Exhaustion means that our vital energies are completely worn out and spent.  Spiritual exhaustion is never the result of sin, but of service.  Whether or not you experience exhaustion will depend on where you get your supplies.  Jesus said to Peter, “Feed my sheep,” but He gave him nothing with which to feed them (Jn. 21:17).  The process of being made broken bread and poured-out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other people’s souls until they learn to feed on God.  They must drain you completely — to the very last drop. 

Have you delivered yourself over to exhaustion because of the way you have been serving God?  If so, then renew and rekindle your desires and affections.  Examine your reasons for service.  Continually look back to the foundation of your love and affection and remember where your Source of power lies.  You have no right to complain, “O Lord, I am so exhausted.”  He saved and sanctified you to exhaust you. 

Be exhausted for God, but remember that He is your supply. 

“All my springs are in you” (Ps. 87:7).

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest

* * *

I believe every experience in my life - good and bad, fun or embarassing, planned or surprise, understood or confusing:  sufferings, losses, joys & regrets  - every single season has been allowed by a sovereign God who loves me and desires to use it all for good as I surrender and submit to His will.  Perhaps more importantly for this 2 Much Too Busy series, keeping in mind that every layered experience equips us for service to Christ, and contributes to making us who we are today.  “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  Eph. 2:10.  For me, the fruit of a somewhat cooky, unconventional life has meant having an extraordinary ability to be flexible and multi-task.  I used to be bitter about the ridiculous life God gave me, but today Providence is the sweetest pillow I lay my head on at night.  God knew eventually I would have an exceptionally large family by Seattle standards, as well as a huge extended Church family.  Flexibility is essential, and He’s created it to be my middle name.  I like how He’s uniquely created that “in Christ”, in me. 

With this in mind, one of my goals for writing this series was to show another side of the rhetoric of 2 Much Too Busy.  In the course of my Christianity, I’ve been scolded, judged and self-condemning for 2 Much Too Busy.   However, in coming to terms with Providence and His excellence in creating Shelly to be the runner in her unique race, for the most part these days I’m 2 much Too Busy full-time, and guilt-free.  A Scottish pastor provided great insight in reconciling my 2 Much Too Busy realities.  He acknowledged this running around like Martha was part & parcel of life, and further said something shocking that I never forgot:  It is okay to be a Martha - SO LONG AS WE take the heart of Mary along with us.  It’s something I daily, prayerfully practise.

In the must-read Christian classic Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian goes on a journey to the Celestial City (heaven), and 85% of his journey is met with dangers, toils and snares.  Only occasionally is Christian allowed respite from his journey and trials, and he takes full advantage of the rest when it comes.  I think Bunyan and Oswald are on to something.  The more I seek to be used, the more exhausted I become.  This year I committed to some pretty hefty ministry projects the week before Easter.  I didn’t get to bed that entire week before 2 AM, and I had work the next morning.  And every time the temptation to feel guilty came up, something said, “unnecessary”.  And then I read the Oswald Chambers selection I started this post with, and it all fit.  It felt so ”right” to be exhausted for Christ’s sake, the week before his crucifixion.

I don’t have any great wisdom on “How To R&R”, because for the most part, I think we all know how to do that.  And we should.  I have found that Jesus is absolutely trustworthy to provide respite.  He’s always looking out for me.  Sometimes that’s a full-fledged vacation, sometimes it’s a morning down at the beach in silence & solitude, sometimes it’s a catnap at the Columbia Center at lunch, sometimes it’s a delicious Korean dinner and conversation with my blogging buddies, and sometimes it’s a glorious night away downtown with my husband.  I grab it when He brings it, I suck every comfort out I can, and I charge up for my next tour of duty, because He saved and sanctified me to exhaust me.    Adriel’s recent post, 16 Men in My Life, illustrated this point perfectly.  And I’m stealing her equally perfect ending.

Good night.

Today at work we started our first Pastor Training Program session. Yesterday I put in 14 hours solid and then today another 14 and I am so tired I have tunnel vision, but I have to write before crashing [and I'm out of laundry and am waiting for a load].

I’m not sure who reads my posts, or what they’ve gathered of information about me, but since October last year, I have worked at Mars Hill as Pastor Scott Thomas’ assistant. He is an elder here at MHC and director of the Acts 29 Network and over the Church Planting Branch. If you think that’s a mouthful, just know I left out 8-12 more roles he has. 

I am almost too tired to be coherent, so I apologize ahead of time to the early readers who will pick this up and catch my spelling and logic errors before I go back and edit them tomorrow.

I’m writing now to tell you I am really happy and absolutely thrilled about the next few days and year. I prayed in my car a lot today for the guys coming in from all over the country - there’s 12 of them - and for the 4 elders I work with in our department who will be training. These 12 guys are training as pastors of new churches - some are rolling, some are gathering speed, some are just a concept in the mind and a burning in the heart right now. Church planting! Mission work! People who have no idea Jesus loves them and died for them will hear!

After all the months of preparation, it was a joy to shake their hands and realize they’re real people and they aren’t just thinking about telling people about preaching the good news and making disciples, they’re jumping into it full-force. These are dudes who love Jesus, love their families, and want folks to meet Jesus and be transformed. These are guys who, because of their example and the preaching of Scripture, will bring the gospel to those seeking and lost.

I remember when I was 9 I really wanted to go and love people who needed love and tell them about Jesus so they wouldn’t be sad or feel lonely.

I remember as a teenager having angst-filled discussions with my best friend late into the night as we discussed how it always seemed that dads were the ones behind everything wrong with our messed up friends and families - girls and boys alike. Every time we tried to trace the source of issues, it came down to an abusive or distant or mocking or absent or harsh father, who also had an abusive or distant or mocking etc father. I remember us crying and praying and saying “God, fix the men - the bad fathers ruin everyone!” I wanted to stop the never-ending chain of fathers being bad dads and their sons growing up to be bad dads, too. And my best friend and I prayed because we knew even then that it would take God and other men who loved Jesus to make the chain stop, and no matter how much we loved our guy friends, we couldn’t fix them and that there was a man-to-man need we couldn’t even approach.

How does this matter to us ladies? Men taking action to train and to plant churches means that more MEN will meet Jesus and stop taking advantage of us, leaving us as single moms, abusing us and our kids, forcing us to take on double responsibilities of men and women, ripping us off, taking and not giving, being dead weight on our couches, lying to us, etc.

All this to say. I am amazed that God in his kindness and great sense of humor has put me in a position where I get to see my 9 year old dream and my teenage prayers start to become real. In a hidden way (with a great view!) I get to help plant churches where people are meeting Jesus. In another hidden way, I get to help great Jesus-loving men get together to train more great Jesus-loving men whose lives are being transformed to become godly in loving, leading and caring for those around them.

More Jesus, more love. Amen.

Good night.

I can’t wait for you to get here. I wish you could talk right when you are born so you can tell us what it’s like to live in my belly.

We pray for you, that you love Jesus. We pray that your heart will be soft even in my womb. Maybe you’ll experience what John the Baptist experienced in his mother’s womb. There’s something I wish you could tell me about!

You’re gonna love your family. You have a super fun daddy! He’ll play with you a lot and make things with you. He plays video games, so you can bet on having all the game consoles to play with. You lucky duck. If daddy didn’t play video games, I don’t think I would get you anything but perhaps the Wii. He’s a really good story teller too. I think he learned it from your grandpa.

My heart is scared for the lack of sleep I’ll have and the lack of alone time I’ll have, but I think we’ll have a lot of fun together.

Your room is probably never going to be ready… but we are ready to have you in our lives.

I love you, little man.

 Speaking of weaving, my mind wandered during Pastor Mark’s last sermon on prayer, to recent conversations with my 5-year old on the same subject.

By way of background, on weekends this summer we have been going to a reading class at North Seattle Community College.  During our walks on campus, he noticed several water fountains, and because water play is right up there with dirt bikes and Legos, of course we got into the habit of visiting the fountains to skip (small) rocks and splash a little before class. 

Spying a few pennies at the bottom, he was naturally curious as to how they got there:

Me:  Some people throw money in water and make wishes.

Son:  Can I do that mommy?

Mom:  (Hesitate)  Um, sure.  Okay.  Just remember, Jesus offers us something super duper better than wishes.  We have a sure hope, and we can pray to Him.  He has way better ears than cement.

Thus ensued a new ritual of throwing in change every week, making a “wish”, and following it up with a prayer right there to Jesus afterwards.  Initially I tried to explain that the gig was you’re not supposed to tell your wish because supposedly it wouldn’t come true, but he’s not one of the dumb ones (nor can he keep a secret), and of course immediately told me right after he threw it in.  The standard prayer became wishing he could ride a 2-wheeler. 

Weeks passed in this ritual.  We added this wish to our bedtime prayers. 

Last week he dug out a fist full of Sweet Tarts from his camoflauge shorts pocket and asked if he could use them to throw in the fountain.  Sure, I said.  Sweet tarts work just as good as money in the big picture.

Son:  Can I make 3 wishes?

(Hmmm.  Branching out.  This would be interesting.)

Mom:  Absolutely.

Son:  I pray that I could ride a 2-wheeler. 

Plop goes a green sweet tart.

Son:  I pray that I would be brave.

(Really?  Wow.  That was unexpected.  What about the cap gun you’ve been begging for at the Little Store?  This is good.)

Glub-glub went a yellow candy.

Son:  And I pray that I wouldn’t be mean to Jack anymore.

(Okay.  My heart stopped.  I was leaking a little). 

Doink went the last blue circle.

Crouched down on our heels, we silently watched them melt.  After which, I hugged him tightly, looked him in the eye and told him how proud I was, and tried to squeeze every drop out of the teachable moment.  Thank you for that, Jesus.  We were late for class.

As Pastor Mark likened prayer to our Heavenly Father as being a similar relationship between the requests of children to parents, I was immediately brought to ponder the beauty, simplicity and integrity of my son’s Sweet Tart prayers.  Indeed, they reflected joy and purity in and through me.  It was easy to imagine this being the way with our prayers to God.

I really liked that of all the things a little boy could have asked for, he chose nothing material.  It caused me later to look up Jesus’ words in Matthew 6, where he says do not worry about what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear.  But seek ye first the Kingdom, and all these things will be added unto you.  I realized that I have been worrying about these pagan things.

His ritual prayer to ride a 2-wheeler was a prayer that I am convinced, Lord willing, he will master in time.  So it is that perhaps many of our prayers are confidently “so” in the realms of heaven, but as Pastor reminded us, the answer in the economy of earth’s time is often “wait” for now.  Just as I can absolutely envision him on 2 wheels, the Master of the Universe, who has perfect vision and is not bound by time, absolutely sees us through Christ as being more than a conqueror in many of our current monstrous situations.   

“Christ Jesus…is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”  (Romans 8, selected). 

Wow.  Jesus prays for me!  Like Brer Rabbit stuck in the Tar Baby, I have been stuck in unbelief, not trusting Jesus for the end result of being more than a conqueror like He promised.

This son has always been reticent, especially with new things.  Recognizing this quality in himself has been frustrating.  My definition to him of brave is “being afraid, and doing it anyway.”  Practicing those things we believe he can do.  His Sunday School teacher, Adelle, has been teaching the class that they are “imago dei,” or made in the image of God, and somewhere deep down, I think little boys recognize this imprint, and sense bravery as an essential character.  Yes, he will need to practice being brave as a young man, and draw on this quality many times over in life.  I want to be brave too, Lord.  Very brave for Jesus’ sake.  Finally, the least common denominator of my son’s prayer “to be nice to [his brother] Jack”, was a simple form of repentance, recognizing the human tendency to sin towards others.  How often do we neglect simple acknowledgements of this?  I could think of at least one sin, one error of commission or omission, with pretty much every single person in my world.  I want to be better ~ like You, Lord:  Quicker to the cross and violent in my exhibitions of unsolicited Grace.

Amen.

I have a confession.

On Friday evening, I spent several hours excitedly writing a “how to” post on how to put wine labels in a journal. I even ran several tests to ensure that my methods would work and borrowed a camera from a friend to take photographs of the process.  I have spent several hours since then fighting with Flickr to post pictures for the blog entry and make everything work. Also over the course of this time, I:

1. Snapped at my husband for trying to help me.

2. Resented my in-laws for wanting to spend time with us.

3. Neglected time with my Bible.

4. Left a frustrated voice mail with a dear friend of mine.

5. Lost sleep while staying up wrestling with the problem.

6. Believed that my reputation was harmed because I couldn’t come through for a friend and post an article when I said that it would post.

7. Yelled at my husband for rushing me out the door to spend time with the in-laws.

It’s now 12:23 pm on Saturday night. I still have not figured out where the computer and I are not communicating well, and you may never read my article on how to make a custom wine journal, but I am cutting my losses on this downward spiral of frustration. As soon as this entry posts, I am spending some serious time communicating with my hubby, who was graciously willing to help me try to solve the issue, then I am reading my Bible before bed, and sleeping. Jesus has been teaching me grace this year, as an ongoing theme. I obviously have plenty left to learn.

Thank you for yours.

  I once worked for a generous boss who gifted me and the kids with free seats to Mariners games at the Kingdome - one row in front of the Mariners’ wives and girlfriends.  Most of these gals were drop dead gorgeous - It was like sitting on a clothed set of Baywatch.  (Interesting Sidenote Gleaned from Overheard Conversations:  Even if our husbands received Two Point Five Million Dollar signing bonuses, our conversations may not be full of grace and contentment).   As much as beautiful women fascinate me, it was easy to come home crabby from those games because there is an undercurrent in femininity that causes us to compare ourselves.  Despite studying women like Esther in the Bible and knowing beauty and good genes are simply another tool God can use for His glory, at times I wonder why He wasn’t a little more generous when He had my DNA on the workbench.  Like it be any skin off His nose.

We could write multiple blogs on the evils of comparing ourselves, but for purposes of 2 Much Too Busy, this comparing takes a hybrid route.  Like Little Red Riding Hood straying off the Path of Righteousness, we veer into the Forest of Discontent when we compare serving and giftings in the Church.  This big bad wolf devours our peace and we swing from pride to depression.

God builds us uniquely and individually with capabilities, giftings and life experiences.  Paul tells us in Hebrews 12:2 to ”fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfector of our faith.”  I need constant reminders to do this, not veer off into what God is doing in my sisters’ lanes and comparing.  Even when we start accepting our imperfections and how God created us on the outside, this comparing takes a sophisticated twist as satan begins weaving discontent on our beauties from the inside.  Know what happens when a runner gazes too long in the next lane?  Trip.  Stumble. Crash.

Several years ago, a beloved friend called me in despair.  Her sister had been battling cancer, and she was starting to really freak out.  Knowing that I had lost several close family members, she was calling for advice.  

One of her toughest issues was that as the cancer took over, her sister obviously didn’t look the same, and she didn’t want her kids to see her that way, and was reluctant to let them visit.  The Holy Spirit did dress me in 1 Corinthians 1:4 conversation (”Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received in God“), but over time our conversations also catupulted me into a cauldron of judgment, anger and discontent as I compared my life with hers.  Underneath our conversation, I was beginning to have a new conversation with myself.

Was she serious?!  What the heck, should I let the kids visit?  In God’s Providence, my kids had to wake up in the same house and watch my brother slowly die every day for 2 years!  It was hardly pretty or conventional, spending toddlerhood in hospitals and the PolyClinic.  Goodness gracious, quit sheltering them, I thought.  What an extraordinary opportunity to teach them empathy and compassion, and that people are what matter in life!  One visit wasn’t going to kill them!  It wasn’t even ABOUT them!  Life is messy, bad things happen under the Curse -  Grow up!  TEACH YOUR CHILDREN TO SUFFER WELL! is what I wanted to scream on the other end. 

What kept me from verbalizing my poison was the Holy Spirit and the fact that she was my friend, and I loved her, and underneath her hysteria and frailty, I recognized an honest soul attempting to reconcile death and heaven for the first time apart from Biblical head knowledge.  She had never before been given the opportunity in life to grapple this out.  I, on the other hand, had dealt with death from an early age.

I took out my suffering ruler and began measuring.  Lost my father and a brother in childhood.  Lost another brother in adulthood to a freakish accident.  And most recently another brother to a terminal illness.  All of the pain and heartache I had stuffed boiled to the surface as I began comparing my list of bereavement experiences with hers, and I thought THIS REALLY SUCKS HOW COMPLETELY UNFAIR GOD HAS BEEN.  NO WONDER I’VE HAD ISSUES WITH MEN WHEN GOD TOOK ALL THE GOOD ONES OUT.

I spent some time as young woman wrestling all the implications out.  Shelly versus God, sovereignty and Providence.  Was He good, or not?  Then how come I had to endure all of that pain & loss?  How come other people didn’t have the same heartaches?  Wasn’t it just the least bit unfair to take all these men and their influence out?  Shouldn’t my Christian home have provided some insurance?  I resented this bereavement ministry.  In fact, I resented almost everyone at Church now with their happy clappy little perfect families.

During my time wandering in the Forest of Discontent, I stumbled across this root passage in Luke 18, starting at verse 9:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men-robbers, evilddoers, adulterers-or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

But the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.  For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Among the theological implications, this passage spotlighted my sinful attitude.  What hit me was this:  I was the Pharisee, looking smugly down at others and their losses and frailties, while I, the Pharisitical bereavement heavyweight, had endured so much more. 

This cut like a knife (see Hebrews 4:12).  How incredibly ungrateful to take the unique life experiences God had given me and use them to be smug, resentful and pious.  Instead, my posture should be one of humility, thanking God for His mercies in all of it, and trusting Him that this would somehow all work out to be beauty and grace in my life, and that of my children.

“But alas, so far from appreciating the gracious designs of the Refiner, how often we are petulant, and murmur when He empties us from vessel to vessel…“  A.W. Pink.

God never intended for us to compare life and giftings with each other in the Church.  This cultivates sinful swings from pride to depression. 

As Pastor Steve exorted us yesterday regarding suffering and any life experience:  ”There is purpose in all of it.  There’s purpose in what we experience and walk through.  You can trust that.”

Comparing life experiences and judging each other from our warped views is wrong.  God is either the who He says He is as revealed in Scripture and worthy of our trust, or He’s a cosmic jerk not worthy of worship. 

God will use every unique experience in our life for His glory.  Some of the fruit from my losses I’m just seeing now, twenty years later. 

Some of us have weathered inordinate internal pressure.  Some of us have weathered inordinate external pressure.  Some may not have much go wrong this side of heaven, at least from what we can tell.  Some will always look like they’re gaining, and some will always look like they’re not.  Some have public gifts, some private.  Some will look irresponsibly 2 Much Too Busy all the time, and some will look unhelpful and unwilling to serve.  Some will look like they have a perfect family, and some will look like the wheels fell off every Sunday.  Unless they are in your community and you have opportunity to get into their kitchen, as it were, fix your eyes on Jesus, and stay there.  We’re never entirely privy to what God is doing, even in our own life.  Jesus is the only One who understands the intricacies of 2 Much Too Busy, and we can trust He’s busy all the time:  Busy being faithful, busy being loving, busy disciplining, busy working all things out for our good, busy getting us ready for heaven.

 This is a journal entry of a woman, addressed to her fiance. She shared with me her struggles to not idolize her relationship with him, not to be a slave to her emotions and how she is trying to break away from a despairing cycle of “works” to make her “worthy” of love. Can you relate in this struggle to worship Jesus in the midst of a relationship? We chose to publish this because it seems a real, raw picture of a post-conversion struggle to abide in Jesus and not return to our old way of life, which is miserable slavery.

Good morning

First off, I want to apologize for how stand-offish I was this morning. I was completely acting on my emotions and blaming you.

As I was cleaning the office this morning God completely convicted me of my sin and how I am choosing to act in my wicked ways rather than in my redeemed state. Things you said I would usually not think twice about, but I dwelled on them and let them fester in my heart. I have been listening to lies and my emotions are telling me things like “he regrets asking you to marry him,” “he does not find you attractive,” “he is the only friend you have and he is sick of you,” etc. The list goes on and on - voices I meditate on, choose to believe as truth and begin playing the victim.

My life starts to build on those “truths” and I work my ass off trying to make them not true and I choose to get stuck in this vicious cycle. I am so discontent with my relationship with God that I keep looking for things to affirm and satisfy me and I fight against simply resting in God. It makes me sick to think I am actually trying to build my life around these things to glorify myself and then get down when they get crushed. My desires are perverse.

I feel like an adulteress. My spirit of rebellion tells me that is not good enough. So I keep working and fighting to try to fulfill my desire for control but end up slipping and blaming the people in my life and the circumstances I am in. I proceed to play the victim and get pissed that you do not ask what is wrong. 

I honestly believe we are entering a new season for our relationship. I think working through how we approach and communicate with each other our concerns and frustrations is huge.

Expectations are being shattered. I expect you to constantly be pursuing me. I expect you to understand everything that is going on in my head. I expect you to always put my best interest before yours. I expect you to be strong in the physical stuff. I expect you to constantly push me to Jesus. I expect you to act like you love me around your parents. I expect you to always be patient with me. I expect you to always be excited to see me. I expect you to always ask me about my day. I expect you to push when I am not giving you answers.

You have spoiled me and I have manipulatively twisted it. Time for me to grow up, because deep down I know that all I really have to do is simply ask you to hear me in that moment and you will be all ears. I honestly do not know how I could be so backwards right now.

How am I going to help you when in fact I am so weak? What does that mean? Buy him more, clean more, ask more questions, try to look good … ? No, it means abiding and all of that will fall into place. I am so completely humbled and more than ever realize my need for God. I physically and emotionally can’t support you unless I am striving to have God be my rock and fortress. My own efforts will continue to fail no matter how hard I keep fighting. I feel so selfish by critiquing how you are treating me and not even looking at my actions. From the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry. I tell you this all of the time, but I will continue to say it, God has blessed me in a way I cannot describe. I know it is not about “deserving it” but I don’t deserve you. You are an amazing man of God and I am so privileged to spend my life with you. 
 
Love you dearly.

A blog entry with a title that includes the word “cross-reference,” is a sure fire way to lose an audience, so for the select few that have made it this far, the picture is dedicated to you.

Background: At the Ballard campus this week, Pastor Bubba preached out of John 15, one of my favorite and most sobering passages of Scripture.

On Tuesday night as I reread the passages, my mind kept asking, “I agree with this, but what does it mean for me, in Seattle, daily?” About the third time I was asking myself how to apply it, I realized that I had never stopped to research the small superscript letters peppering the pages, or truly dig into this theme of abiding in Christ. Reluctantly, I climbed out of bed and grabbed another Bible from the bookshelf across the room. With them side by side, I discovered what Bible scholars and seminary students have been geeking out on for the past 2000 years.

I am no Bible scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but I couldn’t help being fascinated as I began to see how often Christ repeats himself and reiterates this metaphor throughout Scripture. With the goal of sharing this discovery of you, I have written out the first section of verses, and found the cross-references through the ESV Bible Online, then learned HTML enough to put them here for you. It really is extraordinary what can be accomplished in a few hours while sitting at the kitchen table in pajamas.

John 15:1-11

“I am the ^rtrue vine, and my Father is ^sthe vinedresser.

^{2 t}Every branch of mine that does not bear fruit ^uhe takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, ^vthat it may bear more fruit.

³Already ^wyou are clean ^xbecause of the word that I have spoken to you.

^{4 y}Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

⁵I am the vine; ^ayou are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that ^bbears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

⁶If anyone does not abide in me ^che is thrown away like a branch and withers; ^dand the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

⁷If ^eyou abide in me, and my words abide in you, ^fask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

^8gBy this my Father is glorified, that you ^hbear much fruit and so prove to ^ebe my disciples.

⁹ⁱAs the Father has loved me, ^jso have I loved you. Abide in my love.

^10kIf you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as ^lI have kept ^mmy Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

¹¹These things I have spoken to you, ⁿthat my joy may be in you, and that ^oyour joy may be full.”

Now that I have had a study of Scripture/Programming for Beginners session, I think I’ll get dressed and start my day too.

I was just sorting through some old emails and trying to downsize my inbox and found an old one I saved from my Mom. I called her in tears and kind of blew up on her because I was having boy problems and she never hears from me on boy problems EVER, but she stepped right up to it and was very good at calming me down and helping me think things through logically. In fact, her statements were so clear and concrete, I remember whimpering to her, “will you please email those to me so I can remind myself?” and she did the next morning. Here they are.   

1. It is all right for you to tell other people that you do not want to talk about men. Or anything in your private life.
2. You have the right to choose who you allow to talk with you about men.
3. You have the right to take the time you need to decide if a man is the right man for you to marry.
4. Hurry is not a virtue in choosing a mate. (Marry in haste, repent at leisure)
5. A second date is NOT a decision to marry. It is a second look, that is all.
6. A third date is NOT a decision to marry. It is a third look, that is all.
7. Repeat 5 and 6.
8. It is all right to admit you don’t know what you want. It is essential, actually. Until you are honest, you will never know.
9. First steps for you will be to seek God for wisdom about why you are so upset about others’ interest in you. Then seek God for what to do about it. Then respond according to His leading. The business about So-and-So takes a back seat to this, because it will return with ANYONE you want to get to know. When this is straightened out, I think you will be able to think and feel more clearly about So-and-So.
 
Do you remember runaway bride? I struck me that she always had her eggs done the same way her current beau wanted them; part of her ‘growing up’ was when she took the time to test taste eggs to see which way she really liked them. Talk to God about So-and-So and other men. Let Him talk back. It is an adventure, that is for sure. I am praying for you.
Love,
Mom

Many of you have followed the story of my scarf project that supports the House of Hope Micro Enterprise Sewing school in Chillakalu, India. If you haven’t gotten a chance to read the story, check it out on these two earlier posts. (click here for part one and here for part two) So if you have read the posts you’ll know that I’m taking a trip to India to visit the school and find out new ways to support them. The past few months have sped by and my trip is here! I leave July 3 and will return on July 17.

If you want to follow my trip, see photos, and read funny stories (guaranteed there will be a few about aggressive monkeys and crazy drivers!) you’re welcome to follow along on my personal trip blog. I appreciate so much all the positive and warm support I have received from my Mars Hill family through responses to posts and personal emails and I’m excited to share about my trip with you all when I return.

Also, I have recently received many more scarves that readers have asked about in the past. So if you are interested in a pashmina scarf please respond to this post and I’ll be sure to contact you when I return. I have dozens and dozens and they are really beautiful!

Thank you all again and stay tuned…!

-Cambria