have been doing all of these things. Just because I have lived in Muncie, Indiana doesn't mean that I haven't led a crazy life. It doesn't mean that I haven't lived in a completely foreign environment. It doesn't mean that I haven't changed lives or had an impact on the community around me. The truth is that God has worked through me and has done crazy things in me and through me. He has challenged me in ways that I never could imagine happening in such a dull place as Muncie, Indiana.

What I am trying to get at is that what we are doing may not seem magical or the most important thing in the world, but maybe we are just looking at it the wrong way. When things get so normal and comfortable, we forget what we are doing. We forget what God is doing. The truth is that we need to step back and really see what God is doing. We need to step outside of ourselves and see things in a new light.