Desires

This spring has been hard and I've grown and learned a lot, but a few weeks ago I was faced with the reality that my life had been feeling hopeless.  I felt stuck and resigned to a state of indefinite (and permanent feeling) transition and waiting. 

I realized that over the last few years of life -- surrendering my career and job on the tenure track, living with another family and feeling no sense of home or stability, not having a sense of where life was headed -- I felt that life was spinning out of control.  It also hurt to have opportunity after opportunity fall through -- ones that I thought I was following God's plan on.  Over time, it became too hard and painful to hope and expect because I was afraid of being disappointed over and over.  While I had told God, "Yes, I will do whatever you want me to," over time that morphed in my head to become, "God will tell me what to do; I have to wait on Him," and eventually, "My preferences are irrelevant and unimportant." And that felt empty and hopeless.  And I'm coming to believe it is untrue.

Through counseling, a prophecy, and reading Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition and the Life of Faith by Jen Pollock Michel, I am coming believe that my preferences and desires are important and do factor into where my life is going.  The gist of Jen's book is that as the Holy Spirit transforms our hearts and lives more into the image of Christ, He is also at work transforming our desires.  She uses the Lord's prayer to teach us that it is ok -- and even good -- to want, to hope and to dream.  And realizing that for me has been a game changer and a breath of fresh air.  For the first time in over a year, I'm seeing the breaking of a new dawn of hope.

I'm realizing that it is not selfish to want or to dream -- that God has placed many of the dreams that I have had in my heart, and that that is ok.  Realizing this has forced me to ask, "What do I want?  What are my dreams?"  Giving myself permission to dream and want again has made life seem less hopeless.

I have a few big desires that I am asking God for -- a professional opportunity that fell through last year; a house or condo that is big enough for a home office, guest bedroom, and to invite others over for gatherings; and I want to get married to a Godly, kind, gentle but strong man.  These are the desires of my heart -- the things I want, and the things I am asking for.  I trust God with the timing and with the way that it all works out, but I am allowing myself to acknowledge that I do have preferences in this. 

Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. ~ Psalm 37:4

Two Years in the Wilderness

Today is Good Friday.  It's a significant day to me not only because it's the day that Jesus died on the cross, but because it's the day I met with my boss to tell her I'd made the decision to walk away from the tenure track and, subsequently, my life plan.  The last two years have been so full of so many feels -- sadness, confusion, disappointment, frustration, fear, uncertainty (x365 x2) and a general feeling of being "over it".  At the same time, this crucible of mistake making and waiting and feeling trapped and general wilderness wandering has been a season of growth and refinement.

I can't believe that it's been so long and that I still don't have a life plan.  Someday this will make sense, but I still don't feel like it makes any more sense today than it did two years ago.  In the meantime, I plod through and put one foot in front of the other and rely on what I know to be true: God is faithful, and He has a plan in all of this that will work all things together for good.

Books so Far in 2015

Here's a list of books I've been reading this year.  This year, I initially planned to focus less on the number of books I read in favor of choosing to read (at least) 12 classics this year.  Well, that plan has fallen by the wayside as I've read exactly zero classics this year.  However, part of the original intent behind this goal was to incentivize quality over quantity.  Last year I found myself reading short books (250 pages or less, usually) so that I could mark them off my list.  This year, I've decided just to read what I want regardless of how long the book is, and I've noticed the books I've read are decidedly longer (iReaditNow, the app I use, says they're averaging about 300 pages and as long as 700).  As a result I've read fewer books but read about 7500 pages so far this year (not including reading for work).  I've also found myself drawn to more fiction stories, which is a surprise and a departure from what I usually read.  Below are the books I've read so far this year.   Like usual, my favorites are bolded.

1. Me Before You: A Novel by Jojo Moyes
2. The Veil by Blake K. Healy
3. Living a Life of Fire: An Autobiography by Reinhard Bonnke
4. What Every Bride Needs to Know: The Most Important Year in a Woman's Life by Susan DeVries
5. What Did You Expect?: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage by Paul David Tripp
6. Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look by Emily T. Wierenga
7. What Every Groom Needs to Know: The Most Important Year in a Man's Life by Robert Wolgemuth
8. Birthing the Miraculous: The Power of Personal Encounters with God to Change Your Life and the World by Heidi Baker
9. Fly a Little Higher: How God Answered One Mom's Small Prayer in a Big Way by Laura Sobiech
10. 3500: An Autistic Boy's Ten Year Romance with Snow White by Ron Miles
11. The Sacred Search: What If It's Not about Who You Marry, But Why? by Gary Thomas
12. Becoming Fearless: My Ongoing Journey of Learning to Trust God by Michelle Aguilar
13. The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating by Andy Stanley
14. Wife Number Seven by Melissa Brown
15. Chasing the Dragon: One Woman's Struggle Against the Darkness of Hong Kong's Drug Dens by Jackie Pullinger
16. Scary Close (International Edition) by Donald Miller
17. The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
18. The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain
19. Nanny Returns by Nicola Kraus
20. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen
21. Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell
22. Boundaries: When To Say Yes, How to Say No by Henry Cloud
23. Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius
24. The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond by Bill Hybels
25. M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton