Wrestling, The Journey of Desire, and Jeremiah

Today during lunch I read the last two chapters of The Journey of Desire by John Eldredge. He wrote about some stuff that God has been really laying on my heart the last few months. I've been running back and forth between trying to always be content, as Paul says he is in Phillippians, and also continually not settling for anything of this world - putting my hope in what Christ has offered me in Heaven through salvation.

How do I welcome the grief that points my desires to heaven while being content in all circumstances? That's the question I've been wrestling with a little bit, and I thought Eldredge put it really well:


As one camp song has it, "I'm inright, outright, upright, downright happy all day long." What complete nonsense! Augustine emphasized, "The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing. What you desire ardently, as yet you do not see."...Longing leads to fullness somewhere down the road. Meanwhile, being content is not the same thing as being full.

Paul said he had "learned the secret of being content" (Phil. 4:12) and many Christians assume he no longer experienced the thirst of his soul. But earlier in the same epistle, the old saint said that he had not obtained his soul's desire, or "already been made perfect." Quite the contrary. He described himself as pressing on, "straining toward what is ahead" (Phil. 3:12-14). These are not the words of a man who no longer experienced longing because he had arrived. They are the account of a man propelled on his life quest by his desire.

...

The fact is, at this point in our journey, we have only three options: (1) to be alive and thirsty, (2) to be dead, or (3) to be addicted. There are no other choices. Most of the world lives in addiction; most of the church has chosen deadness. The Christian is called to the life of holy longing. But we don't like to stay there.

...

The Israelites tried to hoard the manna - and it crawled with maggots. Our soul's insatiable desire becomes the venom Pascal warns of when it demands its fill here and now, through the otherwise beautiful and good gifts of our lives. God grants us so much of our heart's desire as we delight in him: "You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing" (Ps. 145:16)

...

Now making time to grieve might seem strange to you. "But I don't feel grief or sorrow at all." Just because we do not feel it doesn't mean it is not there. Our pleasant experience may be the result of the thousand distractions that fill our waking moments. Kierkegaard said that despair has become so rare not because the human race is doing suddenly better, but because we so effectively push it away. This is the "sickness unto death," to despair without ever despairing, to mourn without ever mourning.

I've found, therefore, that quite often grief has to sneak up on us, surprise us during our day. It may come through a song you hear or a movie you see. It may come as you choose to allow your soul twenty minutes of quiet during your lunch hour. Sometimes a small dissapointment can be the door into a room of grief you never knew was there. However unexpectedly grief shows up, let us accept it as a welcome visitor.

In the last chapter, Eldredge says that when he journals he always leaves a space in the back of his journal to remind himself of the truths that God teaches him to keep him going, this one I really liked:

The meadowlark. The meadowlark has long been my favorite songbird. I suppose to many people it's a simple bird, not really all that colorful, none too spectacular in flight. But I love its song because it evokes so many summer days out in the fields and streams of the West. Because of my story, there is much romance for me in the meadowlark. Its song means summer, hay meadows, long lazy days, fly-fishing. More than anything else, it has become for me a symbol of hope. The meadowlark returns to Colorado in the early spring, and as I've mentioned, that typically means it arrives about the same time our major snowstorms hit. What courage; I'm sure if it were me, I'd wait until June when the weather warms up. But they come in spite of the snow, and take their place on fence posts and the tops of small trees, and begin singing. Hearing a midsummer song almost seems out of place when the flurries are whipping about your face. But that is exactly when we need it.



Seemingly unrelated, after I got back to my desk I read this verse:

Thus says the Lord, "What injustice did your fathers find in Me,
That they went far from Me and walked after emptiness and became empty?"
- Jeremiah 2:5

That makes sense, we chase emptiness, we come up empty! Paul said to the Phillippians:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things

My good friend christinetwo enjoys running in the rain - she says it is refreshing. She tells the rain to "bring it on." My friend Beth enjoys it too - she once went running in a lightning storm! I've admired these two ladies for their tenacity. So today, in light of their accomplishments, I'm going to go...jog...in the...barely sprinkling rain.

Outdoor activities in the rain - where do you stand?

what happened?

This morning there was really bad traffic on West 94. Around the U area, I saw a broke down city bus with 8 police cars, a firetruck and a metro transit van.

The Star Tribune has been no help. What happened??

I'm not a picky eater...

Today there was left over food in one of the conference rooms, so I went in and helped myself. I love cole slaw so I was really excited to see there were three types. I thought I saw hard boiled egg in one of them so I was like "ooh, I'll try that!"

So like I said, I'm not a picky eater, but I took a bite of that much anticipated cole slaw and realized there was an abundance of some sort of former underwater creature in there. Cole Slaw can't fool me into thinking there is no fish in it!! I spit it right out into a napkin.

Love,
Christine

And now for something completely different

I swiped this from Jonathan's blog:

Here's the down low on this blog entry. The idea is to give a new perspective on yours truly by providing images only. I went to Google Images and typed in various pieces of personal info (see below), and selected my favorite image from the FIRST page of results, otherwise I'd still be searching as we speak. Hey, just another creative outlet that I enjoy. Don't thank me, I got it from JR ...

And I got it from JK. Funny how that worked out!


first and last name




hometown



current place of residence



favorite smell



favorite drink



place you enjoy the most

(This was Lake Harriet in 1895)

favorite song

favorite food

grandmother's full name

Sunday, March 19th

I guess I didn't post yesterday...sorry about that. There isn't too much to post about this day, so it won't take me long to catch you up.

We all retreated back to our original vans and headed from Troy, Missouri to Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN. Our car was a very sleepy one. While Tami was driving, everyone else was dead asleep - I tried with all my might to stay awake, doing that head bobby thing. Poor Tami, sorry about that sleepiness.

I lost count of how many times we listened to one of the worship cds that Jodi made for us. It was a good, relaxing ride. Rachel and I, near the beginning, were having our quiet times and felt a little burdened to just pray together. I remember praying and thinking "Rachel is right here, I want to pray with her." That might've been my favorite part of the ride home - just good talks and prayers.

We watched part of Twister, we stopped at Subway for lunch, we even got home in time for me to hop in my jogging clothes and go to Lake Harriet - which was awesome. God let me run fast (er). Do you ever think about how easy it will be to run in heaven? I imagine it will be much easier. I imagine I could probably run for a million years and not grow tired. That's going to be good.



The end.

Saturday, March 18th

Today we started our ascent towards home. Expect a much much shorter entry!

So the day started off nicely with a run. Adam invited Lee and I to go with him in the morning before we drove off. I was a little embarassed because I'd brought a stupid florescent running outfit expecting to go with Rachel at some point, but it didn't turn out that way....Adam just laughed, Lee questioned my sanity, but Jon Dordal said it best:

"You look like you're sponsored by somebody"

So then we showered. OH, this was awesome. I got a hot shower!! I did not take that for granted at all. It was strange to be the only person in the shower area...really strange. I turned on the lights, and then I turned off the lights. Strange.

Then we went and had breakfast, and one of the Iowa girls was telling us this story from the night before. I won't attempt to describe how it happened because I'd probably screw it up, so I'll just say that after going over a lot of verses and talking for a long time with some other women, she came to understand the full weight of Christ, and his sacrifice. The girl got saved. AHH!! She was just glowing all morning, just so excited. She had no idea what she was getting into coming on this trip!




The day went on, Sarah and I hopped in Scott's van and interrogated Adam with questions for a couple hours. Then he took his turn on Sarah, and then me for a little bit. Then we talked about Chipotle (Scott brought it up of course) for about 8 hours. We were calling everybody we knew who would have an internet connection to figure out if there was a Chipotle in Missouri. I knew there was one in Columbia, so I figured there were others. Turns out, according to Jess' mom, the only Chipotle in Missouri is in Columbia. So we were all pretty bummed about that, when all of a sudden as we were driving into Troy (where we were staying over night) I saw a Q'Doba (pretty much identical to Chipotle) and yelled out "Q'DOBA!!!" so we got off the highway and had dinner. It was goood.

Then we got to the hotel and everyone started swimming. Sarah's and my stuff was in Lee's van (who was a few hours away), so no dry clothes, so our plan was just to put our feet in the hot tub. Shot to a half hour later - Rachel and Sarah giddy by the side of the pool, first Rachel jumps followed by Sarah - bright eyed, and excited. I yelled, "SAARAHHHHH, NOOOOOOOOOOO." But it was too late.

Then I told Sarah she had done something very unwise...about 3 million times I told her that. Eeeeeh...sorry Sarah.

The hotel let us stay in the pool area well after it closed because we were still waiting on a few vans and Jess wanted to get...BAPTIZED!! So as soon as everyone was available we all gathered together and Karl went in the pool with Jess and baptized him! WAY TO GO JESS!!

Then some of us played a big game of hearts and watched Cutting Edge on tv. Then, of course, sleep.

What a good day!

Friday, March 17th (St Patrick's Day)

This was our last full day in Slidell. Our team went back to Larry's to finish up the house. Did I mention that on Thursday Larry had brought us mix cds?? I love Larry.

Today the big job was to knock down the ceilings and insulation. My neck was itchin! Rachel was given the duty of climbing into the attic and pushing down the ceiling from up there.

The rest of us finished up what was left of the walls, and tried to get all the sheetrock, tiling, and insulation out of the house. Sarah bestowed upon me the job of knocking down the tiles in the bathroom. We bashed those tiles so hard, my friends. That might've been my favorite job of the week - who knew??

I wish I had a picture of this, but I was knocking out the bathroom closet (with Jim or Seth's help) when this tiny little green license plate came out that said "larry" on it with the Louisiana logo "sportsmans paradise" written at the top, just a miniature little license plate. It was wedged in between some wood in there! So I brought it out to Larry, and wow, I did not expect the reaction he gave! He couldn't believe we'd found it. I guess it was his old bike license plate from when he was a little kid, a good 40 years ago. It must've gotten wedged into that closet a long long time ago. This really brought home what I think Seth or Jodi had said earlier in the week - that these people have resigned to the assumption that absolutely nothing from their past is going to be salvaged. So when stuff shows up (like those little figurines from wednesday, or an unruined copy of his favorite book, or this license plate), it's like it's brand new to them. You could tell that Larry was taking nothing for granted.



I loved how the day ended. There were two other teams working in different locations. There was Scott's team that was working on someone's house and then there was the team that was working at Rose's house. They finished up around noon or a bit later so they all came over to our house for the last few hours (everyone but Jess and Karl) so our whole team, sans J & K, got to work together as a giant team for the last few hours! There were people inside trying to tile the bathroom floors (impossible, Larry said not to worry about it, but in the process of trying to get it done, Lee hit his finger really hard twice with a sledgehammer) and clean up the rest of the house. There were people in the toolshed trying to get stuff out of there. There was Scott, who had shimmied his way up this mongo tree and was cutting it down bit by bit. There was a team that was helping Scott. There was a team consisting of Will, who was videotaping Larry for his documentary. It was just an awesome sight to see everybody gather together and take on different roles to serve Larry as a team!

Remember that house I posted pictures of on Wednesday? Here it is now:

And speaking of hitting your finger really hard with a sledgehammer...

This is the blood blister that Adam got after he hit his finger really hard de-tiling the kitchen. I honestly don't know how it managed to form itself into that shape. In the car he was ready to pop it, but Scott was like "Don't pop it!!" Apparently it's like raw meat under there, and just ripe for infection. Ouchie.

After everything was said and done, we all kind of hung out and took pictures (click on the link to Jodi's blog to see a good one of her and Maren). Here's a picture of all the FTAers present (minus Lee):

And then all the girls from the trip:

After that we made a circle in the street (yes, road blockage...) and decided to close up our week in prayer since we were all together (again, sans Karl and Jess). It was amazing to see how united we'd all become over the course of this week, how God had orchestrated certain people to be in specific houses, how He'd provided us energy and strength to make it through every single day, how He'd kept us safe all week (4 nails pierced shoes this week 0 pierced feet). After all that, it just felt good to lift up what had really been an amazing week to God, and to pray for New Orleans, and the other volunteers, and the Iowa team, and...yeah. It was a good.

After that, a few of us said our goodbyes to Larry, and then we went home.

After dinner we had cake for Krista's birthday (!!), then Tami, Scott, Jim and I went to starbucks, and then we came back and while we were waiting to watch a dvd of the hurricane, Ben and Seth decided "hey let's race on stools:"

Why is Ben wearing that hat, you ask? I must have forgotten to mention that it was St. Patty's Day:

Also this night we had to rush one of our lovely ladies to the hospital because of an eye issue. For those of you who haven't talked to her this week, she's feeling a lot better now! Praise God there was no permanent damage because I just love that girl...and her eyes are what make her see things, so I love those too!

In closing, here are a few pictures:

Here's a picture of the Monday night bookclub girls who were on the trip:

And here's a picture of the whole team:

I think we were all pretty bummed to have to leave the next morning and say goodbye to New Orleans...yeah, a week later and I really wish I was still back there.

Thursday, March 16th

Okay, so on Wednesday the other team went to go work on this woman's house who is a tour guide for the disaster areas of the city, so she wanted to take our whole team out to the most hit areas of New Orleans so we could see the destruction for what it was. We saw some pretty badly hit houses, we saw the levees that had busted, we saw a huge boat that had made it's way into a neighborhood, we saw the swimming pool of a man who had drowned during the flood because his wife's jewelry, which he wouldn't let go, acted as an anchor to pull him down.

Pictures would tell the best story, so here they are:


This picture was taken from one of the levees, the building on the left is Joe's Crab Shack. No renovation has been done to it whatsoever, even the parking lot is as destroyed as it was right after the hurricane. I'm not sure what the red roofed building was before, maybe someone who was there knows and can help me out?



This neighborhood still doesn't have electricity working yet:

We drove through the 9th Ward. Parts of this area are blocked off to the public, and people are still searching these houses for bodies.

This is the boat I mentioned:

This is the pool where the man drowned with the jewelry:

Once the tour was done, we went back to Larry's and knocked down some more walls and cleaned up. Rob had a conversation with Larry about Christianity. Larry told Rob that he couldn't quite get over the works vs. faith thing, but he said he hoped that would be something he could get over soon. Way to initiate good conversation, Rob, wow!

When we were done we raced home and the girls hit the showers because we had to get ready for our team dinner.

Right about now I want you to prepare yourselves for a story you will never forget.

So I was sitting with Alyssa, Lee, and Adam. We had a $10 per person limit. I had my heart set on a bowl of gumbo - $7.95. Lee had his heart set on bread pudding. He was willing to do whatever it took to get some bread pudding with his meal. Then Alyssa made a discovery! There was this feast thing that was $19.95, where you get gumbo, a main dish, a side dish, and a dessert. She said to us "hey, why don't we just get two of these and split it four ways?" Lee's face lit up and said "now that's an idea! For the two desserts we can get a brownie pie and bread pudding!" I was skeptical. My heart was set on a bowl of gumbo - $7.95. Lee started pretty much just begging us to do this, his heart was set on that bread pudding.

Alyssa was game...Adam and I were much more skeptical...then after much prodding, Adam agreed...at that point I could go no further! Yes! Let's do it!! Lee asked Karl for permission, Karl gave us the go ahead and we went for it.

Then the excitement started to build up, I even was getting excited about this! The waiter came over and I asked him if we played out this scheme would it be more food than if we just each got our own meals. The waiter said "absolutely not, you'd eat much more if you got your own meals"

Then Adam says:
"Let's do it anyway!"

So we did it, and we were all pretty sure that this was a meal we'd be telling our grandchildren about 50-60 years from now.

Then I broke a bottle of hot sauce all over the floor.



I should mention that we had eaten dinner in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was really cool to be there because this area of town did not really get hit by the flooding so it was kind of like being in a pre-Katrina New Orleans. We took a stroll after dinner and this guy was playing music with tuned water glasses. He played Happy Birthday to Krista because it was Krista's BIRTHDAY!!! And he made a really awkward joke toward Jon Dordal that we all laughed really awkwardly at, but all of us were thinking "that is so wrong." I won't repeat it.

Then we went down by the river, and looked at the bridge. I was pretty struck by just how beautiful it all was, but at the same time it was so ugly! There was litter all over the rocks, and just gross stuff all around, but the water was still glistening and there were these beautiful exotic looking plants sprouting from the trees. It was a weird amalgamation, you know? It made me really yearn for when we get to go home, to heaven - when all the crap will be wiped out, and nothing but the good will remain.

We went home, I fell asleep in the car, then when we got home, I walked past Lee with his keyboard. I was stumbling, grumpily, to the bathroom because I was really tired, and he invented this theme song that sounds like I should be skipping to it, joyfully, all the time.

Lee also invented other theme songs this night - Sarah's sounds like it would be in a holocaust movie. Jim's is kinda gangster. Will's is very victorious sounding. Rachel's is....just silence.

Then I went to sleep (but not until Sarah had stuck her face in my sleeping bag to talk to me first. I love this girl.).

Wednesday, March 15th

First off, please forgive me if I don't blog this day very well, I'm gonna kind of let myself ramble on this one...

So let's just go!

If there's just one day that I'll remember from this trip, it'd be this day. I don't mean to be overdramatic, but I actually remember walking around thinking: "I'm going to remember this day for the rest of my life!"

So after we did our morning routine a group of us went to this guy Larry's house. We all were piling out of our van and we saw Larry walk up to us and invited us into his home:

His dining room:

His hallway:

In the hallway were mounds and mounds of records and books and magazines. A lot of the stuff was just embedded in the carpet at this point.

The Kitchen:

Larry's Bedroom:

I'm so glad that Rachel took that picture above because it is an image that is permanently tattooed in my brain. He told us later that he'd just gotten that comforter off of ebay a week before the hurricane.

The bathroom:

The water went all the way up to the ceiling fan. Larry and his father Lawrence had lived in this house for 50 years, 50 years of accumulated stuff lie in a muddy sop all over the house. In fact the hallway was still, 7 or 8 months later, a wet, muddy, mess. The smell was just a given.

Our first assignment was to clear the house out of all the stuff. We were to be carefully looking out for any little figurines that Larry's parents had collected. We found a lot of figurines that were still completely in tact! The mud had protected these little things and kept them safe amongst all the furniture flying everywhere.

I should also mention how DARK the house was when we went in - it was just so dark. Rachel's camera has a flash on it, so that's why they look so bright. Look at that last picture of the bathroom - I remember being freaked out to even walk near that bathroom because it was pitch black.

Rachel took this picture of Lawrence's bedroom, and it's a little closer to what the rest of the house looked like:

At first I think some of us thought it would be a really difficult day because there was a step missing:

but it turned out that it wasn't too hard of an obstacle. GO TEAM!

Larry loves Bob Dylan

I looked in his closet and saw more cds than I'd ever seen before, 1200 according to Larry. A good 80% of them were Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan Live from St. Paul, Bob Dylan Live from Kansas City, Bob Dylan Live from New York City in 1978. Everywhere I looked I saw Bob Dylan. I didn't know there actually could BE this much Bob Dylan.

Larry:"Don't worry...I'll get 'em back"

Later when we asked him why so much Dylan he explained:

"I wanted to collect something, and it was between Bob Dylan and the Beatles, I couldn't afford to do both"

Fair enough, Larry!

We got into the back room and started peeling out hundreds of records. The first one I saw was My Aim is True by Elvis Costello. I love that album. He had the promotional copy as well as the real copy. Larry and I talked about Elvis for a little bit. Later he would make us all cds with live and rare performances from Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello (for me), and the Beatles (for Jim). The My Aim is True cover was in pretty good condition. I put it on top of the trashpile so it would still be visible and sure enough he went through the trash and took out that album cover to keep it.

Later in the day Jim and I decided to take a soda break (Larry had provided us with Coke and Dr. Pepper, Seth wanted us to just drink water, but...yeah, sorry Seth). Then Larry came over and talked to us for awhile about a lot of stuff.

- About how much people wanted to live in his neighborhood, and how this house was the kind of house people would buy just so they could tear it down and build a mansion.

- About where he'd evacuated to and about how it took them 10 hours to drive what was normally a 40-minute-to-an-hour drive because of everyone fleeing the city.

- About his mom who passed away a few years ago, and how glad he was that she didn't have to see all this happen.

- About his aunt who lived next door to them growing up, and how when his dad designed this house he reversed the floor plan so that their kitchen window would look into his aunt's kitchen window so his mother and his aunt could talk to each other while they were cooking (I love that story).

- About how his dad would make these intricate bowls made out of these tiny square pieces of wood that he would put together.

- About just how strong his 89 year old dad has been through all this

After Larry and Jim left, I just sat on the cooler staring at the house, I was getting a little emotional (it's me afterall!) and Lawrence comes up from behind me and puts his hand on my shoulder, very grandfatherly, to offer a bit of comfort to me (it's not even my house). Then I just watched him for a few minutes go over to the house and peek in. This guy lived in this house for 50 years. 50 years.

(Thanks to Krista and Rachel for hugging the daylights out of me at that moment, by the way)

Before lunch, I walked with Larry and Lawrence around their house and let them point some stuff out. They showed me the toolshed where Lawrence's Shoprite saw was where he would cut those tiny pieces of wood out that he used to make all those bowls. Lawrence wasn't being nostalgic about it though, he was just figuring out how we were going to get that honkin thing out of there. They showed me the sewing machine too. I asked if Lawrence could sew, and Larry said "yeah! He just hemmed his pants two days ago." I can't even hem MY pants, this 89 year old man just hemmed his pants!

Okay now Lawrence, spit fire, man!

Apparently there's some interesting neighbor relationships going on - Lawrence parked his car in front of their neighbors driveway and Larry said to him

"Dad don't you think you should move that so she can get in?"

and he just goes:

"Bah, she can just deal with it."

Ha! Oh Lawrence...

When the guys were taking out the fridge, Lawrence is standing out there just giving his advice, and he was right every time! He knew just how to get the fridge out of the house, what door, how to angle, all that stuff, and as we were wielding it out, he just says "you need some more weight in the back there!" and he was right!!

Larry talked with us about where he was spiritually too which was cool - he'd taken a lot of interest in Eastern Religions, but didn't prescribe to really any belief. This really opened the door to some good conversation - we were all really encouraged by Larry's positive attitude and his desire to share his heart with us.

At the end of the day we prayed and a few people prayed for Larry, and he came up to all of the people who prayed and personally thanked us. We get so wrapped up in our world of daily prayer that it's kind of weird to see someone appreciate prayer as much as this guy did. Weird in an awesome way. I admit I underestimate the power of prayer at times, prayer IS powerful, and Larry showed us that.

Then we went home, you know the drill, took a shower, ate dinner, had a meeting, went to bed (in our new rooms that Sarah and Maren had set up for us at the church).

Here are some more pictures from this day:

Ben walking through the muddy hallway with one of the trashcans we were using to haul stuff out to the trash pile. All the stuff you see on the floor had become a part of the carpet at this point:

This mop was frozen solid in this position:

Where's the garbage??:

The Wednesday Crew:

Knockin down the walls:



The backyard where Lawrence's garden used to be:

The bathroom (once it got a little light):

Mold:

And of course, Larry, with one of his many Bob Dylan memorabilia (is it memorabilium?):