"You broke my chains of sin and shame...and covered me with grace"

Alright -- now that the slightly depressing and out-of-character entry about the summer has been written and posted, I think it's only fair for it to be followed by an optimistic post.

I've been really happy to be back in school, back in Pullman.  I love it - even as my differential equations homework is infinitely frustrating, and even when I'm up at 6:30 am and have to make it through 13 hours of work, classes and evening commitments without a break to speak of. Why? Because this is just my place now, the work I do, the relationships I have...they're here. Despite all of the craziness, the comfort of knowing that there are 17,000 other people on campus who can understand what your pace of life is like, can sympathize with the stress, and celebrate the successes, is really refreshing.

The semester's busier than I expected it to be -- while I'm only taking 14 credits, they're intense classes. Add on my Chi Alpha commitments, a part-time job, and living sans-RDA, I have plenty to do and plenty to keep me occupied. However, next week is the beginning of week 5, and I haven't had a nervous breakdown yet! So I think we'll continue to be okay. ;)  I love living in Honors - this is by far my favorite situation yet! Having a kitchen, a couch, a much-more-private bathroom...and 5 other girls to share it with? Great! The study lounge is close, my first class is right downstairs, and I can look out my window onto Thompson Flats.

Now to explain the song lyrics that inspired this post.  The song is called "I Am Set Free" by All Sons and Daughters. The verse and chorus progression goes like this:

You broke my chains of sin and shame
And You covered me with grace
And You mend my life with Your holy fire
You cover me with grace

And You are the hand that reaches out to save

And i am set free, oh oh oh
i am set free, oh oh oh
It is for freedom that i am set free 

I was walking between classes one day at the beginning of the semester, and this song came on my iPod. I hadn't listened to it in a long time, and as it played, I just connected with the lyrics in a different way than before. See, this connection has several parts. 

1) I just recently reached my 4 month anniversary of not biting my nails. I know it doesn't sound like much, but hear me out. I haven't had actual fingernails for as long as I can remember. I have zero memory of deciding to start biting them, I just always have. I don't know if its a stress-induced thing, or a weird psychological thing, or I read about a character a book who did and wanted to try, or what. And all my life, everyone tells me to stop. That I should quit, that I'd have prettier hands if I had fingernails. Told me that my nails would one day stop growing and I'd never have the chance to have pretty fingers. Believe me, I wanted to quit. I wished I could. Off and on for years, I'd make it a week or two, my nails would grow a little bit...and then I'd fall back into it. I prayed for strength to stop, I  cried over it, I criticized myself for it, I couldn't quit. My sophomore year in college I finally decided to try acrylic nails for a few months. I hated the feel of acrylics, but I loved the way my hands looked. They came off shortly after Thanksgiving break, and I managed to keep my real nails for a few weeks. But between finals week, and 3 weeks back at home, where people pretty much "expected" I would start biting again...I did. Then I went to Haiti. 

Honestly, I think I was just afraid to get a parasite and die, so I decided that I would take a lot of gum, and work really hard to leave my nails alone while we were there, just in case there was some evil micro-organism-thing in the dirt or the food or whatever that got on my hands. So I did. I made it the full two weeks. And then I came home, and I was just done. I bought a nail file, and nail polish, and went to town. I have no desire to bite anymore. I honestly don't want to. I'm claiming freedom from that habit, and I'm doing a little celebratory dance every month that goes by. That habit was chaining me down -- I was ashamed. I let it affect my self-esteem, and I felt guilty every day. Finally, after 15+ years, I feel freed. 

2) This one is going to be harder to put into words. I can't give a lot of details, because I don't want my personal struggles to be completely publicized on the web. The short story is this. I've fought with a particular sin in my life for about 4 years now. I've known that this was an unhealthy thing for me - that my thought pattern was dangerous and wrong, but haven't been able to shake it. Okay, as with all vices, it's partially that we "can't" shake it, and partly that we don't want to give it up quite yet. Fear of the unknown, fear of living without the issue, is often a strong motivator to remain in those patterns. In the last year, I was increasingly convicted of the attitudes in my heart, and my refusal to take action to change them. I'd been praying, asking God to help me, to make it stop. I've been confused about what to do, as all of my ideas for how to get out from under this burden seemed to either be failing, or be impossible to actually carry out.

My first week on campus this semester, I finally had a breakthrough. I had both a spiritual and a  physical affirmation that I was freed from this sin. To be honest, I had almost given up hope that it would ever happen. Thankfully, God accepts broken people. He waits for us to throw up our hands in exasperation and cry "I can't do this anymore!", because that's when we will fully surrender ourselves to Him. As many times as I thought  I'd gotten to that point, apparently I never completely had. When I realized that God had removed those thoughts and attitudes from me, and that I was not tied down by them anymore, I wanted to cry with happiness. Even though for a while, it's like a bird who finally has its cage door opened and is afraid to fly out, I knew the door was finally open. Slowly and surely, I am now able to move forward, and to claim the freedom that comes from an open door, and a promise that there is life beyond my cage.  My chain of sin has been broken. I choose to claim that as truth. 

Needless to say, these two events both coincided amazingly with the song for today's post. My chains are broken, and have been replaced with a covering of grace. Constantly, I am covered by grace, and I am reached out to by a Hand that has no reason to reach for me. I am set free. 

*I Am Set Free, All Sons and Daughters

Summer of Silence

     For two years, I've been keeping this blog, and every entry I have successfully titled with song lyrics. Representative of the music that I'm so often listening to, singing, or imagining the beat in my head. This entry has no lyrics. It has no theme song, no background music. Trying to cover the events of the past 4 months since my last entry could never be captured in one short line, or one poetic chorus. My head, my heart, my emotions tried all summer long to create a song that would encompass all of the emotions that I felt and the activities that I did, but each valiant effort was met with nothing. No sound, no melody, not even a faint drum beat. This summer was met with silence.

    I'm going to be skimming over a lot of details as I write this entry, and that's intentional. I don't want to share everything that happened with the world. Some things are just meant to be kept in the recesses of my brain, especially as I continue to sort them out. Really, this entry is for the sake of my future self - when 10 years down the road, I ask "what did I do May-August 2012?".

    May can be condensed into one word. Haiti. Some of the best days of my life, without a doubt. The chance to build friendships with some amazing people, friends that I may not see again until heaven, was priceless and powerful. And all of those people who, for the past 5 years, have asked at one time or another  "French? Why don't you take Spanish? Everyone speaks Spanish these days." were proven wrong. Haitians speak French. I thanked God every day I was in Haiti for the ability to understand them. Having conversations with teenagers about real life, and God, and even things like boys, all in French? Amazing. God encouraged my spirit in Haiti. I saw how people in other countries are above all else, still people. I learned how little I need to be happy. Returning to the United States was hard. I wasn't ready to leave, and I wasn't extremely thrilled to be home. It's impossible to explain the feelings and events to someone who hasn't been there...and I realized why people often come back from mission trips and aren't able to just talk about what happened. It would take me hours, and even then I would forget something. Amazing is really the best descriptor there is.

   post-Haiti through June hit every possible emotional button that I have. Watching my roommate struggle through a lot of family drama and health problems, all the while having no way to help. Re-living my senior year in high school as my brother graduated from high school and made his preparation for college. Catching up with friends from home. Searching every day for a job, sending out dozens of applications, having four interviews, and every time being turned down. Watching my "sister" slowly lose her battle with cancer, and having to be put down. Mom lost her job (but eventually the funding came in for her to get it back). Needless to say, I was ready to go back to Pullman by the end of June.

    July and August were slower as far as "big events" go, but they were still just emotionally frustrating. I've felt so displaced. I want to be connected with those at home, but as I try more, I seem to fail. Oh, and this was also the summer of babies and engagements. Yes, sometimes in that order. I know of at least 6 people who were posting 'hey, I'm pregnant' pictures on facebook on a regular (often too regular) basis. I think only 2 of them are actually married. Add that to the 4 engagement announcements and 1 or 2 new "relationship statuses"...it makes me nervous to log on every day and see what next. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that I'm old enough for all of this to be happening. It's a weird balance between feeling left behind/out since that's not where I'm at in life right now, and disconnected for the same reason. I'm just in college. Goin' to school. I'm not working a full-time job like some people. I'm not married, or even close to it. Definitely not pregnant. I'm just going to school. Living in the college world where time stands still, and our only major life events revolve around final exams and frat parties. Because this life is so different from what other people are doing, I yearned to get back to it. To feel validated in what I was doing. Moving back in was an eagerly anticipated event.
   
     Of course, as fate would have it, the last week of my summer was probably the most fun that I had (excepting Haiti), and the old feeling of "I don't wanna leave yet" returned just in time for me to actually have to leave.

    Where was God in all of this? He was both evident constantly, and yet elusive. I learned about trusting for His provision, and about letting Him comfort and take my cares. Primarily though, I was hearing over and over, new ways to explain how God loves. It's a crazy contrast, because even as I came out of summer understanding God's love in a new way, I also felt that for a majority of the summer, God was very silent. I had to seek Him out - track Him down when I needed to hear His voice. I did a lot of waiting. Which, in my lifestyle that is often motivated to never stop, having my schedule come to a grinding halt for 8+ weeks... was really hard. I didn't enjoy those times, but I did learn to appreciate their importance.  Realizing that everything in every aspect of my life was out of my control, and being forced to wait on God as the only stability.

   I have no doubt that this was my lesson. In the storm, be still. And know that He is God.