God, this semester, I've tried.

I tried to figure out what it meant to live a life worth living. I tried to see the meaning tucked inside each minuscule moment. I tired to push for a powerful existence. I tried to do ever more than ever before.

And I had some results.

I found out that I have a limited capacity, but I serve a God who is unlimited.
I found out that following my own "wisdom" is not always the wisest decision.
I found that I can perpetually doubt (everything) and questions (everyone).
I found out that I can make wrong assumptions and not be able to solution everything.

I discovered that maybe I am much more of a coward than I would like to admit, that maybe I play my life safer than the safest sailor and that I would rarely rarely rarely take a risk (ever) -- my abilities just allow me to do "more," to do more that people would consider risks. But they aren't. They just aren't for me.

I've discovered that I'm afraid of love (or maybe) that I may really not know what love means. I've realized that I really don't like making up my mind but that I am, at the same time, incredibly stubborn.

I've realized that some non-decisions are really decisions, and that safety at the expense of comfort can mean a comfortably miserable existence and that time is an illusively gifted responsibility.

I've realized that I need people, and I need truth. I need facts outside of my mental reality, a mental place where I am both creatively whimsical and calculatingly analytical.

I've realized that sometimes I try to evaluate my own self from a self removed from self. I intellectualize my way away from where the Spirit is leading me, and I hold onto my head to the degree that I lose hold of my heart.

I second-guess my ability to second guess, and I choose the comfortable, easy best over what may actually be the really best.

I deceive myself when I cease spending time with the Son. I search for truth, but if I don't ever come to the truth, how am I supposed to find it?

I think that I know better or can figure it out, but maybe I really need to figure out that I need others to do the figuring with me. Maybe I need to cease so much figuring and start more of the acting. Maybe I need to stop so much internally musing and just muse on the fact that I can delight in the One who delights so much in me and so much in the people and in this world that He has crafted. Maybe I need to craft my life after the Crafter of Life and lay down my existence to with obedience as my heartbeat.

Maybe I must trust.

Trust that I am not enough but I serve the God who is way more than enough.
Trust that I do not understand but I am actually understood.
Trust that I do know what I must -- I know the One who does know, and that's exactly where I need to go.

I'm afraid, Abba; afraid to move in a direction because I do not want to be judged (by man), but I must realize that there is only One whose judgment holds weight, and I want to be faithful into that judgment day.

Do I trust you to write that story?

I'm trying,
and I know I've tried but can try harder still.

I'm being conformed into the image of You, Christ, and who am I to be impatient in the process. I must simply be faithful, but I must be a fired faithful: relentless.

I want that, Abba. I want to come back to not asking what I want or need or think is a good idea but asking--and not just asking but seeking--your desire for my next step, for I do not even need to see more than simply that.

Lord, please keep me from my self and from my selfish, flesly ways. Grant me grace when I need it but grant me truth when I need to preach it and be preached by it.

I crave freedom and peace and trust and truth and gloriousness un-burdened by burdens that I was not meant to carry but only burdened with what burdens Your heart. I need to be channeled into You. I need to lose more and more of myself to ever find what it means to be found in You and to be truly alive.

I need to come back; I need to come back to what you've told me since the beginning, to come back to the (non-complicated) and oh so simple truths. I need this truth maybe most of all, a heart guarded by the beautifully simple and simply beautiful reality.

Lord, please keep me from the reality that is so focused on myself and which is introspecting myself to death, instrospecting it farther and farther away from you. Keep me from pursing things that smell of the fragrance of death. Inspire me with your vision. Infuse me with your hope. I want to be found freed in the fullness of You, forever thankful. Lord, Your favor is so undeserved that you give to us. Thank You, oh Abba, thank you.

Refresh me, revive me. I need You.

“There was a deep inside of me, a happy of Jesus.”

Brown couch against my black notebook, so much of my American surroundings suddenly seemed trivial as the persecuted believer’s heartfelt words emerged in the video curriculum. Barely noticing the syntax, I absorbed the concept: a deep place inside, a joy only allowed because of Jesus.

It was week four of eight in my summer internship, and I felt like I was experiencing a crash-course in Christian life and ministry.

Within my department, I saw how strategy of spreading the word about persecution is seasoned with trust in God’s plan. "I had no idea." Comments issued as I introduced believers to the reality of persecution while exhibiting at a national conference: convicted and inspired. "Equipping to be storytellers of the persecuted." The words for the new program's booklet to engage the American church emerged, and I further read of people being impacted through those willing to give their life because of their commitment to Christ.

I was seeing, hearing, and reading about what God was doing in nations with unique challenges for Christians, and I was now watching the video testimony of one of such believers: “There was a deep happy because of Jesus.”


The internship kept bringing this to mind, and my persecuted family shows me this: mind.

So much starts in the mind.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8).

When believers are faced with imprisonment, torture, and even death, they rely on the truth of the Bible. They cling to songs bringing to mind the sweet truths of Christ and His resurrection.

They engage with truth deeply, and their deep commitment to Christ is evidenced by a deep delight in the very character and essence of who He is. They delight in the reality of a God who is good, just, and holy. They fix their mind on this, despite externals.

Looking up at the persecuted believer on screen, I thought of how our external situations might be different but how we have internal similarities: we both may struggle with doubt, pride, anger, jealousy. We question.

However, just as each other, we each have a choice to fix our mind on praising the Delightful one, our Savior, despite not only external situations but internal thoughts. And this mental fixation? It compels us to action, for his love does not let us sit passively (2 Corinthians 5:14-15; James 1:22).

Entering the last days of my internship and looking into continuing in a life surrendered to Christ, I make it my prayer: Lord, let obedience to fix my mind on you be my heartbeat; let delighted praise of you be my speech.

Pink and white airplane display still yards away, I faltered as I gazed at the pond surrounded by prayer stones emblazoned with regions and Bible verses.

Words reached my ears through Nik Ripken’s audio version of The Insanity of God.

He told. He’d heard persecution-familiar Asian believers crying, tearing their clothes, and speaking in loud voices. The believers had listened to Nik’s stories of Middle Eastern persecution, and they had committed: committed to wake up an hour earlier to pray for those facing “real persecution.”

I faltered. Wow, Lord.

This summer hadn’t brought me from Asian or Middle Eastern nations but from over six hundred miles “up north” to the hundred (plus) degree heat of Oklahoma that had more heat than just weather: a hub of “on-fire,” dedicated believers serving the Lord through an organization while representing numerous “on-fire” persecuted believers throughout the globe.

Coming for an eight-week internship, I didn’t realize how much I would come away with. Sitting across from multiple International Ministries workers, we talked about Bible smuggling and America’s cultural Christianity. Perched on the couch’s edge at my host family’s home, I heard stories about decades spent among Muslims. Pulling up the edge of a banner at a conference, we discussed methods of spreading His Word.

I’d seen the faithful service of co-workers in the office, some serving for over twenty years. I’d listened to the interworking of meetings discussing missiology. I’d heard about my persecuted family who were obedient even till death. I’d tasted and seen the work the Lord is doing globally, and I’d been convicted.

I faltered. Wow, Lord.

As Asian believers cried in prayer, I asked hard questions: what does it really mean to be a part of such a global family of Christ?

As I read my Bible and thought about believers dying to get the Word to others, I asked: who am I to keep asking the Lord to “fill me up” if I am not being “poured out” for the sake of the gospel?

Amar's eyes lit up as he talked about sharing the love of the Father even though he was a refugee. Hannah's passionate voice echoed as she urged believers in the west to simply read their Word of God. Lives filled up and poured out. Lives poured out and refilled.

I faltered. Wow, Lord.

Wow, Lord, You are working a plan so much bigger than any of us can see (Proverbs 16:9; Psalm 138:8; Job 42:2).
Wow, Lord, You’ve given us each a piece in your story (Ephesians 2:10).
Wow, Lord, open my eyes to the ministry that is here, in front of me as they are being faithful there, with what's in front of them.

Wow, Lord, grant us each strength to be faithful to obedience – to the daily surrenders of our everything for the greater reality that we—a global family—are joining in the work of Him who is everything.

“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus as my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8).

The green and white blanket supports my black socks, black pants, and grey tee as I sit, head against the hotel headboard, staring at the silver-handle on the seven-foot smooth door.

I rarely cry.

It's not something I proudly champion (unfortunately, my pride just takes other forms).
It's just something I've observed.

"Deborah, do you even have a soul?" 

Holding the "I-Heart-Oklahoma" T-shirt with bright green, edgy succulents and gold-edged vases behind her, my summer roommate looked at me so sincerely I laughed. She'd asked if I was going to buy anything this summer for sentiment, and I'd told her that nah, I wasn't very sentimental. Combined with our internship "professional development" results (I had no Clifton Strengths Finder "themes" in the "relational" category and scored a zero for "mercy"), she genuinely wondered.

I rarely cry. And I've struggled with having tendencies of a creative executive with a poetically analytical mind yet rock-steely core.

But I teared up, here.

My prayer list, complete with long lists under lots of categories, blinked open at me.

where should I go what should I do who should I talk to how to I keep moving forward what about learning this going there trying that

A frenzy of frenzied questions had inhabited my mind for almost two years, and I had recently turned to (consistent, intentional) prayer about them. Mind used to darting, my heart was learning what it means to be still: to be still focused on the one thing that matters so (so) much:



And this? It makes me tear up because I see that I mess it up so (so) often. I get consumed by my own ideas, desires, thoughts, ambitions. I get so caught up in the technical, minute details of how to "obey best" because I've held this so tight that I've actually gotten tightly tied to its idolatry. I get so caught wanting to please the Lord that I try try try to figure it all out best and make me a thriving Christian.

I lose sight of it.

The biggest success of how I live my life? The best decision I can make? If I obey what the Lord calls me to. The biggest success for anyone? Obeying, so that, in the end, we hear: well done, my good and faithful servant.

Rejoicing always (Philippians 4:4). Praying without stopping (1 Thessalonians 5:16-19). Putting others above ourselves and don't do things from selfish ambition (Philippians 2:3). Bearing one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2). Welcoming each other (Romans 15:7). Remembering those who are persecuted (Hebrews 13:3). Loving enemies (Matthew 5:43-48).

It's not hard; it's in the Word. The hard part, sometimes, is that we hardly take the time to read it and then do it (James 1:22).

Lord, keep us from over-complication.
Lord, make us people whose heartbeat is obedience.

Sitting across from three leaders (having years more of life experience which I wanted to honor), I couldn't help my visceral reaction: I wanted to gag.

I know. I know I know I know. People realize that human busyness is an issue and we need to spend more time on soul-care. I've heard. I do know this need is valid (very valid).

Sometimes, though, it seems like soul-care and self-discovery are the most common advice people give. Deep in my soul (and actually right on the surface), I just want someone to challenge me, to call me out on my sin, to tell me I need to repent, to push me to have more discipline and to be more committed to simple (and often less experiential disciplines): serving, praying, reading the Word.

Maybe I'm the only one who is a little sick of the soul-talk. But I just can't help it. I find hard truths in the Word: love my enemies and pray for persecutors (Matthew 5:44) and pick up my cross (Matthew 16:24-26) and count trials as joy (James 1:2) and give thanks in everything (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Who is calling me beyond soul-care to do these things?

Instead, I often hear I need to "look inside" and "create space" so that we all have "safe places" to share without our feelings getting hurt.



B e i n g | yes, I am a human being prone to burnout, tempted to measure success by a checklist, and neglecting sleep in productivity's name.

B e i n g | but, I've seen what's behind this flawed way of being: a lack of truly being, being present in each moment to the truth - ultimately, to the one who is the way, the truth, and the life and to what He says about how to live this life (John 14:6).

This "being present to truth" isn't mystical; it's having your whole being, your whole focus centered on Jesus, on worshiping and obeying him. I can choose my sin of making an idol out of my productive obedience (and then wallow in perpetual soul-care to try to fix my mess). Or, I can spend my life in worship of the supreme Being: my Lord and Savior.

I sit in my cubicle and feel myself being pulled to overly-productive thoughts making me want to wallowing in "soul-care:"  I'm not being extroverted enough, I'm not being caring enough like a Christian should, I should really be doing something else to advance my future. I am caught being inside my head. The present isn't something I often live within.

B e i n g | when I try to maximize my life, I am left in the grips of my own ability. (News flash, it's not as much as I think it is sometimes.)

And I can stay there. I can be the best version that Deborah creates herself to be. I can focus on soul-care and on doing this being better.

I can be most fully in the present when I realize that being is not about me. It's about being obedient to Christ, to lifting His name high, about preaching Him and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 1:23) and counting all else as loss for the sake of knowing him (Philippians 3:8). 

It's about being able to lose my tight-grip on myself to ever really find what my personal "being" is all about.

I've been in the search of how to be present. To be present, I don't necessarily need more soul-care.

I must present myself before the Lord (Romans 12:1) and focus so wholly on who He is, His being. 

Then, I must pray (Isaiah 55:6). I must rejoice (1 Thessalonians 5:16). I must serve (Luke 17:33). I must go (Matthew 28:16-20). (Yes), I must even do.


Lord, give me the humility to let go of me and to grab hold of You and all that you make life to be - to be in each present moment.

Gray and white PUMA hat pulled over my bronze-tinted aviators, I sat, back to the water and face to the bench I abandoned for the pavement. I didn't realize redness silently invaded my shoulders because ninety-five degrees felt more like a blissful coating than a crisper.

Lord, I am a sin-sick sinner in need of a Savior.

The dark wood reaching far beyond the balcony in the Oklahoman Baptist church still seemed before me. The pastor's powerful exegetical work in Psalms was affecting me deep, despite my joking claim to already have interned in church for seventeen years (pastor's kid perks).

The sick just need to come to the physician. They simply must come, and the physician is the one who then does the work to make them well.

Well, I know. I've grown up hearing this from camp-side fire and red-couch church basement youth group discussions. Well, I know, but what have I done? The pastor's prayer had echoed my verse, James 1:22: Lord, make us doers of your word and not hearers only.

Come, come.

(a u g u s t   t w e n t y   f i f t e e n)

Lord, I want to go for you.
Lord, I want to do anything and everything you want me to.
Lord, just show me. I am fully yours.

I wrote the words in the pink and yellow and blue and orange stripped journal as they had been the words filling pages since my eleven year old journals. Go, go.

(a u g u s t   t w e n t y   s i x t e e n)

ερχομαι | "to come, to go" in koine greek

The blue greek text book was all it took to make me a little blue at how much I still had to learn and yet how quickly I figured I'd forget it.

But my heart still pulsed: go, Lord, I need to go I need to do I need to be I need to find your will and do it with all that's in me.

The Bible, penned in koine, has the word, the word to go, so mustn't I? Better yet, shouldn't I have already?

(p r e   a u g u s t   t w e n t y   s e v e n t e e n)

But ερχομαι holds in it a dichotomy: a coming but yet a going. Post Oklahoma Baptist preacher, I was face to face with the sin that the Lord had already been tugging and showing me that was within. Good intentions? Likely, but also a lot of distrations of pride, jealously, and selfish ambition and a lack of faithfulness. I was caught needing to come, come.

To come straight to the Bible and to be a sin-sick (yes) but Savior-soaked sister in the process of sanctification.
To come straight to prayer to pour out my heart but also to be still and know He is God.
To come straight to praising and thanking Him no matter what I'm thinking of feeling.
To come straight to serving and to loving.
To come straight to Jesus.
Faithfully. 

To ever go, I must first come. To simply go into this day with the ability to love requires me first to come to the one who is love. To go and change the world requires me to come with my sin to the physician and plead for the change regardless of the pain of recovery.

Going requires coming (repeatedly).
Simple, so so simple.
But oh how simple to go (repeatedly) in my own strength and to miss it.
And to miss so much more.

So help me, Father.

 My size eight nike shoes hit the pavement just as my white headphones emitted sound on my ears.

“The pursuit of joy in God is not optional. It is not an “extra” that a person might grow into after he comes to faith. It is not simply a way to “enhance” your walk with the Lord."

With John Piper's words audible thanks to Amazon's Audible app, my (yearly) spastic relationship with running (and not running) stabilized through these sunset runs. Oklahoman sky vast, my nikes paused. I soaked it in: the green, short blades beneath me; the vast sky with lingering, painted pink-orange clouds haloing the open, brown-flowing field beneath.

Breathe.

I was coming as close to PTSD as I ever wanted, but it was more like PSID: post self-stress induced disorder. I hadn't realized how much the last semester had really done me in.

Flashback.

Wakeup at 7:20 class at 7:50 back to back class till 12:30 then change and work by 12:45 then not off till 3:10 then meeting at 3:25 till 5:00 then seminar at 6 till 7 then group project at 7:15 till 9:30 then random crisis hallway conversation till 10 then homework till 2:30 (and no component work or writing or dishwashing or devo time or laundry or guitar or even friend convo)   

Maybe most vivid was the mental tension.

Updates popping up on my computer | oh that's right another thing I am behind on
Planner with notes to look back at the previous week's notes | another mental note I'm not getting it all done
Gmail with over 2,000 unread (and needing to unsubscribe) messages | messages clouding my consciousness 

Breathe.
Piper.

"Saving faith is the confidence that if you sell all you have and forsake all sinful pleasures, the hidden treasure of holy joy will satisfy your deepest desires.”

Each pound of my nikes pounded my mental tension away, coming off like a refreshing Oklahoman gusting breeze.

What does it mean to desire God?

To really, truly, run after him with all: heart, soul, and mind? To desire Him that I could care less if my desires to have a clear mind ever came true? To desire Him that I didn't idolize my own achieving-obedience-mental-stress-chaos where my priorities (purportedly on Him) were actually on me?

Breathe.

“But to enjoy him we must know him. Seeing is savoring. If he remains a blurry, vague fog, we may be intrigued for a season. But we will not be stunned with joy, as when the fog clears and you find yourself on the brink of some vast precipice.” 

Known unknown. I could feel the mental tightness coming again.

Breathe.

"To enjoy him we must know him." Simple. God's word. A starting place. My foot pounded down; my prayer pounded up.

God, I don't even know where to start, so show me. I desire to desire you more. I want to know you more. Give me conviction to make a change, grant me the contentment with the simple truths: your word, your character, your plan.

Simple, really.

I stared at the cloud-haloed Oklahoman relieving bliss and kept pounding as I knew it was He who was really doing the (gentle but firm) pounding in my heart, something only He can do.

Peace.

The light blue waves mirrored the blueness of the cool bench imprinting my sunburned legs with small circles. I spoke.

"And fast forward two years, and I guess here I am today.."

He looked back at me, but I was still looking inside, realizing it had actually been two years since I'd moved to a new state and (somewhat) neglected my soul's state.

Straight rewind.

The past two weeks | neon shirts, lawn mowing and weed pulling with nine other grounds-care coworkers.

The past two months | eighteen credits, five activities for zero credits, three jobs, two honors component research projects, and an average of four hours of sleep per night.

The past two years | too much of a self-centered, introspective dive tainted with good intentions and my questions' questions.

Straight forward.

The next two weeks from that bench-sitting dusk | a move to another state and an awakening to the true state of things, the state of the reality of these past two years.

I've actually been realizing some things.

I haven't written a post solely for this blog in over a year.
I haven't been faithful with reading my Bible.
I haven't prayed like (I've realized) we humans actually need.
I haven't been focused on doing and moving and going.

Actually, I've been so focused on doing and moving and going that what I've done a lot of thinking about it, thinking at the expense of action.

And that's just the beginning.
(It's been a good, good first month of my two-month relocation since that blue-bench conversation).

What I'm seeing is that when we have these relizations, we have two options: to continue in the same direction or to move in a slightly different one.

I'm not saying I've been heading in the wrong direction (because that's honestly not accurate). I've been on this wonderful path God has laid before me; I've just found a spot in the shade and have been chillin for a little too long.

Here's the thing, though. I want to move again, to move in the direction God's planned.

But something is different about this choice inside.
I'm not choosing to gather up my willpower and to go with all my might.

I'm choosing to say that I do not have the sustainable motivation to go or the clarity to always know where to go or the wisdom to always go most effectively. But I do have something: a knowledge.

I know that I must keep my eyes on Jesus and delight in Him.
Then, I have to humble myself.
I have to ask.

Jesus, I need you to go anywhere, and I need to stop caring so much about the details of this "anywhere" and the "how wells" of how I'm getting there, and simply care that I'm going - I'm going with You.

So help me, Lord.