This past week I have not been able to sleep or eat until today! Thank God! Yeah, sure some days I was able to sleep but when I am in a new place I find it hard to sleep or eat.  I don’t know what it is…new surroundings?? maybe…maybe it’s the change.  I do like change, I like to be spontaneous, but it always takes me a while to get used to the change.  When I am on vacation, I am so excited.   I am like a little kid in a candy store.  I just want to stay up and process all of the scents and smells of the environment.  I like to take pictures in my mind, and hold on to these pictures for years to come.  I’m sure the people that I was staying with this past week thought I was quite strange with my eating and sleeping habits, but sometimes it’s just hard for me to adjust.  The adjustment wasn’t bad, I was just over stimulated.  Usually, when this happens I am completely exhausted, however, this time it gave me strength. More often that not, I get strength from the mountains.  About four years ago I had a dream that I would be working a huge project in the mountains; maybe someday this will be true for me. 

For those who don’t know me… Last week I had the privilege to stay in Colorado Springs.  I don’t know what it is about the mountains, the air, the wildlife, wildflowers, but it has a feeling of home. For one week, I got to experience a dream, residing in the mountains for a few days.

Upon endless cups of coffee, I sat in a living room and ponder on a few thoughts…I thought about Adam and Eve and there time in the Garden, I thought about the beginning of time.  Maybe these thoughts came about because I sat in a living room full of house plants and it reminded me of the Garden of Eden.  Being in the mountains and in this particular living room I realized that Garden was much lager than I had thought.  Before this moment, I always had pictured a man and women living in a small cottage wearing leaves.  I thought about Eve and what she looked like when Adam first saw her.  Before this moment, I always thought he was like.. “Hey women, thanks a lot for taking one of my ribs… Gosh.”  Then I thought about it a little longer, and you know Adam and Eve didn’t meet right away.  God knew that Adam was lonely, but He didn’t create her upon that first feeling.  This gave me hope, because God create me like Adam, and he was lonely, wanted a friend, a BFF, but God waited.  He told Adam to name the animals.  This must have been easy right? Naming some animals right? Sure, that is what I had always thought, but when you really thinking about it… there were a lot of animals to name, several in fact, probably millions. Then Adam sleeps and God takes one of his ribs and make him a helpmate.  Interesting…the entire time that Adam was naming the animals he was alone.  I wonder if Adam’s and God relationship changed after He created Eve.  I wonder what Adam was really thinking the first time he meet Eve?  What did she look like?  What did she smell like?  What was Eve thinking when she meet Adam?  And because of all of this, it helped me to understand love.  If God is love, than what is love?  How can someone be “in love”?  These are a few thoughts that I ponder over this week.  I am very thankful that I was able to spend a week in the mountains, there are many more stories and ideas that I came across this past week and I look forward to be sharing them with you. Until then…

Last week I went to the $2 theater and I had the entire theater to myself.  If you ever get the chance to do it, you should.  Two years ago I would have disagreed with you, but that was before I lived alone.  It’s funny the older I get, the more comfortable I feel about doing things alone.  If you talked to me five years ago I would have thought you were out of your mind.  Since then I have realized that I am not alone, I never have been alone, and never will be completely alone.

This reminded me of my time in Thailand.  Kansas City and Thailand are very similar.  No the climate may not be the same but the season of my life is the same.  I am here standing on the edge, living in a foreign country, alone.  I am working on incredible projects, projects I would have never dreamed of.  I got to visit most of the royal projects, and travel all over northern Thailand, but I was never completely alone.  Kansas City, a place where I grew up, I place where I called home, and now get to work with some amazing people on my research project.  There’s been numerous bumps on the way, but in time they rounded out to be alright, not too shabby in fact.

Why am I not alone?  I began to realize the Christianity thing, spirituality fit my soul like a missing puzzle piece.   It was rather awe-inspiring, actually.  I realized I would never be alone because God was right there with the entire time.  Sometimes I get caught up with the check lists and formulas of life, "I have a plan," I would say to myself and everything will a-okay.  Give it a week trust me… the walls will come tumbling down. Then, I began to wonder if the actual language of life was not just a duty or a way of life, but that there is more to the hidden language.

I like how Donald describes it… I would paraphrase it but I’m lazy.

            I don’t mean to sound like a pop-psychologist.  I am only pointing to the obvious stuff that is taking place in our souls that nobody wants to talk about.  It is obvious stuff that Scripture seems to waltz in and address matter-of-factly.

            And that is the thing about life.  You go walking along, thinking people are talking a language and exchanging ideas, but they whole time there is this deeper language people are really talking, and that language has nothing to do with ethics, fashion, or politics, but what it really has to do with is feeling important and valuable.  What if the economy we are really dealing in life, what if the language we are really speaking in life, what if what we really want in life is relational?

            Now this changes things quite a bit, because if the gospel of Jesus is just some formula I obey in order to get taken off the naughty list and put on the nice list, then it doesn’t meet the deep need of the human condition, it doesn’t interact with the great desire of my soul, and it has nothing to do with the hidden (or rather, obvious) language we all are speaking.  But if it is more, if it is a story about humanity falling away from the community that named it, and an attempt to bring back to that community, and if it is more than a series of ideas, but rather speaks directly into this basic human need we are feeling, then the gospel of Jesus is the most relevant message in the history of mankind.

            -Searching for God Knows What

In our professional development we are always asked to remember, remember Teacher that this is the best that we have, these students are the best that we have.  The parents wouldn't give you any different; they will only give you the best that they have.

And poetry is a literary tool that has the power to give a person the feeling he isn’t alone in those emotions, that , though there are no words to describe them, somebody understands.

            I can’t tell you how beautiful I thought this was; I had always suspected language was quite limited in its ability to communicate the intricate mysteries of truth.  By that I mean if you have to describe loneliness or how beautiful your sweetheart is or the way rainstorm smells in the summer, you most likely to have to use poetry because these things are not technical, they are more romantic, and yet they exist and we interact and exchange these commodities with one another in a kind of dance.

                                                                                                            Donald Miller

Changes come
Turn my world around
Changes come
Bring the whole thing down

There is all this untouched beauty
The light the dark both running through me
Is there still redemption for anyone

Trouble is I'm so exhausted
The plot, you see, I think I've lost it
I need the grace to find what can't be found

I thought that we'd be
Further along by now
I can't remember how
We stumbled to this place

I wanna do better
I wanna try harder
I wanna believe
Down to the letter

Jesus and Mary
Can you carry us
Across this ocean
Into the arms of forgiveness

Words written by: Bergquist/Detweiler

From the recording: Ohio

Colorado oh how I miss you, since the first moment I met you in that cool summer month of my sophomore high school year.  I started to pursue you two years ago, I have written many letters to the department of education but still no job.  This was the beginning of a lifelong fling.

I wrote down a dream
Folded the note
Slipped it in the pocket of my tattered coat

I wrote down a dream
In invisible ink
It never was mine I'm beginning to think

I wrote down a dream
What more could I do
I drew myself a picture and the picture was you

I wrote myself a riddle
I said, What I wouldn't do
To give something good
To a love like you

I wrote down a dream
Folded the note
Passed it to you we stepped in our boat

Sailed 'round the world
We were hoping to find
More than the sum of all we left behind

I wrote down a dream
But what was it now
And why does it feel so distant somehow

Did I take too long
Did I get it wrong
You're still the missing line in my favorite song

I ever took a ride that could slap me this silly
With roiling joy
Lazy as sin
Lyin' up in heaven with my special friend
And the space he's in
It can make a girl grin
In the beginning of a lifelong fling

Words written by: Detweiler

From the Recording: Ohio