Whose

Wow. It is more overwhelming to sit down and write about this past month than I had anticipated. I have so much to say, so much that I’ve learned. Some good, some bad, but all right because of my Teacher.

What seems like ages ago, I departed sweet, sweet Chesapeake. I said goodbye to my spiritual home and the brothers and sisters that walked with me through laughter and tears, joy and pain, with Jesus, always. I left the place that taught me so much about what a community of love and fellowship can look like through the earnest pursuit of He who has already sought.  The place that I cannot describe because What has moved through it is not of this world. Chesapeake still holds a special part of my heart but three weeks ago I was made to leave by the will of my Creator… and the beginning of classes. So, to the mountains I went, with Jesus still at my side.

I will not pretend to be able to write all that I have been taught in my three short weeks here. It utterly astounds me that each night I cannot even finish recording the movement I saw that day before I pass out on my bed. Since I now eat, sleep, play, and learn in the same place, twenty-four seven, Jesus has been on my mind, twenty-four seven, almost obsessively. I sometimes begin to think I’m going mad but am happy to be a fool to the world for my very best Friend.

He has shared much encouragement and peace with me as I transitioned into the big, bad world of university life. I am enveloped by His presence. He is visible, tangible in every river I swim and wood I walk. He exists within the love of believers, here, evident and true, and I am never without joy as I wait to see what He will show me next. However, I also see an abyssal voidance of Him, rather the recognition of Him. It is very real, in my heart and the hearts of all who surround me. That is where things became difficult.

While I have found much joy in experiencing being pushed far, far out of my comfort zone for Him, it has been hard. I sat under a tree on the Drillfield and cried on my third day here because I had already walked farther than I had all summer and just could not physically handle it. I cried because I missed having a community that knew and was known to me. I cried in class when one of my older friends gently reminded me of my iniquities. I cried because I had overcompensated the strength of my own heart. I just recovered from one of the rarest surgeries performed today faster than any surgeon in Portsmouth Naval predicted. I got through that; this college thing should be no sweat. Wrong. I have been incredibly humbled in the time I’ve been at school. What? Why was this happening? Why had my strength fled as quickly as it came? Why were things moving and shaking around me more quickly than my heart could understand?

I was looking up sermons by Judah Smith when I was stumbled on to one entitled “Jesus Is With You Always.” Click. Okay, his recounting of Paul and Silas’s time in prison did nothing to quell my pleading heart until he said of the worshipping disciple, “…and what’s real to Paul is Whose he is.” I clicked off the video. I remembered writing that in a blog before my surgery. The reason why I have been breaking down is because, again, I had forgotten-as humans always do-the one fundamental Truth of life. IT DOES NOT WORK WITHOUT JESUS. It does not function properly or beautifully without its one and only Author. Even in my attempts to pursue Him here, I forgot this. I, again, was trying to show people Jesus of my own accord. I was making it all about the big, ol’ M-E, me. Just as I did in the pre-op room, just as I have repeatedly my entire life.  But, the beauty of this is, He never fails to remind us of His presence and graciously bring us back home, again.

While I have cried many tears, here, in humility of myself and mournfulness of my sins, I have been reminded of Joy through the sweet tears of Grace. I will never, ever be enough, for college, for a new community, for this world. But Jesus loves me enough to redeem me in all of it. I cried and shook as I went up to take communion at church. I am reminded Whose I am each moment I realize the enormity of the Cross. That Jesus’ body was broken for me. For us all. In these mixed up times of laughter and tears, of growth and transition, I can do nothing but sing praises to a God Most High.

What I am listening to:

“O.N.E.” -Yeasayer

“Haller Lake” –The Cave Singers

“I Need a Dollar” –Aloe Blacc

“Arms” –Seabear

“Virginia May” –Gregory Alan Isakov

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened.” Acts 16:25-26

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:1-2..14