Sometimes, Lord
I see you walking
and I don't know what to say

Because I'm afraid what you're going to ask me next
Give up my life, my family, my love
All for you? Is it worth it? What will you say,
this time around, My Lord my God my Jesus?
Son of Man and Son of God? Will you make my tree
wither because I'm not bearing fruit? Will you ask yet more
of me - not a little fruit but much? Are apples red because they're
born through blood?

It'd be nice to skip it all, Lord.
Skip forward, fastforward, rewind back to the very beginning,
go to the end when we were happy, when we will be happy again,
there in Eden, in no-dark, Lord, but only You.
Say it didn't happen. This life. With its dark cartwheels
and its endless tricks. I'm afraid, Lord. Don't want to let go.
Don't want to give in. Isn't is simpler
to just be
Selfish?

Of course it is. But I wasn't selfish when I died on the cross,
you reply, and for better or for worse it's done, you're saved
from an eternity of hellfire so you're just gonna have to deal with it.
A lifetime of struggle then an eternity of peace - you choose. Is it worth
it? O Child of mine - is it worth it? Am I worth it? Answer as you look in my face.

But Lord, it's hard. This way is dark and my feet are bruised from the stone and my hands
from stumbling.
But daughter, I'm here with you, and you know I won't ask of you more than you give - I will
not tempt you or grieve you beyond what it's possible to bear. Trust, and live by faith. Let light in-
without knowledge, make it sacrifice. Just do it.

Wish I had something coherent to say about God.

Had a good(amusing:) conversation with Dorothy today. I'm constantly amazed at the glory and variety of God's creation. She's an amazing and very unique person and I'm glad to know her. :)

Having one of my bouts of madly missing home. Dorothy asked me today about New Guinea and the second sentence that came out of my mouth was "I miss it". That's never happened before. I, like a good number of MKs(and PKs, for that matter) have a love/hate relationship with the land of my upbringing, and I don't generally talk about my feelings about it to people either because it's complicated and most don't really understand, particuarly if you've never lived overseas. But maybe I'm starting to deal with the dichotomy of a childhood in a land I'll never fit in and a current life in a land that will never be home. I finally put up pictures on my wall, something I was never able to due before because it simultaneously made me sad and the life depicted there seemed so distant, like a dream. Increasingly, however- the longer I'm away from it - it comes back more and more vividly. When I first arrived back in America, I think I subconsciously expected it to be yet another temporary sojourn in the land of my birth - life in the U.S. has always had an expiration date on it in my experience. I enjoyed it greatly, but it seemed on some levels like a vacation or an alternate reality - not here, not real. I think it took a good two years of living here for the reality to sink in that I'm not going back, that here is really where I am now. I still feel unsettled sometimes. Uprooted, cast adrift on the winds and waves, wondering why I'm in this part of the ocean and what's over the horizon. It doesn't help the confusion life itself naturally creates sometimes. But I'm glad God gave New Guinea back to me.

It's this life now that every now and again seems surreal, a dream I'll be waking up from to find myself back in the 14-year-old child's body in New Guinea. So many memories, and all of them on the other side of the world. I guess it's no wonder I feel displaced sometimes.

Man, how I miss it.

"Kolim nem bilong Bikpela na singaut long em na tok tenkyu long em. Tokaut long olgeta lain manmeri long ol bikpela work em i bin mekim, na tokim ol long em i gant biknem. Singin ol song na liptimapim nem bilong Bikpela. Em i kisim biknem long ol gutpela gutpela wok bilong en."
Aisaia 12: 4-5

God's been doing a lot lately, in both me and the people around me. I haven't quite threshed it out yet - turned it into coherence, articulated the aspects of God's character he's teaching me this quarter. That's what winter break is for - threshing. Which is another word for praying. Contemplating and taking a step back. Such joy lately, paralleled with such confusion. Well, I guess it can't all be roses, huh? There's a reason it's called the straight and narrow path. I keep thinking about Pilgrim's Progress lately. Not sure why. Maybe because it's the way I've always viewed the Christian walk - as a largely solitary, individual journey, in which the individual battles God, himself, and the world. Been questioning that view lately. But I do wish more people had read Pilgrim's Progress. Some great insights there.

I really have nothing more to say. God is good, and life is complicated - a beautiful confusion.

Praise him.

You know how in movies, television shows, and Asian dramas, whenever there's a wedding there's always this scene where the bride comes out/walks down a staircase, blushing, shy, and beautiful in a gorgeous dress, and the bridegroom, when he sees her, always gets this stunned, dazed, "you're my dream come true" kind of look, and fixates on her utterly as if he can't look away, she's so beautiful?

I don't want my wedding to be like that.

When my husband sees me walking down the alter, I want him to see exactly what he expects. Me, without frills or furbelows. Sure, me in a nice dress, with my hair and make-up unusually well-done - but that's about it. Me looking really much as I always do, slightly nicer perhaps, but still a fairly average-looking girl; no beauty queen, and certainly not changed into a stunning beauty by the simple addition of a dress. I don't want him to see me as transformed into some swan. That's completely unrealistic, and it means he wouldn't be seeing me. What I want him to want - and get - is just me. Claire. Walking down the aisle because I love him and am going to commit the rest of my life to him. That should be enough. I should be enough. So when he sees me - when he first lays eyes on me in my wedding dress - I don't want him to be surprised at all. I want him to see exactly what he expects and has committed to - the girl he loves, and knows in and out, and about whom nothing is really changed. So I don't want him to greet me with a stunned look of worship. I want him to greet me with a smile of deep affection, as if seeing me is just the completion of a pact of joy he and I made together, in surety and trust in God. I want everything to be understood, nothing to really be that new. It's really quite simple, the act of marriage - highly dangerous, as most simple things are - but simple. No revelations. Only him getting me and me getting him. Under God. In love.

So when I walk down the aisle - let him see exactly what he expects. That's all I hope for.

"All I know is I'm lost without you/I'm not gonna lie/I could never be strong without you/need you by my side"

This was a really, really long week. A blessed one, but an exhausting one. I struggled - bitterly and mostly unsuccessfully - with a particular sin which was consuming me. The more I prayed, the worse it seemed to get. However, by God's grace I pulled through - my struggles with that sin aren't over, but at least He alleviated it for a little while.

It was a week also full - as most of my weeks since getting back to ucla have been - with spiritual blessings. Not loud, triumphant blessings, but quiet ones that come to me in the small moments, throughout the day and all the time. I am feeling the presence of God so constantly. May He not take it way - it's such a joy. Something I need so much. May I not take it for granted.

I think also that God's timing and the blessings he grants are very planned out, very perfect. This quarter, I see need all around me. Strong people engaging in deep, deep struggles, people formerly filled with joy now wondering where God is, various people struggling with things simply new to them in their Christian walk. Very few of them I can directly or frequently help - but I can pray for them, and a few of them, by God's grace, I can help or at least listen to. Which is why I'm glad that last quarter was my time to fall apart, and not this quarter. Not that I am without struggles - I struggle every day. But at least I am not dealing with any soul-wrenching things, and have, concurrently, more emotional energy(though not necessarily more time:)  to be there for those around me. Everyone falling apart simultaneously is not a good thing. :) For anyone. By God's grace, it's measured out in his portions.

"What I want to ask you is: Would you help me become a different man?"

Ex-Nazi Albert Speer, to Pastor Georges Casalis, chaplain in Spandau Prison, the late 1940s, quoted in Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, page 23.

Found this on a great blog I discovered the other day(thanks to Erick who sent me a link to a gospel blog aggregate). It's called Christ is deeper still and I also love the blog quote - "there is no pit so deep but Christ is deeper still" - this from Corrie Ten Boom who should know since she spent a great deal of time in concentration camps.

Anyway - that is what I want, what I think all of us want - to be set free from this miserable human being that we are, this miserable human existence that we're living, to be lost in Christ and his love. We're not willing to do it on our own - I can't do it on my own - but I"m coming to understand the heart's deep longing for its true home. "Would you help me become a different man?"

It was midterm week, along with about five other things I had to deal with, and while I never pulled an all-nighter and only once got only 4 hours of sleep, I'm paying for it now. One of those things where you don't quite realize that you're pushing it because it's very spread out. But after a week of it, it finally caught up this weekend - I think for Amy too. After another busy day for both of us, in which the morning was spent serving in one way and the afternoon in another way, we're tired. Not as much as we have been - or maybe we're just more used to it now. (such is college life). For both of us we use the analogy of every molecule in our bodies crying out for rest(and for food, but that's another story).

Coming back, I was drained. I sat down at my desk and pondered several options. I could watch an Asian drama. I've always had a tendency to turn to escapism in my life when I'm tired or unhappy. Growing up, it was books. In high school and American life it changed more to other media, as I no longer had to time to invest in books. Asian dramas were certainly a weakness of mine over last summer. But the older I get, and the further I go in my (beginning) walk with God, the less external things satisfy. Contemplating an Asian drama tonight, it just seemed - empty. Because it was. and is. My thoughts turned instead to God, and I contemplated spending some ttime with Him. At the end of a long day, I don't just miss him - I need him. He's the only home I have, the only home I have left. As little in many ways as  I know him, I am coming to learn a kind of intimacy. God is always there, even when others aren't. Listening to Christian music while writing this, I"ve been blessed and encouraged by all of them, with their promises of God's love and redemption and home. "Better is one day in your courts/than thousands elsewhere"; "all who are weak, all who are thirsty/come to the founatain/dip your heart in the stream of mercy"; "the holy and the broken hallelujah". The lyrics I quoted at the beginning of this quote are from one of my favorite songs, Lost without You, as sung by numerous artists but paricularly Delta Goodrem or Jaci Velasquez-
"I know I can be a little stubborn sometimes
A little righteous and too proud...

All I know is I'm lost without you I'm not gonna lie
How am I going to be strong without you I need you by my side
If we ever say we'll never be together and we ended with goodbye don't know what I'd do ...I'm
lost without you
I keep trying to find my way but all I know is I'm lost without you"

I'm lost without you...need you by my side...how can I ever be strong without you?

Keep writing, a friend told me lately.
:)

I'm grateful for friends like these - for those small scraps of words we fling each other, balls of encouragement and acquaintanceship, those small things that keep us going or deepen our lives a little further.

Writing is hard. I wish I had more friends like that - wish that I was a professional writer so that I had more people to push me to do this difficult and always fearful thing. I don't really know what this post is about. Generally, I have some overall theme - grief, or the hurt of the world, or things going on in my life lately. Not this time. So expect it to be more rambling than usual.

I've been thinking lately about many things - joy, grief, the satisfaction we find in God, the abandonment of God...
Marianne Moore once said

"satisfaction is a lowly thing, how pure a thing is joy."

I wish we were more content in God. To be a Christian is not to be in a state of constant self-examination and recrimination and emotional turmoil. To be a Christian, at its best, it to live clearly and simply - and calmly - in the light of God's love. There are endless complexities to living life as a Christian. But the love of God - like all loves, while containing all complexities within it, is at heart as simple as a child. Love is one of the simplest emotions. It simply is. We know and see it and rely on it without having to test and try it for what it is. It's the depth of it we often don't understand. But if we did - if we understood that, and understood the forgiveness of God, how much better and more joyful our lives as Christians would be!

Have Mercy on me, O God, according to Your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgression. –Psalm 51:1

steadfast love. and abundant mercy which blots out trangression. Love unfaltering, steady as an oak, able to weather a million storms, not because the object of its affection is strong, but because the love itself possesses that degree of strength. The steadfastness of God's love is a testament to His character. A testament to who He is, not who we are. Steadfast love chooses who it will love - almost by chance, it seems sometimes, so indecipherable are its methods - and then loves forever, whether its object will or no. Similarly, abundant mercy blots out transgressions. We are forgiven for all eternity. Not today, not tomorrow, not this moment - forever.  Christ has been teaching me the immensity and the truth of his forgiveness lately. I've only touched the brink - but I understand that his forgiveness, his blood, is a living thing which covers me every single day of my life - the only thing that keeps me from the brink, from falling over into hell, where I belong, where the devil would have me. And his blood is a sure thing, because it's based on a once-for-all sacrifice. A pact sealed and set. I'm glad sometimes that I come from a third-world culture. Here in America promises don't mean much. Pacts scarcely exist. Even business deals are constantly broken. In the culture I grew up, promises are made with blood and by the oath of family - you swear by your blood or your family or your most precious possession(usually land) - and by golly, you'd better keep that promise. Not all do, of course - but at least the idea is still there.

When God promises it's an implacable thing.

back to my original thought - to be satisfied with God is one thing. I suspect I will strive the rest of my life for that only. And yet what God promises - and oh the glory - what we will obtain in heaven at least is joy - pure joy. Joy which in its intensity and the purity of this emotion is as far above satisfaction as the sky is above the earth. Joy. Pure, unparalleled happiness. A history professor of mine is constantly mocking the idea of heaven. "A constant Disneyland", he cries, hopping about like a monkey and pulling mockingly excited faces. "how wonderful!" - sardonically. He underestimates God, and completely fails to have sufficient imagination to comprehend the idea of a place in which only joy exists. Joy is like love - endlessly simple and yet possessed of so many forms and derivations we can never grow tired of it. And he fails to understand - joy in its real form is such an intensely sweet and delicious emotion. In heaven, it will be complete. And it will be simple - in heaven we won't even need all those extra forms, because it will all be centered around God.

Sometimes I try to imagine a life, a world without God. In the end, I always realize I can't. I wonder how people who don't believe in God can handle it. Facing a life and particularly death without God, I'd be filled with such abject despair. The world is full of such darkness already.

For you are good to me. What's that song? Vineyard - Good to Me. God is good to me. Not all the time -not my definition of good - His rather. But still, oh, so good.

You take me as you find me. I wrote this a while ago as part of a poem. As Vivian once said, I don't need to be more to be saved. Thank God, he is more powerful than that, and overrides all my protestations of sin and inadequacy and weakness.

"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; and his mercy endures forever" - Psalm 118.

"I will worship You/for You are great and gentle too/Master who sets me free/Kind Judge who gives mercy/Great God who whispers come/Into your arms I run" - more lyrics

My father once said that people try to separate out salvation - break it down into many bits, parts, particles, acts, stages - a sort of ongoing or ever-changing, undefinable process. Salvation comes in only one shining package, and once given, it's done - for all eternity. I am saved for all eternity. It is well with my soul.

I don't remember who said this, but someone once said -

“I really don’t want it all. I just want God in my life.”

That should be enough.

God, let it be enough

and for some reason I felt compelled to include this last, non-christian quote(not sure why since it doesn't even really relate...)

"Sometimes it's easy to feel like you're the only one in the world who is struggling, who's frustrated, unsatisfied, barely getting by. That feeling is a lie. And if you just hold on, just find the courage to face it all for another day, someone or something will find you to make it all okay. Because we all need a little help sometimes. Someone to help us hear the music in the world. To remind us that it won't always be this way. That someone is out there and that someone will find you."
-Lucas Scott, One Tree Hill