Youth Group – jj barrows

puffy yellow jackets

I remember being in the 7th grade and someone pointing out a Roxy model in a Seventeen magazine. There was a group of us eating breakfast at Hardee’s before school… I think it was someone’s attempt to start a “Bible study” before school started, but I don’t remember it lasting past that one early morning. When the Bible study was over and the breakfast sandwiches had been eaten, one of the girls pulled out her Seventeen magazine. “Jennie, this looks like you when you get older,” she said. The girl she pointed at was a short-haired brunette who was clearly a tomboy. She didn’t look like the other models, but she was still a model and she was cute in a tomboy-kind-of-way. It was the first compliment I remember getting as a middle schooler. Like most middle schoolers, I was awkward and underdeveloped, but without the obvious potential that other girls had to be high-school heartthrobs.

For example, I didn’t make the cheerleading team, so I borrowed a cheerleading uniform from a girl who did and I had my mom take cheerleading photos in our front yard, as evidenced by the mud-pit behind me…

cheer

I was approached by boys, but only to talk to my friends for them. Advice to middle school boys, or boys in general who are interested in girls: talk to the girl yourself, it will score you mad points not only with the girl, but also her friends, who you will more than likely have to impress more than the girl.

That being said, in 7th grade I got my first compliment regarding my looks, or my potential looks… one day, just maybe one day, way after high-school, I might look like a 90s tomboy model.

I was excited at the thought and wondered how long I would have to wait. One of the boys who overheard the comment being made about my future self walked over and asked if he could see the picture. “Wow, yea, I could see that,” he said, and my excitement grew… until he kept talking, “if that’s true, call me then, but not before.”

Excitement dwindled and the reality of my present self came crashing down on my two-minute long dream of becoming a 90s tomboy model. Everyone laughed, so naturally I laughed too, because that’s what you do when you’re in middle school and you don’t want to let on that you’ve been hurt. Except that it’s not what you should do. Never on your behalf or the behalf of others should you silence your voice and laugh with the crowd for the sake of fitting in. But in middle school I didn’t know that, and truth be told, sometimes I still forget it… because it feels good to fit in, even when it hurts. While it was clear I wasn’t going to be “asked out” anytime soon, I made peace with it by falling in love with the brothers that are Hanson and swearing my love, life and devotion to them. I think most middle school girls devoted themselves to Hanson in the 90s, and those who didn’t were clearly delusional… or so I thought until much too late in life (ahem, last week).

I MMMBopped my way through ninth grade when my five-year relationship with braces ended. I remember the day I got my braces off. I couldn’t stop licking my teeth, they felt so slimy and perfect. It was the first time something on me ever felt perfect. I went to youth group that night and a boy pointed out that I had gotten my braces off. The sun was setting and there was a chill in the springtime air. Everyone was outside scattered on the field in front of the church for that week’s game of dodgeball. Huffing and puffing while trying to dodge a big red rubber ball, a boy ran up to me, “you… you… you got your braces off!” followed by deep breaths. “Yea,” I smiled, not moving so as not to mess up my smile or get slime on my mouth. “It looks good,” he said, followed by the loud smack of being hit in the head with a big red rubber ball. “YOU’RE OUT!” a kid yelled at the boy who was distracted by my smile, and I wanted to attack the kid for interrupting my first compliment from a boy.

“Thank you,” I said to the boy as he walked off the field. “Are you cold?” he asked as he started to take off his puffy yellow jacket and walk back towards me. “A little bit,” I lied given the slightest possibility that a boy might offer me his jacket. “GET OFF THE FEILD, YOU’RE OUT!” the kid yelled again at the boy with the puffy yellow jacket who liked my slimy smile. “HE IS!” I turned and yelled, “HE’S GIVING ME HIS JACKET! I’M COLD!” I lied with confidence and a death stare seemingly from satan because the kid looked terrified. Don’t mess with an awkward girl on the outskirts of middle school when she is getting her first compliment and clothing offer from a boy. She may not be good at using her voice, but when you try to short her on her first interaction with a boy who might like her, she’ll find her voice real quick and verbally rip your head off.

He handed me his jacket, me still uncertain of why he offered it, but mostly certain it was because of my teeth. I went home that night and wrote a thank you card to my orthodontist. Seriously. I have believed in thank you cards for as long as I can remember. Dr. Ross Orthodontics knows what I’m talking about.

All of this to say, to my present self (because I’m forgetful) and anyone willing to listen, be nice to people. With love as the lenses with which you look through, speak truth over people about who they will become, but also speak truth to them about who they are now. Tell people they don’t have to wait to be great one day, tell them they are great now, growing into someone greater. Life is hard and middle school is harder. Kids need to be told they are smart and funny and beautiful and brilliant and fully capable of thinking for themselves and of voicing their truths.

Kids grow up, all of them, even the awkward ones, and they remember. They remember who picked on them and they remember who was nice to them. They remember the boy who wanted the girl to call him one day if she grew up pretty and they remember the boy who risked getting smacked in the head by a big red rubber ball so he could tell the girl he liked her smile. Nine times out of ten the girl never calls the first boy, but she still smiles and licks her slimy teeth when she sees puffy yellow jackets.

Take risks, not by jumping off cliffs or out of airplanes (though sure, do that too), take risks by being nice to people, even if you get nothing in return. Live a story worth telling by breathing life into other people and be amazed by the life it will breathe back into you. There are plenty of mean words out there to stereotype any sort of person you dislike or feel threatened by, but challenge yourself to look for something good, and say something even better. Where I live I always hear people say “send good vibes,” and yes do that, but don’t just leave it at sending good vibes in thought, speak them out. There is power in the spoken word and I think we would all stand a little more amazed at the end of each day if we spoke kind words to even just one person who might not even know how badly they need it.

Kindness matters. It is the fruit of love and it will nourish not only the recipient of it but also the giver. It’s not always easy… kindness, or love for that matter, but it’s worth it. If you don’t know where to start, start with a thank you card. There is always something for which you can be thankful… always… even if it’s your orthodontist from your entire middle school career, start there, and keep going!

i kept the coats

“And when your witness Stephen was killed, I was standing there agreeing. I kept the coats they laid aside as they stoned him.” (Acts 22:20 NLT)

Paul spoke to the crowds who were ready to kill him. He gave his defense, which is to say he defended Jesus instead of going along with the crowd. His defense was good. “I learned to follow our Jewish laws and customs very carefully. I became very zealous to honor God in everything I did, just as all of you are today.” (Acts 22:3 NLT)

Paul was a Pharisee who obeyed the law and took it to the “necessary” extreme, killing and persecuting Christians in his effort to follow God. Somewhere in all of his intense training, he missed some of the key ingredients in honoring and following God.

The crowds were pleased with him when he was doing as he was trained to do, killing and persecuting Christians. The crowds weren’t so pleased with him when he had a change of heart and started letting the outsiders in. The outsiders were anyone who wasn’t Jewish, or in Bible terms, the outsiders were Gentiles. The crowds had missed some of the key ingredients as well, which only makes sense seeing as how they had been under the church leadership that Paul was a part of, the one that wanted to erase the name of Jesus and anyone that spoke it.

On Paul’s way to kill and capture more Christians, he encountered a bright light that stopped him dead in his tracks and blinded him. Unlike most lights, this light had a voice and a name. It was Jesus, revealing himself to Paul. Leave it to Jesus to reveal himself to someone only to blind them. But Jesus didn’t blind Paul as a defense mechanism. While Christians were spared by Jesus interrupting Paul’s mission, it was not a defensive move to stop Paul because Jesus felt threatened. It was an active move. Blinding Paul wasn’t an attempt just to stop him, Paul was blinded as a direct result of a sinful life encountering Jesus, a life that Jesus wanted to be His. Jesus wanted Paul; a blinding truth for such a sinful man.

We see Jesus addressing the importance of a single life to Him earlier in the gospels, “suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” (Luke 15:4 NIV)

I think the road to Damascus, the road on which Paul found himself when he encountered Jesus, we see what it looks like for the shepherd to go after his one lost sheep, no matter how far gone that sheep has wandered off. Paul mattered to Jesus, and so Jesus went after him, not just to stop him from doing something, but to make him His.

It seems obvious to us today, “don’t kill people,” but to Paul in that time and culture and way in which he was trained, he was doing the right thing. Without a real Jesus encounter of course Jesus would seem like a dude with a bunch of dos and don’ts and too much grace for those who do or don’t. Jesus was the worst in the eyes of Paul. And while it might be an extreme example, the heart and the mindset of Paul is not too far off from how people feel about Jesus today, even people in the church.

If Jesus were solely about doing and don’t-ing, he would have stopped Paul from persecuting and killing Christians and left it at that. He would have saved the masses and lost the one. I think a lot of people (without the context or the whole picture) would say that Paul’s one life would have been worth losing for the sake of saving the masses. But Jesus wasn’t just trying to save people from Paul, Jesus was trying to save Paul from Paul. Jesus was trying to give Paul life because for whatever reason, the one life of Paul mattered to Jesus.

I truly believe that when a life encounters Jesus, like really encounters Jesus, they cannot walk away the same. Encountering Jesus might not mean they choose to follow Him, but I certainly think the encounter would haunt them, and like anything that haunts us, paranoia and anger set in over time. I think people who have a hatred for Jesus have either been terribly scarred by the church, or they’ve encountered Jesus in a way they refuse to accept.

Paul encountered Jesus and it changed his life, not just because it blinded him for three days, but because of what it did to the nature of his heart. I think for a law-abiding, rule promoting guy like Paul, what he felt in his encounter with Jesus was love, and upon realizing that he was loved, his cold heart broke, warm blood pumped through his body, and in his blind state he saw his own humanity and his need for a Savior. I think Paul was driven to surrender the life he had been living as a devout Pharisee not because Jesus offered an easier set of rules to follow. I think Paul surrendered his life to Jesus because he felt something he hadn’t learned in all of his Bible training… love.

I don’t think Paul would have been the same man if Jesus met up with him and merely said “stop killing my people.” Even if Paul would have stopped, that would have been great for those people, I don’t want to discredit that, but Paul would have still been a rule-abiding guy without a change of heart or conviction to live from. He wouldn’t have been Paul, he would have been a shell of man with great potential who didn’t make much of a difference. Paul’s encounter with Jesus didn’t just keep Paul from killing people, it thrust him forward to save the lives of countless people, not just in the physical but in the spiritual.

Jesus doesn’t just want to encounter us to stop us from our sin, I mean, sure, that’s a part of it and I think it happens by default more than anything else. Jesus wants to encounter us so that we can finally start living. Jesus wants us to know Him because of what knowing Him does for us.

And so back to the crowds and Paul’s defense. Paul had a heart change, one that involved following Jesus, and the Jews who didn’t believe in Jesus, the very group Paul was once a part of, did not like this… so much so that they, once like Paul, wanted to kill this follower of Jesus. Paul is now the man he once tried to kill.

Paul is being threatened with death and so he gives his defense, his testimony. We all have a testimony of some sort. Paul’s was one of those “I once was lost but now am found” sort. Paul talked about who he used to be before meeting Jesus and who he is now as a result of meeting Jesus. This is the testimony of all of us who have met Jesus, in one way or another. Even having been raised in the church, it is my testimony… I once was lost but now am found. Much like Paul, I understood the rules, but I didn’t know Jesus. I knew about Him, and while I didn’t actively hate Him the way Paul did, my actions might as well have told the story of hate in my heart… hate for myself and hate for other people, which I think is just a mask for hating God.

It only occurred to me this morning just how similar I am to Paul. I always thought he was at a different level than me and just a good example of an extreme situation. I don’t kill Christians, or anyone for that matter, and so in that sense Paul and I are not the same. Fair enough. But this morning I read one sentence that changed the way I saw myself.

“I kept the coats they laid aside as they stoned him.”

Paul was recounting the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian Martyr. In this instance, Paul was not actively killing Stephen, he didn’t pick up a stone and throw it at him. All he did was hold the coats of the men who were stoning Stephen. By all appearances you could have been there and said Paul had nothing to do with Stephen’s death, other than standing there agreeing, keeping the coats.

I thought about this in a recent situation in which I felt someone was misrepresented. Instead of defending that person’s character, I said nothing. It was easier to say nothing. I didn’t want to get involved and I was already in an uncomfortable situation that I just wanted to be over, so I let someone stone this person’s character as I stood by. I kept the coats. I didn’t say anything against this person, I didn’t throw any stones, I didn’t slander or gossip, but I also didn’t do anything. I didn’t do the right thing. And you could say I didn’t encourage it either, but not discouraging is encouraging it. Holding the coats of the person who is actively killing someone else is assisting in the death of that person, even if passively and silently. I don’t know if Paul was yelling or not when he stood by and watched Stephen get killed, all I know is there is enough evidence there to suggest that he contributed to the death of Stephen… he kept the coats. The blood of Stephen was on Paul’s hands in the form of the killers’ coats he held.

And again, while my situation might not involve a physical death, it’s the condition of the heart that is the issue. Just because the times and the culture are different doesn’t mean I’m not capable of the same type of hatred as Paul and the same ability to stand by and watch someone die, be it physical or spiritual, all because I did nothing.

To stand by and let someone’s character be attacked because it’s more comfortable than getting involved is to support the attack. To stand by and watch is to persecute that person. And to persecute that person is to persecute Jesus. Never would I have thought of myself as someone who persecutes Jesus, mostly because that seems so large scale. But for someone who speaks so highly of the little things mattering, it’s in the little things that I find myself persecuting Jesus, which make them really big things. And math will always be right, little things add up to be a really big thing. I have to address the little things, the condition of my heart is at stake, and if left unattended to long enough, my heart is capable of becoming as cold as Paul’s pre-Jesus.

Yesterday, I kept the coats.

I don’t want to keep the coats anymore, but it has to start with admitting the fact that I am holding them. I don’t know where to go from here. Holding the coats was kind of comfortable, I felt like I belonged. Going along with the crowd always feels like you belong, but the feeling of belonging is not worth the life of another person being cast out.

Father, forgive me. May I have wisdom and discernment to know my part in this messy world and the courage to live it out.

writing a book

Hey Friends, family and the like…

I’m finally writing a book… based on this blog.

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reggie june

A few days ago I sat on the opposite side of the street and watched my van rebel against its parking spot, as if to yell “FREEDOM!” and roll backwards onto Pacific Coast Highway. My van has a name, which we’ll get to, but my van’s name is not William Wallace, and so while I can appreciate Wallace’s fight for freedom, freedom is not something I’d like my van to take part in, especially from its parking spot, and even more especially from its parking spot when I’m not inside of it.

I had taken a couple of high schools girls to Encinitas, my favorite beachside town, to get smoothies and talk about whatever might come our way. It’s a longer than necessary drive to get smoothies, but the drive is a sight unlike any other along the California coastline, and I look for any excuse to take a road trip; an affection for the road is something I’d like to pass on to my high school girls.

We parked on an incline and I noticed my emergency break giving a little, but I assumed once we removed our extra weight from the van it would be fine. That is to say, I noticed a problem… my van was moving when it shouldn’t have been… and I ignored it.

The girls and I sat outside of a cafe across the street, and in between snacking and laughing I looked up and noticed a van that looked just like mine, pulling out of the same parking lot I parked in. It took me the length of time it takes to read “God Bless Johnny Cash” on the back of the similar looking green and tan Volkswagen Vanagon before I felt my heart drop into my stomach, realizing that it was my van pulling out of the parking lot… and I was not in it. I barely had enough time to ask myself who was driving my van when it dawned on me… no one was driving my van. My van had gone rogue.

I jumped up as if a fire had been lit underneath me and screamed, “OH MY GOD, that’s MY CAR, I’M NOT IN IT, IT’S ROLLING! MY VAN IS ROLLING!” Thank the Lord above my van rolled onto the highway at a time when there were no cars present, and those that approached shortly after her right lane arrival had time to get over and drive around her (yes, my van is a girl). She stopped with her back end sitting in the far right lane of the highway… which is to say, my bedroom was sitting on the far right lane of Pacific Coast Highway in Encinitas, California.

“My house! Oh God, my house! Please don’t hit my house!” I said to myself, as well as passing cars, as well as Jesus, “Dear God, please,” I prayed and panicked, realizing I might have sounded crazy to anyone walking past or watching as I yelled about my house being hit by traffic. There was a florist outside with a bouquet in her hands and I could hear her yelling, “there’s no one in that car! Who’s driving that thing?” I made it across to the other side of the highway and as fast as I could, unlocked my house, jumped inside and cranked it up. I pulled back into the parking lot, on a very flat surface, put her in park and turned to look at the cafe where the girls sat on the other side of the street, laughing in disbelief, along with anyone else who was sitting outside, including the cook standing in the doorway of the restaurant next door.

The girls ran across the highway to join me and we all laughed as they climbed in, but my heart was racing, almost pounding out of my chest. “I need a second, I need a second to catch my breath and thank Jesus that my house did not get run over.” I took a deep breath and grabbed the steering wheel, “Oh thank you, Jesus,” I said, “thank you, thank you, thank you… that could have been so bad… not just for me, but for other people. Oh, my, God, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Jesus nodded, as Jesus always does, as if to say, “you’re welcome, kiddo”…

After catching my breath and saying my prayers, the finger-pointing began… “Reggie June!” I scolded my van quietly, “you could have killed somebody!” Yes, my van is appropriately named Reggie June. She’s named after one of my favorite football players of all time, Reggie White, and one of my favorite ladies of all time, June Carter Cash. Reggie June is a tomboy with a sweet and sassy personality who isn’t afraid to get down in the trenches… and apparently play in traffic. And even though she’s painted green and named after a former Green Bay Packer, she’s a straight up Chicago Bears fan…

I scolded Reggie quietly because even though it was she who rolled out onto the right lane of Pacific Coast Highway, I knew that it was mostly (if not all) my fault.

It was mostly (if not all) my fault because I noticed a potential problem and I ignored it. I even commented “that makes me a little nervous” when I first set the emergency brake and it started to give way. But instead of addressing what made me nervous, I walked away from it, as if it was going to fix itself. I said “oh well,” instead of taking a little bit longer to park somewhere else a little more stable, a little more flat. To save time, I settled for the possibly of disaster instead of taking longer to find a safe place and a little more stability.

I still can’t shake the sight of sitting on the other side of the street, watching Reggie roll out of her designated parking spot; and if she wasn’t yelling “FREEDOM!,” she was definitely yelling, “I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU!!!” I was horrified, as I’m sure Reggie was, having her rear-end exposed to oncoming traffic. Reggie was in a vulnerable spot, and yet I got mad at her for backing out of the parking spot I tried to force her to park in, even though she gave me a fair warning that she wasn’t safe there.

As I watched bobble-head Jesus have a dance party on my dashboard for saving the day, as well as the lives of many (in more than ways than one), I couldn’t help but think about how often I have played that scenario out in other areas of life. How many times have I noticed a problem, or even just a potential problem, and instead of expending the time and energy it takes to fix it, or the very least address it, I’ve either said “oh well,” and ignored it as if I didn’t care, or said “ahhhh, it’ll be fine,” in complete denial that a problem even exists. How many times have I seen a problem, walked the other way and then blamed the problem for becoming a bigger problem?

What’s worse, how many times have I done that with people?

How many times have I either avoided conflict or given up trying to resolve the conflict because it took up too much time or energy? How many times have I ignored someone’s cry for help because it was inconvenient? How many times have I seen the warning signs of potential disaster, especially with men (in my case), and avoided them (the warning signs, not the men)? I don’t want to bore you with statistics so I’ll just sum it up and and round up… A-WHOLE-FREAKING-LOT!

As I scolded Reggie June under my breath, I knew I was scolding her quietly because she didn’t actually deserve to be scolded at all. As long as I could scold her, I didn’t have to own my stupidity in the situation. Scolding her was a form of blame shifting, and since I felt stupid for ignoring the problem, blaming anything other than myself made me feel a little bit better about not being smarter. But let’s face it, feeling better about myself for a moment wasn’t going to fix the problem in the long run. And in the same way ignorance and denial will never solve a problem, conflict will never get resolved if you are attempting to save face by not owning your stuff (in my case, stupidity… or carelessness, if we’re avoiding the S-word) in the situation.

You cannot seek to feel better about yourself as an end result of conflict and expect to find resolve, especially if you care about the person you are in conflict with and you want them to feel cared for.

Feeling less stupid isn’t going to prevent what happened with Reggie from happening again. Not even blaming Reggie for having a defective emergency brake is going to prevent a potential bumper to bedroom disaster from happening again. Addressing the defective emergency brake is what is going to prevent it from happening again, that is to say, addressing the problem. And if I’m honest, nothing within me wants to address the problem. I just want it to work… without the effort. So much time and energy and prayer and money has already gone into Reggie that I don’t want there to be any more work to be done. And even though I wrote about the importance of maintenance in previous posts, I want to erase them all and ignore the problem, because it’s easier, and cheaper… now. But not later.

While it might be frustrating to have to keep working at keeping Reggie in good health, it’s a lot less frustrating than Reggie’s health giving out completely as she spirals backwards into oncoming traffic and my mode of transportation/house/office space is no more. I’d rather it be frustrating now than devastating later… I’d rather buy a new emergency brake than buy a new Reggie.

And so it is with people, with relationships, with communication, with conflict. It’s so much easier to not work at it, to not try harder, to not fight (if need be), to say “never mind,” “oh well,” “it’ll be fine.” But avoiding conflict is not resolving conflict, and not fighting for the sake of not fighting is still fighting, just with less words, which is what you’re going to need if you want to find resolve, not just the state of not fighting.

I don’t want to pick or start fights with people I care about, but I do want to be able to fight well with them when a fight is called for. Avoiding a fight isn’t just avoiding a fight, it’s avoiding the person involved in the fight. And so while I don’t want to fight, I also don’t want to be afraid to fight… especially when that person, place, thing or relationship is worth fighting for.

I’m learning a lot about life from Reggie, and a lot about myself in my efforts to take care of Reggie. I’m being exposed to parts of my character I didn’t know were there, and parts of my character I knew were there, but tried to avoid simply because I didn’t like them. Reggie is showing me that the parts of my character I don’t like will never change if I keep ignoring them, or pretend like they aren’t an issue… in fact, they’ll probably get worse.

I think that might be why I am where I am right now… not just in San Diego, but in life. I think I have a few defects of character that the Lord has tried to work on before, but I’ve avoided the work that needed to be done because it seemed too hard, too messy, too time consuming; but avoiding all the work has only gotten me further away from being who the Lord has called me to be, and gotten me further away from being comfortable with who the Lord has called me to be.

It’s funny, I now live in a mode of transportation, and yet I’ve never been more aware of my need to slow down, my need to be still, my need to stop running. It’s in my moving house that I’ve even begun to realize that I not only have a need to be still, but a desire to be still.

Reggie’s a big girl, and she’s thirty years old, which is young in human years but pretty up there in car years, so she’s pretty slow. Perhaps this is another reason God has paired Reggie June and I up, He’s gifted me with the opportunity to do all the moving I want, while slowing down enough to realize that I need, I want, to be still.

That might sound like a contradiction seeing as how I also just stated that I wanted to be able to fight… and I do, well, I don’t really want to fight, but sort of I do. I want to not be afraid of fighting so that I won’t run out on the people I’m avoiding a fight with. For as much as I want relationships to be easy, I want to be even more to be willing to work at them.

Relationships require work. People require work. Cars require work.

And love, love definitely requires work… and that’s okay.

May we all know when it’s time to get down in the trenches and work hard…

and when it’s time to sing and dance and play harder…

I think life is a good mix of both… kind of like Reggie June…

like a boss

Well, today is supposed to be the day I get my Vanagon out of the shop. Perhaps I am writing about it a bit prematurely because I’d like to say “I got my van out of the shop,” as opposed to “I’m supposed to get it out of the shop,” but I’m trying this whole naming and claiming thing. I’m speaking out in faith that even if I don’t get what I hope for in my time frame, my God isn’t neglecting me, but in fact being so, so good to me in His better timing of things.

I tend to be afraid to speak out what I hope for, in fear that if it doesn’t happen, I won’t know how to handle my disappointment, or even how to approach God with disappointment. Maybe I fear God can’t handle my disappointment, and I don’t want Him to be disappointed in me for being disappointed in Him, and so I avoid the whole disappointment fiasco by not expressing any sort of desire, just incase said desire can’t or won’t be met.

I’m tired of living as if God can’t handle my emotions and I’m tired of playing it safe. I’m tired of being fearful to speak out a hope because of what other people might think if it doesn’t happen.

God doesn’t need me or my van getting fixed to prove that He is God and that He is listening to His people and that He is in fact in charge. My plan is to get my van back and head out of Portland tomorrow. I’m learning to hold my plans loosely because He may change them, and to not think He’s brushing me aside if He does.

I’m also learning to speak out in faith without all the answers or the facts, knowing that God can handle my disappointment and plan an adventure and write a story better than I could ever hope to.

This whole process has become one of having to trust the Lord, not just with the van, but with my life. I NEVER would have thought that buying a VW van would so challenge my view of God and reveal so much of my character that needs to be worked on.

For starters, I’m pretty selfish. I want what I want when I want it. God is continuously good to me and many times over He has given me a glimpse of a something or a someone He wants to bless me with, and often times He has said something along the lines of “hold on, don’t reach for it yet, let me make it better.” God wants to not only give me something, but wants to make it better before He gives it to me and I say, “no, I want it now.” I settle for a watered-down version of what God wants for me simply because I want the world and I want it now.

Which leads to my next character defect, I am incredibly impatient. I want the finger-snap answer to prayer as opposed to the long process. Who doesn’t want the finger-snap? It’s much easier and feels much better than a long, tiring and gruesome process of becoming a better version of ourselves. I want to be patient, I want to be selfless, I want to be kind, but I want God to zap me with those things so that it will be easy to be those things. I don’t want to be put in a place of having to practice patience, having to share when I don’t want to, and having to extend kindness when it’s hard. Being kind to someone who is kind to me doesn’t mean I possess kindness and have that to offer people, it just means I am capable of responding to kindness.

And perhaps that is another character defect, I am good at responding to people, but I don’t know how good I am at being good to people. I respond to a hand that asks for help, but I rarely offer my hand first. I respond to someone who shows or tells me they love me, but I rarely offer my love first. I would make a great paramedic, responding to calls all over the place, but I would make a horrible search and rescue, in part because I don’t seek, I just hope to find.

Man, ugly spades are flying all over the place.

I am not very good at seeking the Lord, and yet by some bizarre twist of my makeup, I am just as bad, if not worse, at waiting on the Lord. I find myself in a constant state of Limbo, neither seeking nor waiting, just keeping busy to pass the time and hoping the Lord shows up.

I don’t want to be busy for the sake of not being still, I want to be busy because I’m working hard, which is yet another character defect, I don’t work very hard. I work hard enough to say I worked, but not hard enough to endure when things get hard. I give up easily. When something comes up, I give up and I say I tried. Starting something is not trying, starting something is just that… starting. Trying is continuing what you started, even if you don’t feel as amped about it as you did when you started.

And while maybe I have taken note of these things before, all of these character defects have come to the surface and exposed their ugly roots in my life as a result of going through this whole van process. Yes, I wish it was as simple as being gifted a VW van in perfect condition for crazy cheap and hitting the road as soon as I was ready, but the process has exposed more work that needs to be done, not just in and on the van, but in and on me, that if not worked on could lead to more damage further down the road.

An un-restored me is just as dangerous to the lives of others on the road as an un-restored VW van. We were both born in the eighties, my van and I, we’ve both been through a lot, hold a lot of stories and have a lot of wear and tear as a result of. We both need work. And just as getting the work done on my van couldn’t be done without the helping hands of community, neither could I get through some of life’s obstacles without the helping hands of community.

As much as I hated the list of things the mechanics told me they were working on, I was glad the problems were found. Only in exposing the problems can we get to working on them and function at our best. While the waiting process is long and the work is tough, I know it is for the best. I know that just as those mechanics are getting that van in great shape for me to start a long journey, so the Lord is getting me in great shape to continue on in life’s journey, only making me better with each defect He picks apart and works on.

Lord willing, I get my van back today.

In fact, I’m claiming it now… I get my van back today! I’m writing about it on the unsafe side of the phone call, the side without the answers or the guarantees.

One thing I know for sure, God has been working on my attitude. For someone like me who is easily discouraged, I have found so much hope and joy in the simplest of things, as I have realized that worry really doesn’t add a single hour to my day or a single day to my life.

I have taken hard things, like moving out of my “perfect” home, and instead of avoiding the process or complaining about it, I have learned to enjoy it…

I have let go of hands I didn’t want to let go of with a grateful heart that I ever got to hold those hands in the first place, instead of whining that I couldn’t keep holding on… okay, maybe I whined a little, but I let go with the faith that it was for my good.

Leaps and bounds, my friends, leaps and bounds from where I was.

The road ahead is a long one, I don’t doubt that, but I know I am equipped to take it… it’s just going to be a matter of remembering that I am equipped to take it even when I don’t feel like I am, even when the road gets tougher and possibly longer.

While He may change things up on me from time to time, I know that God Himself does not change, and so I am removing my hope in the external circumstances and placing it in Him who is constantly and consistently Him.

I know He is for me, restoring the damage that has been done and refusing to give on me in the process.

My God handles the restoration business like a boss! In fact, I think I can hear Him now…

“GO VAN GO!”

waiting it out

The waiting period. The in-between. The unknown.

I am in a state of limbo in what feels like every area of my life. I am currently in the process of moving out of my beloved little cottage in Portland, Oregon, and though it is the cutest of places to be, it’s not home any more, and so I’m there, but I’m not really there. With half of my stuff inside its walls and half of it hauled off to Goodwill, for as cute as my little cottage is, I find myself not wanting to be there. Remaining in a place that is no longer home feels tortuous the longer I stay there. I almost feel like the house is taunting me, “see how cute I am, remember how comfortable I am, everyone else wants to live here, see those ducks, you’ll never find anything as good as me!” While I may be a bit on the weird side, I know I’m not being taunted by my house, but instead of enjoying the last few days there, I find myself wanting to just rip the bandaid off and get out.

Existing in a state of one foot in and one foot out sucks. And so it goes with my little cottage on the duck pond in Portland… one foot in, one foot out, and I’m not quite sure how well I am handling the tension. Since I know my time there is ending, I want to “just be out,” but I can’t “just be out” if I don’t go through the process of moving out. I think this is true to life in many other instances… we always want to “just be” somewhere with someone having something, but we often don’t want to go through the process it takes to get there. We don’t want to do the work.

Allow me to correct myself, I don’t want to do the work.

Time and time again I have told stories of getting close, but not close enough; of trying hard, but not hard enough. I have too many stories of “almost,” of that one time I almost did this or almost did that.

If you’ve followed any of my blog up to this point, you know that I recently flew back to Portland to pack up my belongings, after which I will head back to San Diego to continue working as an intern at a church for the rest of the school year. And if you’ve followed any of my blog up to this point, you also know that I recently bought a VW van to not only drive back to San Diego, but to live in while I am there, attempting to live what I preach, which is not “live in a van,” but “follow Jesus.”

And fret not if you think following Jesus means living in a van, He’s too creative to tell everyone to do that.

Now that I think about it, perhaps I should take a step back and start even simpler than “follow Jesus,” perhaps I should start with get to know Jesus. Find out who He is before you decide to follow Him, because as you follow Him, you are going to find life to be more beautiful than you ever expected AND more difficult. People leave out the difficult part when telling other people about Jesus. It is often implied that if you follow Jesus, He is going to solve all of your problems and you won’t struggle anymore. I am here to say that since following Jesus, all of my problems have not been solved. I have been helped through many of them and set free in most cases, but not instantly, and not without a struggle. It is in the struggle that I find most people give up. They hit their first roadblock on the Jesus highway that they expected to coast through life on and they say “never mind, I thought it was going to be easier than this.”

I was one of those coasters, more than once, on more than one occasion, essentially saying to Jesus time and time again, “never mind, this is too hard, I’m gonna take a nap or another route and maybe catch up with you later.” Honestly, I think I was one of those coasters up until last week. Sort of. I’ve been clinging to Jesus for a good ten years now, but my patterns seem to repeat themselves. Instead of having ten years of experience following Jesus, I think I have one or two years of experience ten times. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the exaggeration is needed to make the point, that time and time again something gets too hard and I pull out. I pull out, and feel good in the moment that it’s not hard any more, but it’s only a matter of time before regret sets in for not following through, especially once I realize I have to start over, which is much harder than just pushing through the tough stuff.

I am an expert at asking God for forgiveness, not just because I am a sinner in need of a savior, but because I am so well practiced in the act of giving up. Giving up means passing on what God has to offer you and when you pass on what God has to offer you, you find yourself saying “my bad” with more sincerity than Eve with a piece of forbidden fruit in her hand.

A week ago, hours after landing in Portland, I found myself shaking the hand of a man who was selling me a VW van, dropping it form $2500 to $1800 simply because of my reasoning for wanting it. I did not ask him to drop the price, I told him what I believed Jesus had called me to and I think (whether he knew it or not) Jesus told him to drop the price. And while I didn’t even know how to drive stick-shift, nor did I actually have $1800, “something in me” told me to shake the man’s hand and tell him I’d have the money by the following night. Actually, my friend Liz told him we’d have the money by the following night and so I sensed she was trusting the Lord to follow through just as much as I was. Sure enough, hours before going to pick up the van, we had the money in full, some of it loaned, some of it given, much of it drained from everything my bank account had to offer.

I know it sounds like a crazy move, sometimes I still check my phone to see if certain people have called yet to tell me I’m being dumb, but I can’t shake the fact that Jesus asks us to do crazy things all the time, and more often than not we ignore them simply because they are crazy. Or at least I do. I’m not saying go out and buy a car you can’t afford, please hear me say I am saying nothing close to that, I am only saying don’t ignore the crazy just because it’s crazy… at the very least, take it up with the Lord.

The van has been in the shop for the last few days and the waiting period has been tortuous. It’s in the silence of not moving forward that the voices creep in, “give up, this is crazy, you can’t do it, you’ll disappoint people, you’re a let down.” Sitting here writing those voices out, I realize that the voice of God sounds nothing like that. There’s no way I could follow God if I listen to the voices that sound nothing like His.

People have come out of the woodworks to support me and the van and the road God has me on. Honestly, the obstacles have been worth seeing God show up in the most unexpected ways by the most unexpected people. And if that stands true, that the obstacles are worth seeing God show up, then I can’t back out when more obstacles surface, I can’t give up because it gets too hard or I hear a snarky remark from someone who thinks I’m crazy… even irresponsible. People thought Noah was crazy. I think he was too… you’d have to be a certain degree of crazy to say the voice of God told you to build an ark for a flood that was going to wipe out the earth in the middle of a drought.

Why do we seem to think Bible characters are just that… characters… ? They were people just like you and me, struggling to decide whether or not they heard right when the Lord told them to set slaves free, close the mouths of Lions, kill off giants, take on armies ten times their size, knock down walls with the sound of their voices. And just because we live in a day and age or culture that doesn’t look the same as it did back then, it doesn’t mean God doesn’t still show up in the craziest of ways, asking us to do the craziest of things… things that not only seem crazy, but flat out stupid. Perhaps I struggle more with feeling like this whole thing is stupid more so than crazy. Stupid because with everything else that is going on in the world, how could any of this possibly matter?

But… if I believe in a Jesus who cares just as much about the one lost sheep as He does the rest of the flock, then I have to believe it matters simply because He cares about me. I matter to Jesus. He cares about the condition of my heart… and the same goes for you. If I could drive any point home it would be that all of this matters to Jesus because it involves how I view Him, and how I view Him is going to dictate how I live my life, and how I live my life is going to reflect the condition of my heart and it is my heart He is after.

I knew going into this whole process that the van wasn’t the point, and I thought maybe that meant letting go of the whole idea. But I think it is the opposite, I think simply because the van is not the point, I can’t let go of the whole idea. The whole idea is that I’m trusting Jesus on a crazy path… a path that will offer outs along the way and I have to decide whether or not I will press in or bail. I can’t say I’m trusting Jesus on a crazy path and then as soon as it gets hard say “never mind.” I mean, I could, and believe me, my muscle memory tells me to do just that, but I need to exercise a new set of muscles, ones that don’t give up just because something gets hard.

I can’t say thank you enough to the people who have stepped in to help, I couldn’t have made it this far without you, even just in my spirits. I talked with the Volkswagen people this morning who gave me a list of things that need to be worked on, along with a finish date of next Wednesday, and while the price tag on it made my jaw drop, I already have 90% of it covered. The mere fact that other people are responding to my requests for help tells me that I am not the only one God is prompting on the matter, telling me to move forward. I have to listen to those voices that come with each deposit of money that say “get it, guuuurl,” “go do God’s work,” “Jesus shows up every time it looks hopeless.”

Those sound more like the voice of my God than “give up, pull out, this is crazy, this is dumb.”

Get behind me, satan.

I’m writing down every name that has reached out as I thank God for them in prayer and ask that He blesses them and responds to their faith.

I sincerely mean this when I say you can help in more ways than money. Yes, I am still a few hundred dollars away from covering the costs, but you don’t have to give money to help. Honestly, pray, pray, pray… first and foremost that I make it safely back to San Diego. Share the videos I’ve posted, the links, put the word out there so that other people might follow the story the Lord is writing. Share with other people what it looks like to trust God, to see what happens when He shows up, not just in my story, but in yours.

For as crazy as it sounds, I’m learning not to give up on myself in the process of not giving up on this van. Much like myself, the van needs a lot of work, and for as much as I want it to just be fixed (like how I want to just be fixed), I know it is going to be a process. I can’t give up just because the process got hard.

One of the ladies supporting me, whom I’ve never met, had this picture posted on her Facebook timeline and it so perfectly captured the process of this van, but more so the process of life… especially life with Jesus. If you do decide to follow Him, count the costs and brace yourself…

I have more stick-shift lessons ahead of me, so I am at the very least thankful to have that time to practice, as well as say goodbye to friends instead of rushing in and rushing out.

The waiting period is just as much a part of the process as the highs and lows, and I’m learning how not to give up just because I have to wait. And I’m not sitting idly by while I wait, I’m hustling while I wait, keeping my mind right and my thoughts on Him who is busy at work, even when I can’t see or feel Him working.

And since I’m waiting, I’d like to take action in other ways, I’d like to pray for you. I have plenty of time and a mighty God, so if there is something you’d like prayer for, anything at all, I mean it with all sincerity when I say please email me (jenniejoybarrows@gmail.com) or comment below.

I would love to pray for you while I wait on the Lord, and He would love for you to know that you are not alone.

get a job, hippie

“Get serious.”

“Get married.”

“Get a job.”

“Get a life.”

Get. Get. Get.

I’m currently trying to figure out how many times Jesus told us to “get” anything. Maybe it was lost in translation, “get this or get that, come follow me,” but what I read most are the words “give this or give that, come follow me.”

Give. Give. Give.

We live in a society that is obsessed with getting, and I’m not at all saying I don’t like getting, I don’t think I would be human if I didn’t, but I do find it awkward to live in a getting-obessed environment when you are trying to follow a giving-obessed man who is so giving that He gave up His own life so that we could be given more life… even if we chose to spend that life getting more and more stuff we can’t take with us.

That said, the rumors are true… I am following a giving-obessed man down a road that is not only different from the rest of society, but makes that society uncomfortable.

After an entire summer of working with high-school kids at a church in San Diego, which you can read about in previous posts, I was asked to stay on for the school year. Though I wanted to return to the comforts of my home in Portland, I felt led to stay in the more challenging environment of investing in the lives of other people. San Diego is beautiful, so I’m not complaining about the environment, but when life isn’t all about you, then it certainly gets uncomfortable and challenging, no matter where you are.

In praying about what my living situation would look like if I stayed, I started the conversation with the Lord about a seemingly impossible seventh-grade dream of mine… living in a Volkswagen. I discovered Janis Joplin in the seventh-grade, along with with The Beatles, Peter, Paul & Mary, Bob Dylan, and the Volkswagen. I dreamed about growing up to live as free as the hippies without all the drugs, assuming my dream was just a dream since the sixties were over and drugs scared me at that point.

That dream faded around ninth-grade when I met a boy and my life became all about him. Years down the road when that relationship ended, my life became all about the next relationship, and when there wasn’t a relationship, my life became about whatever other people wanted me to make my life about. I’ve been though more phases in search of an identity than I can count on both hands and one foot, finding contentment in my new identity for a little while, only to feel unfulfilled and not at all like myself.

Even still, I sometimes find myself asking “who is myself?” But I learned in more recent years that I have been asking the wrong question to the wrong person. Instead of asking myself who I was, I started asking Jesus who He was, slowly feeling more and more like myself as I became more and more aware of Him.

As I talked to the Lord about a living situation in San Diego, coupled with the desire to do more for other people on a limited budget, the raggedy little brunette seventh-grader in me surfaced her opinion… what about a VW van?

I won’t lie, my heart leapt, but as a thirty-one year old who already quit her salaried job to be an intern at a church, the voices of my past crept in and told me to get serious and grow up. I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but in all my conversations with Jesus, at some point it dawned on me that not only was I sick of stifling my personality for the sake of making other people comfortable, He was sick of me stifling who He created me to be for the sake of making other people comfortable.

The desire to live more simply has been unfolding in the last few years of my life, and even more so since realizing I could actually do more for other people if I lived with less. I’m tired of “getting” for the sake of preserving… getting more to preserve what I have and how people see me is a fear I give much too much power to. So when I decided to cast out the opinions of other people, not the advice and insight, but the opinions, I could see clearly that not only was my dream an option, it was possible.

The longest of stories short, I’m not following a dream, I’m following Jesus, and following Him has resulted in a dream being followed. Yes, I am giving up a lot to follow Him, I am simplifying to the extreme… but I don’t feel like I am losing anything in the process, I mean I am, but I’m not… if anything I feel like I am becoming more and more of who I was created to be. It’s this weird concept of gaining, but not from efforts of getting.

I recently wrote to someone asking for help and the best way I could sum up me living in a van to do youth ministry was this:

I’m not saying this is the direction God asks everyone one to take. My message is not “get rid of your house and move in a van,” my message is “follow Jesus, knowing that following Him looks different for each of us, especially since we are created so differently. Don’t be afraid to ask Him what it looks like for YOU to follow Him just because you’re afraid it might look the same as it what it looks like for me.” I think people are afraid to ask what it looks like to follow Jesus simply because they are afraid of what it MIGHT look like. They forget He knows their hearts and the ways they are wired. Honestly, I’m wired the way in which Jesus is asking me to follow Him.

And I stick to that. Following Jesus looks like me becoming more of who I am, not less. I may have less, much less than what the world says I need, but I’ve never felt more alive. And I think I’m becoming more alive not because I am pursuing a better life now, but because I am pursuing Jesus… a Jesus who cares about that raggedy little brunette seventh-grader in her John Lennon sunglasses, posing in front of Volkswagens.

I don’t know how long this season will last, I know my time with the high-schoolers is a commitment through the school year and the conversation will be revisited then. I’m making plans and holding them loosely, because I know God likes to shake things up.

To those who have always said I need to “get more”… get serious, get married, get a job (hippie), get a life…

I am serious. I don’t have to be married to be of value. I have a job (thank you), and I’ve never felt more alive than at thirty-one years old, twenty-three pounds heavier than her former anorexic self, a few figures less than her last job, and acting on a faith that forces her to step out and buy a van that she doesn’t know how to drive and can barely afford. I made a faith based choice that I would learn how to drive stick-shift and the rest of the money would turn up. Again, I wasn’t banking on people giving me money, I so fully believed that this was the direction God was asking me to take that even if I didn’t have the resources on my person, I knew He was going to provide. I had to act, not because I had all the pieces, but because I had a faith that said all the pieces would come together if I believed even when I couldn’t see. It is one thing to talk about that kind of faith, and it is a whole different thing to actually act on it. It’s scary.

If you don’t know Jesus and you think I’m crazy, read the Bible.

If you do know Jesus and you think I’m crazy, read the Bible.

That book is crazy. I can’t claim to believe it if I don’t take its crazy seriously.

All of this to say, it wouldn’t be an adventure without obstacles, which is where you can come into the story. After engine work and other car troubles that have surfaced, I almost gave up a couple of times, chalking it all up as too crazy and almost audibly hearing the voices that would be coming down on me.

I called my boss/friend/brother-from-another-mother, Evan, and asked at what point I should pull out because I’m being irresponsible and at what point I should press in and not give up. He reminded me why I was heading back to San Diego in the first place… “you’re not coming to be become a professional surfer or a sun-bather, you’re coming to invest in the lives of these kids and simply because of that, the enemy is going to do anything he can to stop you. Press in and don’t give up.”

And so I’m not. I’m not giving up. Certainly not yet. The van needs help. It’s in the shop now and I’m still waiting for totals, but what doesn’t go towards covering the work done will go towards gas money to get back to San Diego and continue the work I started with the kids… along with writing the stories God has called me to live and write.

Yes, I am asking for help, but that is not all. I’m asking you to ask God what it looks like for you to follow Him. It might look like giving time or money to someone or something else… do it, even if it seems crazy. Don’t ignore those little nudges or checks in your spirit, and don’t think following Jesus means you have to give up being who you are. Jesus doesn’t want to suppress your personality or your life, He wants to enhance it. He wants you to live and live well, feeling fully alive as you go, breathing because life is to be lived, not survived. If you are fortunate enough, as I am, to be in a place where survival isn’t your means for living, you are blessed beyond belief already.

If you are in a place where fighting for survival is a way of life, hold on. Please. I may not understand your situation, but I understand the need to hold on, and the lack of desire to keep doing so.

You don’t have to look far into the archives of this blog to find posts that lack the tone of hope and life that this post has. There were times I wasn’t sure I’d ever have anything happy to write about, accepting my fate as the designated downer who other people looked at when they wanted to feel better about themselves. And while I may be experiencing an extreme amount of joy in this process, I know living in a Volkswagen van isn’t going to be all flowers and rainbows. I will face the hardships as they come while embracing joy in the process.

So my challenge to you is this… go to paypal.com or clearxchange.com and send money to jenniejoybarrows@gmail.com (or track me down in Portland),

BUT…

Before you do, go get on your knees, or out in the ocean, or in a tree, or however you best connect to God, and before you ask Him what you should do or how you should help, ask Him who He is. Ask Him about Jesus and ask Jesus who He is (there’s this weird three-in-one thing going one that I still don’t get, so don’t worry if you don’t). Even if you already know or already think you know, I think it is always a valid question to be asked multiple times over the course of our lives…

“God, who are you?”

Or if you’re anything like me, “God, who the crap are you!?!?”

He’ll answer. Maybe in that moment, but maybe not. You might end up giving me money, you might not. But if you got to know Jesus a little more in the process, then it was worth asking you for money in the first place… a question that is hard for me to ask, which may be less about an answer for me and more about an answer for you.

Don’t give up asking if you don’t hear Him right away… and don’t worry, God doesn’t call all of us to live in a van… air pollution would be awful and there would be no where to park. I do not think this is everyone’s call, or even “the call,” this is just what it looks like for me to follow Jesus.

What does it look like for you?

Go ask Him.

I did… and some twenty-years later I’m going to be driving my VW down to Southern California, experiencing freedom in Christ and life in community. And when people holler at me, “get a job, hippie!” I shall wave my peace sign, smile and proudly holler back… “I got one!”

Thank you, Jesus, for being serious, for being the ultimate example of living what you preach, for giving me life, and a job with these kids in San Diego.

Now please send money, and help me get there.

shaking and taking

I stood staring at the edge of the ocean, looking very much my age, perhaps not by what I was wearing, but certainly by how stoically I was standing, as if at 30 I had all of life figured out. I stood and I stared and I listened to the sound of friends’ voices sing into my ear about Jesus through my tiny pair of earbuds that are still clogged with sand. The beauty of having friends who are talented musicians is that you get to take their voices with you where ever you go and take their words personally and intimately, even if they are singing to the masses. Friends in an Ipod, it’s like a therapist in a box.

I am what feels like worlds away from my friends in Portland, and while I am pleased as punch to be exactly where I am, the beauty of Southern California doesn’t replace the beauty of what it means to live in community with people no matter where you are. Portland is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but let’s be honest, it’s not the thrift stores and coffee shops that sit beneath dark skies and rain drops that has kept me there so long… it’s the people. If it weren’t for the community I found there, I would have left shortly after arriving in 2010, as I was planning to do just before stepping into a group of people that changed the course of my next four years where Portland has remained home.

But… for as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to live in San Diego for a season of my life. I can’t explain it anymore than I can explain a kid enjoying math, nothing makes less sense to me than that, but to each his or her own, some kids liked math, I liked California.I don’t know where it came from, and I get it, it’s not abnormal to like the idea of California, I just find it interesting that as a kid growing up on the east coast, enjoying the beaches I was raised on, I day-dreamed about California. Maybe I saw a postcard, or watched Free Willy one too many times, which I don’t even think was filmed in California, or I knew it was the birth place of Mickey Mouse and my obsession with Disney almost led me to pursuing a life that would involve getting paid to draw Mickey for the rest of my life (which l later learned was called an animator), but for whatever reason, I wanted to end up in California. While being on my beach in South Carolina, I dreamed of another beach far away, and so goes the story of my life… always dreaming of somewhere else.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one, as proven by John Lennon well before I was born. I love being a dreamer, there is so much beauty in it. Even at 30, I imagine worlds that make the dreams of children look like child’s play… literally. If you let it, I think dreaming gets better with age because you have more experience with it. Too many people let their dreams die, they settle for less than because it’s safe or realistic or practical. I think there is a great risk involved in letting your dreams die, mostly because you end up living a mediocre life that you aren’t even aware of and if you aren’t aware of it then you can’t actually pursue living a more abundant life, so you end up thinking your mediocre life is all that life really has to offer and you get by, not really living until you die. That’s sad to me. And scary.

What’s also sad and scary to me is people like me, people who are so good at dreaming that they also never really live, but instead dream their way to grave, boasting that they never let their dreams die but they also never took action and did anything with them. They miss the life that happened in front of them because they were too busy dreaming of what could, would or should have been or be, and life around them gets stale, understandably so since they aren’t invested in it, and so they keep on dreaming, not even necessarily of somewhere better, just somewhere different. Before we pride ourselves on where we are at in life, be it as a dreamer or non-dreamer, I think we should ask ourselves if we are actually living the life we were meant to live.

And so here I am, where I’ve always dreamed about being… the coast of Southern California, and I love it. I’m living here for the summer and I’m not even going to try and down play it and say “it’s not what I thought.” It’s actually more than what I thought. Truly, it is beautiful in every way possible. I’ve cried multiple times from merely driving around, looking out at the coast line of the pacific, cluttered with palm trees and cliffs, so much so that my greatest threat here seems to have nothing to do with crime but everything to do with what I might plow my car into as I seem to look at everything but the road.

Not to mention, God let me in on a little secret kept during my entire childhood up until a short week ago when I moved here. You know Dr. Seuss? Well, I hate to bust your bubble, but for as much of a dreamer as he was, and he was if anyone was… all of his animation, whether he professed it or not (I don’t know his story) is 100% God inspired. Truffula trees and bungalow bushes and every plant or tree you’ve ever seen in a Dr. Seuss book or movie is REAL! My mind has been blown as living in La Jolla, California literally looks as though I am living in a Dr. Seuss book. I walk around laughing, saying “dude, you are so busted,” as if Dr. Seuss were there walking with me, laughing too. I imagine him to respond with something like, “yes, it’s truer than true, I’ve seen all my creations before, but much unlike those who’ve seen them all too, I didn’t keep them locked in my mind behind a trapped door. I took what was real, made it look like a dream, and so I went really living, being who and what I was meant to be. I’m a dreamer and a realist and I’ve combined the best of the two, and so ask yourself, JJ, are you good at being you and doing what you were meant to do?”

“That’s deep, dude,” I say back to the doctor as I brush my hand through an abundance of Kochia Balls. “Did you hear that, man!?” I ask God as I invite Him in on the doctor and I’s conversation. God laughs and says He indeed heard that, “and now that you’ve seen first hand what Seussy did with his time in La Jolla, JJ, what are you going to do with your time here?” God asks. And yes, I imagine God to have a nickname for Dr. Seuss, God doesn’t need the formalities of job titles.

Good question. What am I going to do with my time here? Am I going to leave what I see trapped in my mind or am I going to take action? And I don’t just mean with the scenery because let’s be honest, while I want to write books one day, I don’t think I’m here to replicate Dr. Seuss’s story. And while I love and appreciate what Dr. Seuss did with his time here, I’m here as a part of my own story. As I have met more and more people in the church I am working at for the summer, one of my favorite things they say to me is “God hand picked you to be here.” That melts my heart more than a stick of butter in a high-voltage microwave. Hand picked? And not just by any hand, but the hand of God?

Whoa.

There is great honor and great responsibility that comes with being hand picked by God and if I’m honest, I’m not 100% sure what I am supposed to do with it… at least not yet. And though I might not know yet the full purpose in me being here, I don’t doubt for a second that I am supposed to be here, and I have yet to find myself wishing I was somewhere else (well, maybe except the time I found myself lying on the beach next to girls who made Sisqo’s thong song look somewhat conservative… I struggle with insecurity enough to not linger in that situation, and about five minutes into comparing myself to them, which is five minutes too long, I told the enemy to take a hike, and when he didn’t, I did).

Yes, there are challenges here, which I hope to write on more at some point. As I just mentioned, I am surrounded by beauty, and not just in landscape. I feel like I have to walk around with an invisible baseball bat, beating the enemy off as he tries to jump on my back and whisper in my ear that I’m not as pretty, not as small, not as well dressed as those around me. On top of trying to make me feel worse about myself, he has me blame the beautiful women I am surrounded by who “make” me feel this way, judging them in order to feel better about myself. But you can’t fight evil with evil and expect to come out victorious. I can’t fight feeling worthless with judging others. So what do I do?

I shake it out!

Florence and The Machine sang it best, “every demon wants his pound of flesh, but I like to keep some things to myself, I like to keep my issues drawn, it’s always darkest before the dawn, so shake it out, shake it out! And it’s hard to dance with the devil on you back, so shake him off!”

That song has greater meaning to me than anyone will ever know, as I have literally and physically experienced the devil being shaken off my back, as well as any of his punk-ass sidekicks being shaken out of my body, and all in the name of Jesus. And so I’ve come too far to get caught up in the comparison battle, only to re-start living a lie of life that says I need to look a certain way in order to really live. I am surrounded by beauty and I am surrounded by lies and I have a choice to make not only about what I am going to look at, but how I am going to look at it. I tried closing my eyes so as not to compare myself to all the women, but that lasted about three steps before I realized I would have to walk around blind all summer. Avoiding comparison is going to have to be a matter of the heart and a transformation from within if I don’t want to miss the beauty of God’s creation and every Dr. Seuss plant along the way. And so as I open my eyes and look at my surroundings, I remind myself that I have been set free and I shake out the lies, even if that looks like literally shaking my arms out, or spontaneously dancing just be sure the devil is not on my back.

And perhaps this is my spade to reveal, the truth I must tell, that even as a leader to young women, I still struggle with believing the message I want to send them. But, my struggle with the message does not determine it’s validity and I refuse to give up believing the truth that I am perfectly crafted in the image of God just because I walk in a world where the enemy lurks and tries to tell me otherwise. I am not my struggle, I am not my thoughts, I am not a product of the enemies lies, I am a daughter of God who is prone to wander from what’s beautiful and settle for a cheaper version of beauty. And fortunately, my God of a father snatches me up time and time again, no matter how many times it takes to say, “no way, girl, I have so much more for you.”

And so I’m here for now, still in the early stages of what will be an entire summer of being able to love on girls in high school, who are also trying to figure out what they will do with their time here, both in La Jolla and in life. I miss my community back in Portland, but I have their words with me, tucked into my heart, my emails and text messages and even my Ipod.

As I listened to my friend, Liz and my pastor, Josh sing into my ear at the ocean’s edge yesterday, I was comforted in a way that not even the edge of the ocean or the limbs of a good tree can comfort me. It was the words of Jesus coming from voices I know well that reminded of who I was. Being on the ocean restores my sanity and being high in a tree calms my racing mind, but the the love of Jesus coming from the voice of a friend does something for my soul that not even God’s creation can do, simply because God’s creation is not God Himself. And so I can be anywhere and be at peace with who I am, if I am at peace with Him. But, let it be said, I am OH-SO-THANKFUL that I am where I am… it is icing to the cake. God is the cake, takes the cake, ices the cake, and let’s them eat cake because cake is all you need when it’s made by the hand of God. Seconds? Yes, please.

I hope to continue to dream a lot while I am here, but even more so I hope to do something with what I dream. To whom much is given, much is expected and I have been given a lot by being here… my prayer is that I do well by and do much with this gift. If any of the high schoolers are reading this, I have one thing to say… I am here for you. And if that is the only reason God has brought me to La Jolla this summer, then that is absolutely 100% worth it.

I’m here because I believe in you becoming who you were meant to be, in part because as a child of God, you already are! Dr. Seuss may have said it, but he was really just repeating the words of Jesus, and I find it to be an important thing to say especially during this time as graduation is upon us…

“Kid, you’ll move mountains!” It only takes the littlest bit a faith and the biggest piece of cake!

Summer 2014, here we go…