the answer

tea garden.

raspberry tangerine shake.

changed my life.

blessed are the peacemakers

The sermon from Bethlehem today was severely edifying.

Peacemakers are Mirrors of Jesus and His Gospel
Colossians 3:1-17
Ken Sande, Peacemaker Ministries

1. A "truncated gospel" can cripple our souls and relationships (Matthew 22:29).

2. If we truly understand the Gospel of peace, we will delight in mirroring and imitating it as peacemakers (Ephesians 5:1; Colossians 3:12-17).

*Reflect much on Jesus and his gospel, and you will reflect much of Jesus and His Gospel.

3. Conflict is an opportunity to exalt and reflect God's reconciling glory (Exodus 33:18-19; 34:5-8); 1 Corinthians 10:31; Philippians 4:4).

4. I delight in mirroring my union with Christ by guarding peace and unity in his Church (Philippians 2:1-2; Ephesians 4:1-4).

5. When others wrong me, I have the opportunity to imitate the loving correction and forgiveness Jesus gave me through the cross (Galatians 6:1; Colossians 3:13; Acts 7:60; Matthew 18:21-35).

6. Confessing my sins proves I trust in Jesus' mercy, helps me put off harmful habits, and enables me to reflect Jesus' likeness more fully (1 John 1:8-9; Proverbs 28:13; 2 Corinthians 3:18).

7. When people see God empowering me to break free from sin and make peace with others, they may hunger to know the source of that power and peace (Acts 2:42-47).

Blessed are the peacemakers, who mirror Jesus and his gospel, for they will be recognized as and called the sons of God (Matthew 5:9, paraphrased).

i'm here.

what a refreshing past few days-- cooking chicken curry, playing outside, talking to a good friend in a hammock by the pond, frolicking through the woods in dresses and taking dumb photos, variety show, staying up late, waking early, fresh vegetables, lots of good music, southern sweet tea...

i'm learning to keep both my feet planted in the ground God has me on now. not one foot here and one foot in what He has for me (or what I hope He'll have for me) in the future. i am still in school. i still live in minneapolis.

do not worry about tomorrow, for today has enough troubles of its own.


post script: please listen to/read the lyrics of "embracing accusation" by shane & shane. this song moves my soul to worship Jesus in such a unique, refreshing way every time i hear it. the story behind it is really cool too.

i <3 mpls

things i will miss about minneapolis

diversity in faith, culture, religion, language. somalis and tibetans and hmong. going to coffee shops and meeting people from other countries.
lakes.
green.
the 35w bridge view. at night. the old gold medal flour factory, the stone arch bridge, the mississippi, sky scrapers.
spyhouse in uptown.
cafe overflow on university
the university of minnesota campus
uptown
dinkytown
downtown
bethlehem baptist church
the tea garden (grand and university especially)
eat street and all the restaurants i haven't tried
art museums like the walker and mia that i still need to go to
the snelling bridge where you can see both downtown st. paul and minneapolis
the caribou on snelling
jonathan, my 98-year-old friend at the nursing home across the street from campus.
every chipotle within a 10-mile radius of campus
mild summer temperatures
cruising snelling to b96 at night
half price apps at crapplebees-- default saturday night activity
unique thrift store
excelsior - lake minnetonka at night when it's snowing
89.3 the current
lots of cheap concerts
the downtown dunn brothers

things i won't miss about minneapolis
winters that last 7 months.

a wednesday diatribe. no, i just wanted to say diatribe.

i never want to sleep in again. waking up late steals my joy.

sufjan stevens sings some hymns, and i really like it. he also has some rare songs (apparently from the seven swans B-side) like "woman at the well" that i really like. try searching for it on youtube.

today in class we listened to an NPR interview of louise erdrich, a writer. i don't know much about her, but she said her favorite part of writing is gathering the information. she called all the words and phrases in her notebooks a "compost pile." i love that. that's what i did last night at spyhouse in uptown for a few hours. gathered information. gleaned words and ideas from overheard conversation and the scene around me. spyhouse is a really interesting place. i want to write there again. i feel stuck with my poems right now, stuck in the microlevel with all these orphan words and sentences that don't yet have a place in a poem. i'm struggling to weave it all together thematically. that's always the most dramatic, overwhelming part of my writing process. taking the compost out of the pile and forming something new.

charles wright wrote some beautiful things in "clear night," one of my favorite poems. i want to write with this urgency. i want to tangle together haunting scene and declarative diatribe like wright does:

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine
On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.

I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.

And the wind says "What?" to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say "What?" to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.
And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

p.s. i've taken the myers briggs eight times in the past week and keep getting the same result no matter how many times i try to change my answers. i'm just not satisfied with "the joker."

requiem for a winter.

bye bye big reds.


after two months, three countries, and a myriad of close calls, my fantastic big red sunglasses have been laid to rest.


(i think two months is the longest i've ever gone without destroying a pair. one could fairly accuse me of being inept at caring for sunglasses, among hosts of other things.)

in other news, i feel so renewed today. it has to be the weather (and Jesus, but that goes without saying. i've been asking him for this for many days now. refreshment, rejuvenation, release...) 66 degrees, and it's already 8pm. i feel like this is the warmest air minnesota has breathed in at least 5 or 6 months. i hope this glad weather reawakens my creativity (and discipline) (and joy) (and my whole spectrum of emotion), which has (have) been hibernating for a few weeks (spring and easter breaks were no help, i'm sure).

i bought the most beautiful long summer dress yesterday. i'm excited to share a dress closet with kat and rach. i want an old armoire filled with dresses. i think tomorrow will be the first dress day without tights in a very long time. i'm tired of tights. and i wish i could trade in all my boots for keds or toms or strappy sandals.


spring. makes me want to listen to feist and sufjan and nickel creek.


He is faithful.

academia, you're dead to me

for real, i'm so over the school scene.

instead, i'm into
planning what my room will look like in lubbock (my first real bedroom since high school!)
lengthy text diatribes with kat moffett, my future roomie
refreshing conversations with amazing girls at cafe overflow
doing anything off campus (tea garden, overflow, starbucks, even applebees...)
reading for fun
a God who pursues me and matures me even when my mind and heart are persistently wandering
phone convos with rachie, my other future roomie
delicious bagel sandwiches i eat 2 or 3 times a day
getting laundry done
sweet iced coffee drinks (gotta be wise and discerning about this from now on.. i had one the other night and it kept me up till 5am...)
chill folk music that's easy to harmonize with...
underground hip-hop
meeting tons of new people but also getting sweet, refreshing time with my friends here
learning about myself through the wisdom and insight of Godly people in my life
making snide remarks from the back of my night class
extended pranks
jewel's coming home with me for easter, yay!
sunny april afternoons :)
hope of temperatures over 40 degrees sometime in the next few weeks


enjoy the things you're into today :)

one-way ticket.

today i bought a 1-way ticket from minneapolis to lubbock, texas, which made what's coming in my future so much more real to me. it was scary and exciting. for some reason i was being super indecisive-- continental or american? layover in houston or dallas? seat on the right or left side of the plane? usually i am pretty impulsive, especially when i'm excited about something, but i had a really hard time actually buying it. i feel like deciding those things was hard for me because it's sort of momentous and such an important junction in my life. here's the story. i think i'm going to probably refer people to this when they ask me, because i've told it dozens of times. but for some reason it's still not getting old. like i said, i feel like i'm living in someone else's story just because of how well this is all coming together. . .

in october, i decided i wanted to go to europe for spring break. i know a couple of missionaries in edinburgh, scotland, but the tickets to scotland were more expensive so my friend cassie and i bought tickets to london and decided to fly from london to scotland. luckily we never bought those tickets, because the scotland thing fell through. a few weeks before we left, cassie remembered she knew people in madrid we could stay with.

we finally got to madrid after a solid twenty some hours of travel. that afternoon all i wanted to do was sleep (i have a really hard time sleeping in airports, airplanes, cars, et al), but we all went to church. on the way out of the service, i made some snide remark to this guy. me, cassie, and steve started talking to him (nate) and his two friends. we all hit it off really nicely and decided to go hit up some art museums as a group the next day. these three guys -- david, noel, and nathan-- were from texas, which is where the story sort of begins. i told nate i wanted to do something sweet with my summer and he jokingly said he would hire me to work for him at his church. he was probably joking, but that made me really excited. i wanted to do something different because changes of scenery are really refreshing to me. i also knew i'd grow a ton somewhere else because it would be stretching to me and i wanted to deal with some other things i've been kind of avoiding the past few years. basically, going somewhere else would give me a chance to look at some things in my life from a different angle.

well, we all went separate ways, but i wanted to hang out with them again because we all connected and had so much fun. later that week, i took a train to sevilla, where david and noel are studying abroad (they were just visiting madrid for the weekend). david brought his friend ryan to the train station to pick me up and we all spent the day hanging out. i didn't really get to know ryan very well, but we talked some on facebook when i got back and i was very encouraged by him. he told me he had a friend named kat whom he thought i'd get along with because we liked a lot of the same music. i jokingly added kat on facebook expecting her to judge me for being a creeper, but we ended up talking for a super long time on facebook and found we had tons in common.

i mentioned that i was looking at moving somewhere in texas for the summer, and told me her roommate needed a subleaser for the summer months. i was so excited, but i didn't know anything about lubbock (where texas tech university is) and didn't have a job or a car. well, that all kind of fell into place. ryan's going to be in africa for most of the summer, so he's letting me use his car until he comes back and i can look for my own while he's gone. i'm also thinking of interning at the wesley foundation, a college ministry on the texas tech campus. if that doesn't work out, there are a few other jobs i'm looking at and would be really excited about. since i've committed to moving, i've "met" tons of other amazing people-- kat's roommate rachel is super sweet, and i'm so excited to live with them both. we all get along really well and i'm so excited to get down there and hang out with all of them. i've probably added or been added on facebook by like 20 lubbock people this week. :)

i'm already so encouraged by all of these people and the way God is so divinely orchestrating all of this it's such an intricate web He's weaving! and i love it! i'm trusting that Jesus has me going to this body of believers to continue to grow me and challenge, stretch, and encourage me. this is such an exciting thing for me. actually, the first thing i've been really excited about in many months. it was originally just going to be a summer thing, but i'm thinking if i find a stable job and place to live i may as well stay. it'll feel like summer all year long for me i'm sure :)

so i leave may 18, 2 days after i graduate. and i went with the american airlines flight (that's the climax of the story, just fyi).

it's all so strange. i feel like i'm just getting settled in some ways at northwestern and just developing some sweet relationships, but at the same time i'm so ready to get out of here because i feel really caged. may 18 can't come soon enough, but i also want to be careful not to live in the future, because it'll come soon enough. i want to make the most of the last few weeks i have in college. it's all so sad and beautiful at the same time. i can't even begin to communicate how much i'm learning and growing right now. God is so good and faithful to me, the worst of sinners.

i'm beyond excited to see what He has for me in the last place i thought i'd ever be.


:)