One among thousands

This week was my first week of classes. It was also my first week as an offical, full-time student at the University of Texas at San Antonio. This week was, in a word: stressful.

Wednesday morning I left early to find a parking space, which I did with little difficulty (much to my surprise). Then came the task of figuring out where each building was and which classroom I needed. This was a little more challenging. The classrooms are numbered first by the floor they are on. Then there's a second number that I haven't really figured out the purpose of, maybe the hallway number? Then just because three is better than two, there's another number that I'm assuming designates the actual classroom. Honestly, I have no idea. So when you're looking for classroom 3.02.14 and you're somewhere on the third floor, but have no idea where, it can be a bit unnerving. By God's grace and with lots of prayer, I found every class and was even on time.

All day long the song "Sea of Faces" was playing in my head, as I watched literally thousands of people swarm all about me on the campus. There were long lines and confusion almost everywhere you turned. I even put off some things like getting my student I.D. and going to the bookstore just to avoid some of the hassle. I have not seen so many people in, well, a very long time. It was rather intimidating. Additionally, since I don't know anyone at my school it was very lonely and scary. It reminded me very much of my initial university experience. As I was taking it all in and having the song play endlessly in my mind, I was comforted as only the Holy Spirit can comfort by remembering that I'm not in this alone. Because I am a follower of Christ, He is with me everywhere I go. I tried to imagine and observe how others must be feeling, many of them freshmen in this big, new world. I remember that feeling. I tried to comprehend how anyone could do this without the ever-present presence of Jesus by their side. The huge university sprawling before me, felt less frightening, less lonely in view of the fact that I have a friend who sticks closer than a brother walking to each and every class with me. And God, in his goodness and understanding of who I am, allowed me to run across a couple of familiar faces throughout the day.

My prayer for this year has become, God let me shine your presence into the darkness of this university so that others might find the same peace and security I have in you. Help me show others that they don't need to be lost in the sea of faces, because you know them more intimately than any person ever could and desire to be in relationship with them. Use me to minister your love and grace to a hurting world.

The WORD became flesh

Okay, this always blows my mind, but I was thinking about it especially today because I started reading the book of John. God himself, the Creator of the universe loved me and you enough that He took on the shroud of flesh and dwelt among humans. He was fully God and yet he was fully man.........I don't know about you, but I really have a hard time wrapping my small brain around that concept. He knew the fleshly desires I feel, He knew the struggles I face........He knew incredible pain.....He KNEW intimately what it was to be human. I can't even imagine that. That is some love.

On days like today, I can't imagine why he would have wanted to be human. Have you ever looked so forward to something, you could almost taste/imagine/feel it? I can't wait to get to heaven, and I have to admit it is for somewhat selfish reasons. But I can't wait to have a perfect body free of all pain and illness. I truly believe that God uses all things for good, even the really hard things, but in the midst of it, sometimes its' really hard to see where this is all going. My head is throbbing like the constant ticking of a time bomb, threatening to explode at any minute and my body hurts, the slightest touch sending pain shooting through the area and flushing my skin bright red for hours. There are other niceties, but I'll spare you the details. I have no idea when it will end, but then I think of Jesus, nailed to a cross. Can you imagine how painful that must have been? How he must have wished in his humanness for it to end........and yet, he stayed there for me. He loved me enough to endure that indescribable pain. (I've been taking pain killers all day, and He didn't even have that benefit.) And so, today I am choosing to thank God that I am alive despite the pain, and even thank Him for the pain which I know He is using to teach me some greater lesson about His love and goodness and grace. He knows my weaknesses, He knows my limits and He loves me more than anyone else ever could.

Lord grant me the grace to endure as you did and to testify to the world that you are love defined.

Awkward silence

Wow! I never knew silence to be so strange. I like to be quiet and listen to things (you learn a lot by doing so).....people talking, birds singing, whatever might be going on around me. But these past couple weeks have been an eye-opener. I don't really know what it's like to experience quiet. And, I don't really know how I feel about it.......

The people I am living with have been gone every weekend for the last three weeks now, and during the week only the husband has been here. However, we have averted any major awkwardness on either part by having completely opposite work schedules. I'm getting up when he's leaving for work and leave before he gets home. He's already asleep when I get home, so basically we've seen each other a total of maybe 3 times in the last couple weeks. Since I don't know him really, I can't say that's been a problem for me.

This week has been especially odd because I haven't been in school, so a great deal of the "busy"-ness of my life has been stripped away. I've noticed how little silence I have in this fast-paced, constantly on-the-go, life-style I lead. When that's gone, I feel somewhat lost. However, it's also shown me how little time I give to "hearing" God. In the din that is my constant daily pattern, He'd almost need a megaphone to get my attention. I read my Bible and pray, but often that gets caught up in the whirlwind of things going on as well. I've been wanting for a while to take a "retreat of silence" so I can seriously seek God out on some things...........perhaps He's given it to me in a different manner than I had planned in my feeble mind.

I don't know yet what I really think about the silence..........but I think it could grow on me. And who knows, maybe God could actually whisper.

Straining to hear

One of the ways God gets my attention has always been music. I love to listen, just listen, so often I hear the words and they get into my soul and help me refocus. This is one of the reasons I love music so much.

The past couple weeks have been tough. I've got all kinds of people telling me what they think I should do about just about everything in my life. And well, I'm pretty much sick and tired of it. I'm adult, at least last time I checked I was anyway. My life has been pretty much in turmoil all summer. I've moved, I've transferred schools and taken one of the hardest classes I've ever had (during a summer session), my youngest niece requires extra time, my oldest niece desperately misses me and I her, and I've been promoted to a new position at work. Basically, everything I've known for the past couple years has been completely uprooted. I have a very hard time with change...........I don't know why for sure, it's just not really something I care much for.

I've got the dude at work still trying to get me to step down from my new position so he can have it back and now other people pressuring me to relocate stores. I don't want to change stores. I love my store. I work for an amazing store manager, who not only knows my name but knows that I'm in school as well. Every time I see her she greets me by name and asks how school is going. How many store managers do you know that take the time to know each of their employees, really? My direct supervisors are good people to work for and I have built rapport with them. So what if I have to drive farther????.......It doesn't take me any longer than it did before I moved (most of the time) and besides, I like the down time. If I'm willing to pay the extra gas money, why should anyone else care? I'm just soooooooooooo..........I don't even know what

Anyhow. Today, I popped in a favorite CD by the group Downhere. And appropriately enough God spoke to my heart.........

I Will Follow Your Voice

I can hear the people
I hear the ideals they love
I can hear preachers that please other seekers
The message of heroes and proclamation of kings

I hear the messages
I hear the debate
I hear all the love songs
I hear all the promises
I hear music that dreamers create

I won't take advice from cynics
I won't listen to the word of fools
Sure, everyone has their own take
On what I should do, but...

I will follow Your voice
I will follow Your voice
I will trust Your choice
I will not fear

I will follow Your voice
I will follow Your voice
Not my will but Yours
Be done here...

I can hear the questions
The answers that breed doubt
The spiritual poison of hecklers and demons
Who whisper in corners, hoping for a sell-out

I can feel the pressure
To filter everything I say
To sit down in silence
Put up with injustice and turn the other way

I hear about a war
I lose with tragic force
I hear I'm going down
I'm headed for the ground
I hear I should panic
I should be afraid
I hear through all the noise
A still and steady voice say...wait

With every channel on
We don't know where we belong
Help me to hear Your voice
Above all the other noise

Not that I am presumptuous enough to say that the people who are saying some of these things are fools or don't have my best interests at heart......it's just that they don't know me like God does. And so, at the end of the day, I realize once again........it doesn't matter what ANYONE says as long as I listen to and follow the lead of my shepherd's voice.

Grace

Grace is something extended to us that we do not deserve. I am knowing grace today. This entire summer session, I have struggled through my Biochemistry class. Not that it was a particularly difficult class in itself, but there was a lot of reading (Ask anyone I know, I always had my book with me...........when we went places in the car, on all my breaks at work, every minute I was home) and I never really could figure out the teacher's testing technique. The material I thought I knew, never was what I seemed to need to know. I had fallen behind in my reading to the point of being ridiculous and impossible to catch up. There was simply too much going on between work, school, and general life for me to handle everything. I had become discouraged and hopeless with regard to the class and even though I wanted to do well, had begun to not care. Last week, I finally caught a break and was able to read the material thoroughly for the upcoming final exam. By my calculations, I could only miss one question to still have a chance at a "C" in the class. (When there's only 20 questions on an exam, every question missed hurts........a lot.) I went in, began my exam, and like every test before, there were some questions that I knew the answers to, and some that I had no idea where she had even gotten them from. Fortunately, the ones I knew were the first seven or eight questions on the exam, so I was able to feel confident until near the end of the exam. I left the test attempting to be upbeat, but inwardly feeling defeated. There was simply no way that I could possibly have missed only one. And I was right......I missed four. For the first time since the beginning of the course, I got a B on a test! Now, I had been keeping very close tab of what my grade was and knew that even this B wasn't going to be enough, but then I looked down at my final grade. As clear as day, there it was, "C." This is not a merciful teacher, she let us know at the beginning of the semester that her grades are cut and dry.....don't ask her for adjustments. But somehow, I ended up with a "C." The only explanation I can think of is grace........she didn't give me what I had earned, she rounded the points up.

This experience set me to thinking of course about God's grace. How much more vast and incredible is that. This was a simple grade, He had grace on my life. In my sin nature, I deserve to die and be separated from Him, but that was not acceptable to Him. He wants me (sometimes I can't think why) to be with Him so much that He sent His only Son to pay the debt that I could never repay. I didn't deserve that, I didn't do anything to earn it..........He gave it, freely. He did not give me what I did deserve, but instead gave me something that I could never do on my own. I love that God uses the events of my every day life to remind me constantly of who He is and how much He really does love me. I am always awed at how he orchestrates things in order to point me back toward Him when I need it most.

And........for those of you who are concerned about a future doctor who barely passed Biochemistry, I do have to take it again in medical school.........so I will know what I'm doing when I graduate. :)

Little Christ

As a believer I am called to be like Christ, to have the same mind, purpose and goals as He did. He came to minister life in abundance and fullness, a life of freedom in Him. I often find myself frustrated in my Christian walk, because I feel like I am not growing or becoming as Christ-like as I ought. I am to be an ambassador for Christ to the world......a little Christ. I am not asserting that I will ever be Christ himself, but rather I as I become more like Him, will be a mirror reflection of Him to the world around me.

In that light, I was struck by a couple of verses this week. At church, the Sunday morning small group I have been attending is studying the book of Hebrews. Yesterday, we covered Hebrews 5:11-6:3 in part of our discussion. "We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so."

The analogy was given: This is like going to a National Park. There is a trail at the park along which you can hike and it has many twists and turns in it. At the head of the trail is a visitor center. You go into the visitor center and a man comes and explains what the trail is like and what to expect and watch out for along the way. You listen to the entire spiel and then just stand in the visitor center. Fifteen minutes later, the same guide returns and gives the same information and you listen and then continue to stand there. Fifteen minutes later, you listen again.....and again and again and again......you get the idea. You have all the tools you need to begin the journey, but you're staying in the visitor center and not leaving to actually walk the trail.

I have to admit that I think I find myself in the visitor center a lot. I know what the Bible says about a lot of different things, but I lack the confidence to go out and share my faith. Or at times, I have stepped out to share my faith, but at the first sign of rejection or failure, I've turned and high-tailed it back to the visitor center.

Tonight I was reading in Luke and came again across the parable of the great dinner in chapter 14. The owner of the house prepares a great feast and invites all his friends, and when the time comes, the friends all have an excuse for why they cannot attend. Verse 23 says, "And the master said to the slave, 'Go out into the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled. ' " Compel them to come in, not invite, not beg, but compel...........The definition of compel is to drive or urge forcefully or irresistibly; to cause to do or occur by overwhelming pressure. This is not a timid invitation, but rather an offer you can't refuse.

This is the kind of Christ follower I want to be, one who goes out and lives her Christianity for all the world to see and compels other to follow. God, more of you and less of me.............help me mirror you more perfectly.

When customer service goes right

For all the horror stories that one hears working in customer service, it is nice to know that some people out there are not rude, cantankerous and out to take advantage of the system at everyone elses' expense.

Take for example a couple I helped today. The customer had bought a pair of sunglasses and no longer had the receipt (a common occurrence). The glasses were broken and he wanted to exchange them for something else. Since he didn't have either the tags or the receipt, I told him he would have to find something exactly the same in order for me to process the return. He was very polite about it and left with his wife/girlfriend to find an identical pair. When they came back the brought an almost identical pair along with a pair of shoes. Since I could see from the pair that he brought to the counter that the glasses did come from our store, the only difference being an extra couple screws.........I began to process his return. Everything was going smoothly until it came to the shoes he wanted to exchange for........they were marked at one price but came up at a different price. He didn't yell/scream or get upset, he simply said, these shoes are not the correct price, the associate working in the department told us they were "such-and-such." He then ran back to the department, found the associate and brought up the shoes with the clearance tag on the box. Unfortunately, because the price on the shoes was wrong, I now had to restart the entire transaction. I had already tagged the glasses defective and put them in the claims basket and put the glasses he brought up into the return bin. This required that I go back and dig out the glasses from both locations. I restarted the transaction and finished with the customer. I didn't get frustrated, I didn't let it ruffle me, I just did my job to the best of my ability. The customer was very apologetic that we had to begin the process all over again, but I just smiled at them and told them it was no big deal. He left and I continued on.

Several minutes later, one of my managers approached me. She said, "You should know that you just received a very high compliment from one of the people you were helping." She described the man and told me, "He said you were very professional and an asset to our company and that if we ever let you go we would be crazy." She then thanked me for doing a good job.

So, with all the negative people out there, it is nice to know that there still are some people in the world who appreciate what you do for them.

Transitioning

The second day I was here, Makya called me. She was in bed all three of the times my sister and brother-in-law called me the first day.

"Ya-Ya, I want you back." It was the sweetest thing in the world in the most pathetic voice possible.
"Are you missing me?" I asked.
"Yes."
"I miss you too, but I'm going to see you tomorrow at church."
"Ok."
She then proceeded to tell me something unintelligible through the 3-year old gibberish. And she wanted to "show me" something too......she hasn't quite figured out that I can't see anything over the phone line. =)

We missed each other at church due to miscommunication, so I stopped by the house the next day. Makya told her Mom and Dad all day long that I was coming to see "her," it didn't matter why else I might be coming by, like to collect mail and such......in her mind, my only purpose was to see her. (Of course, she was partially correct.) She immediately jumped up from the table and wrapped her entire body around my legs, the second she heard me open the door. It was so good to see her. Ashtyn was excited too, in her own way. She came and held onto my leg until I picked her up. When it was time for me to leave, Ashtyn & Makya were busy in the back yard with popsicles ('Poppy-sickles' as Makya calls them) so I got a simple "Peace out" from Makya. And a quickly added, "I love you!"

My former room was transformed overnight to a "guest room" which is completely rearranged. But I think that is good for everyone, because it gives the room a different sense....so that the reality of the move can set in for everybody.

The new room is now mostly unpacked. I have a couple of containers waiting for my next day off, but otherwise everything's set up. It's quiet here, which is nice when I am trying to study. I don't have to try and keep myself focused while keeping an eye on the girls or chasing after them to attend to their needs. Not that I mind caring for them, it's just nice to have study time that is uninterrupted.

I miss them a lot, more than I really can adequately express in words alone..........but, a new phase of my life is beginning and just around the corner I will see what lies ahead.

A work in progress

This week, much to my delight, I discovered that I have changed. There was a time when I would have been intimidated by a co-workers assertions that I'm less than adequate..........but, yeah, that time has passed.

When I took over the position at Customer Service, I replaced another associate who wanted to get out of that specific department. He therefore took a pay cut and transferred out to the registers. For the past several weeks, he has been constantly trying to get me alone and questioning my like/dislike of my new position. To which I always give the same answer. "It's fine."

Well, since he wasn't getting me to say that I hated it, last week he tried a different approach. He told me (when no one else was around of course) that everyone was saying he should come back to Customer Service. My thought, "Who's everyone?" So, I considered it for a while then asked the girl I normally work with, since she's been there a long time, how she thought I was coming on learning the workings of the service desk and if our supervisors will alert us if we're not performing to the company's expectations. I assumed that they would, but you can't always be certain. She confirmed for me that if there's a problem, they will most certainly address it.

I left it at that and moved on. At that point, I knew that my position was safe, even if he did as he was claiming he was going to personnel and beg to have his old position back. I hadn't really been too worried about it, like I would have been in the past. I know I'm doing my best and that's all I can do. Then yesterday, my managers pulled me aside to talk with me. I hadn't said anything to them, but apparently the other girl did. They just confirmed for me what she had already said, that I'm doing fine and my position is secure....in addition to telling me that no one to their knowledge has said anything to him about wanting him to come back to the service desk.

There was a time, when I was not confident enough in who God created me to be to stand up to this affront, but that time has passed. While I did probably give the whole thing more thought than I should have (something to work on in the future); I wasn't intimidated by it. If everyone thinks he should come back to the service desk, why is he telling me and not them? I was supposed to be intimidated by it, but that plan doesn't work on me any more. He figured, I'd just take his word for it and step down without saying anything. Not gonna happen...........sorry, dude! In the past I would have needed my managers' affirmation to know that I didn't have anything to worry about, but I didn't even need that. Had it not been for my friend, nothing would have ever been said to anyone but her. It's taken a lot of time and just choosing to believe that God's opinion of me is far more important than man's opinion........but I feel like I'm finally making some progress. It's a long journey, I've been believing lies about myself all my life. But I now know that if I can choose to believe God's truth about one thing, believing the truth will get easier and easier over time.

Moved

Well, it's official. Everything I own is now in my new room. I move in today. Most of it is unpacked as well. Makya realizes now what is happening. They helped me move the last of my things to the new house yesterday. When they left before me, she cried and cried and cried. She wasn't sure about leaving her Ya-Ya there. She wanted to pack her suitcase and move in too. I told her she could come and stay the night with me sometime, but she could not move in with me. She just kept saying, "I want to move in Ya-Ya's new house too." I promised her that we would still see each other. I knew this was going to be hard, but I didn't know for sure how hard it would be.............It's going to be very hard, on both of us.