6 posts tagged “life”

It's been a while since I've sat down...since I've stopped long enough...to write a post.  Sometimes it's easier to post videos about creativity or talk about broken cell phones than it is to, well, stop.  Just stop...and be honest.  So I'm stopping.  And I'm gonna try to be honest because I think I need to be right now. 

You know sometimes...ok, most times...I have this idea--a bird-brained idea, but an idea nonetheless--that because I'm in ministry, or because I've been called to go to Germany as a "missionary", or whatever, I've got to keep it all together, and maintain the façade that I've created, and not let on that anything is any different than it appears to the everyday observer.  However, the reality is that (and some of you may need to brace yourselves for this one) I do NOT have it all together.  You can lift your jaw off the floor now and continue reading.

The reality is that sometimes, I'm really afraid of this move to Germany.  Sometimes, I think I don't have what it takes.  Sometimes, I don't feel like I love God enough.  Sometimes, I'd rather hide in my apartment than face people, and sometimes, I do.  Sometimes, when I come home after a full day...week...month...of holiday festivities, as much as I love her, my cat just doesn't cut it for companionship.  Sometimes, I'm just lonely.  Sometimes, I think that maybe God picked the wrong person.

I'm ok with admitting these things.  I think I need to (even at the risk of people thinking, "WHAT?!  She doesn't have it all together?!  And she's going to be a missionary?!").  Truth is, I'm a broken and fallen human being living in a broken and fallen world, and sometimes, sometimes just admitting that brings more freedom and gives more room to breathe and move forward.  It keeps me connected to the reality that I am completely and utterly dependent on Him.  It reminds me that I don't have what it takes.  But He does, and that's why I need Him.

Give Me Jesus

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Well, this is typical.  Tomorrow I'm leaving on a trip to California, it's almost midnight, and I haven't packed yet. 

"Then why are you sitting at the computer writing a blog?", you ask?

I really wish you hadn't asked.  I don't have a good answer, other than: "Avoiding the inevitable."   You'd think that by now, after all the travelling I do, I'd have this packing thing down to a science.  I don't.  It usually comes down to me waiting til the last minute and then overpacking because I'm just throwing a bunch o' stuff in a suitcase with the hopes that I'm not forgetting anything.  Then I usually end up having to make a pit stop at a local CVS because I did.

I forget a lot.

I've had people say to me after a concert, "It wouldn't be a real Mindy Boyd concert if you didn't forget the lyrics at least once."  I'm not proud of that.  Especially when it's my own song that I'm forgetting.  I forget people's birthdays all the time.  And people's names?...let's not even go there.  Last week I forgot to drive the speed limit.  Twice.  Now I have a sign on my dashboard by the spedometer that reads "SLOW DOWN".  I'm trying.

I hate that I forget things--the little things, the big things.  The toothbrushes, the birthdays.  But what I hate the most, is that sometimes I forget the important, significant things.  Like where I've been, and what the Lord has delivered me from.  Sometimes I get so caught up in what I'm doing now, and what needs to be done--and remembered--in the everyday, that I forget about what the Lord has done in my life.  And what inevitably happens is that I start becoming disillusioned and discouraged, which then leads to despair and depression.  All because I forgot.  But I'm not the only one.  A good friend recently brought Psalm 78 to my attention.  It's basically an account of all the miraculous things the Lord did for the Israelites when He delivered them from Egypt.  But check this out:

"The warriors of Ephraim, though fully armed, turned their backs and fled when the day of battle came.  They did not keep God's covenant and they refused to live by his law.  They forgot what he had done--the wonderful miracles he had shown them."  vv. 9-11 NLT (emphasis mine).

Oh man!  This is me!  That's exactly what happens when I forget.  I'm fully equipped for whatever it is that the Lord has placed in front of me, but I shrink back, pull away, close up, and stand still.  This is where I've been so many times in the past, and this is where I've been in the past couple months.  But do you know what He does more often than not when I'm in this place?  He says, "Mindy, it's time for you to share your testimony again because I want people to know what incredible things I've done in your life.  And because I want you to remember."

Several weeks ago, I got an email telling me that I was chosen to give my testimony at one of the general sessions at the Exodus Freedom Conference in Irvine, CA.  The timing of that email couldn't have been worse (from my perspective), because giving my testimony was the last thing I wanted to do at that time.  However, I was challenged with the truth that the despair I have felt recently in my life does not change what God did for me in the past.  That's why Asaph wrote Psalm 78.  That's why the Israelites were commanded to pass on these accounts to their children and their children's children...

"So each generation can set its hope anew on God, remembering his glorious miracles and obeying his commands." v7.

I am overwhelmed, grateful, a bit freaked out, and extremely honored to be given the opportunity to share what God has no less than miraculously done in my life at this year's conference.  Preparing for it has forced me to recall my past experiences and has helped me to remember God's deep love and never-ending faithfulness to this prodigal daughter of His, and how He rescued me from that pit.

Would really appreciate your prayers for this one.

Now, let's hope I can remember my toothbrush!

...but I'm not sure why.  We were never allowed to watch "Casper, the Friendly Ghost", and I didn't know any other Caspers.  But that was his name.  I can remember frequently climbing up the hill through the woods, pulling briars from my legs, and grabbing a stick to clear the way in order to get to him...my Casper.  As a little girl of 7 or 8, I made this trek so I could talk to him, tell him my secrets, cry or just simply be.  Even though he was dead, I believed that he listened, that he heard me.  He was an old fellow, and BIG!  Especially to a little scrawny girl like me.  But I liked that.  I'd climb up onto his fallen trunk, brush away the leaves that were gathering and lay back on him.  Somehow I felt safe there, so there I would stay.  In the stillness of the woods.  In peace.

I still remember the sick feeling I had in my stomach the year I walked up to Casper and found that he had been sawn into peices for firewood by my dad.  It seems silly that I would do this, but I cried.  It seems silly, I know, but an old fallen oak tree had become my closest confidant, and I had considered him my friend.  Now he was gone for good.  And even though he kept me warm that winter, I was sad that he was gone.

I was reminded of all this tonight.  I have a favorite place here in my little town where I like to go.  I take walks there with the Lord.  Down the street, behind the old Presbyterian Church, there's a cemetery.  In the middle of it is a paved path that cuts the cemetery in two.  At one point along the path, it splits and forms a circle around a tall tree with a stone bench underneath it.  I'm not weirded out by cemeteries.  I don't mind being in them at night by myself.  In fact, that's when I like going there--not because I'm Goth, or have some freaky affinity for death or anything like that.  I am not bound by death.  It has no hold on me.  So I am free to find solitude in this quiet place and allow the cemetery to give me perspective on my own life.  That's why this is one of my favorite places to go...and sit...and just be.  I have shed many a tear on that bench.  I have prayed many a prayer and confessed many a sin.  My heart has ached there.  I have grieved the loss of relationship.  I have celebrated the birth of new love.  I have gained perspective and questioned the meaning of my life.  I have a close connection to that place.

But tonight all that changed.  Tonight as I approached that place, I remembered that sick feeling I had as a little girl.  The bench is gone.  The grass is gone.  The tree is gone--chopped up into several huge peices and discarded on the side of the path.  All that's left of this place for me is a dirt circle with tire tracks through the middle.  And as I stood there staring at this void, my initial thought was, "You have got to be kidding me!"  But immediately following that I realized that this whole scenario fit perfectly into this reoccurring theme in my life over the past year and a half.  I remembered writing this, and felt the Lord clearly reinforcing that Truth again.  Safety and belonging and intimacy have little to do with a geographical location--no matter how attached I may be to it--and everything to do with my relationship with Christ and my position in Him.

For some reason, I'm having a hard time getting this, which is why it keeps reoccurring, I assume.   And yet, I am very much aware of how much I need to get it.  It is no small thing to realize that God is calling you into full-time ministry.  In fact, it scares me senseless.  But during my recent trip through the South, I had several meaningful conversations with close friends and people who I trust that confirmed what I already knew, but have been too afraid to act upon.  What I also think He is showing me is that the ministry He is calling me to is going to be somewhat transient...itinerant, if you will.  This both excites me and scares me at the same time.  It excites me because there are two things that cause me to feel most "alive": when I'm sharing my music/heart and when I'm travelling.  I am not settled here.  I am constantly looking ahead to the next trip.  Could it be that I am "wired" this way for this specific purpose?  Or does the "unsettled-ness" have to do with a deeper issue?  Perhaps this is why I am also scared by this prospect of itinerant ministry.  In all honesty, I do not trust myself.  I feel so far from having it all together.  Who am I to think that I should be in full-time ministry?  And yet, I cannot shake it.  He has called, and He has confirmed.  It's funny--being in ministry is what I always thought my life would look like, and now as I stare it in the face, I stand trembling, afraid to look it in the eye. 

This is why the source of my safety, belonging and intimacy must be Him--my Spring of Living Water.  Not a stone bench under a tree in a cemetery.  Not an apartment that can easily burn to the ground.  And certainly not in a dead log named Casper...that's just silly.

A year ago, in August, I was in Germany.  Four days before I returned home, I received a phone call from a friend of mine who was staying at my place while I was gone.  Our conversation went a little something like this:

"Hey, Min.  I need to tell you something."

"Sure, Anna.  What's going on?"

"Well...there was a fire, and your house was burned pretty badly"

"How bad?"

"uh...you can't live there anymore."
(at this point, my initial concern was for Maddie, my cat, but Anna quickly assured me that she had been rescued.   She even made the front page of the newspaper!) :)

When I got back to the states, I moved in with my friend, Amy, who had an extra room for me, and stayed with her for six months until they finished building my little apartment.  At the same time, I started travelling a lot with my music, and when I came home from that, I would often dog/housesit for people who were away on vacation.  Then I would come back to my room at Amy's which really wasn't "mine" at all, and watch TV in her living room and make dinner in her kitchen and check my email on her computer...you get the point.  Up until this time, however, I never realized how valuable my own personal space was to me.  So I set my sights on getting back into my apartment.  I have a cool neighborhood and great landlords, and I told them I was committed to waiting for the apartment to be built so I could move back in.  And so I waited.  Finally, in February of this year, I moved back in...but only for a couple days before moving into the "snake-house" to housesit for the entire month of March.  Since then, the longest period of time that I think I've actually been in my house at a time has been about three and a half weeks.

Because of all this, over the past year I have really done a lot of thinking about this whole concept of "home".  It obviously would have a different connotaion for everyone, but generally speaking, "home" carries with it--or at least it should--the idea of security, safety, belonging.  But what happens when the place you call home is destroyed, or transient, or unstable.  What then?  Well, I suppose that is when you begin to realize that "home" is not as much a geographical location as it is a state of being. 

There's a great line in the Rich Mullins song "Here in America" (who, incidentally, was killed 9 years ago today) that says, "But I am home anywhere if You are where I am".  I love that...and it is exactly what I have been learning this year.  My "home" here is not guaranteed.  However, my position in Christ is.  Who He is, and who I am in Him is a sure thing that does not change.  THAT is secure.  THAT is safe.  And THAT is where I truely belong.

Of course, it's one thing to sit here and write a blog about it, or even talk about it from the stage.  It's a whole 'nother ball game to practically live that out in my life.  It has been fresh on my mind recently as the circumstances of my life have felt somewhat unstable over the past few months.  Things are changing for me in a lot of areas, and that is scary...but exciting at the same time.  I just hope that during this season of transition in my life, my grip will be tight on His promises to never change...to be safe...to my place of belonging...my Home.

Well, I'm enroute to NC for the big beach wedding.  From the reports, it looks like Ernesto should be past the Carolinas by Saturday afternoon, which is when the wedding is.  So, I may not have to sing Randy's version of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" ("Bridge Under Troubled 90 mph Waters Flying Sideways") after all. :)

I stopped in Richmond to spend the night with a friend from college...my first ever roommate from my freshman year and connect with another person that I also knew from college.  What's interesting is that my conversations with both people ended up going in the same direction...

It's pretty crazy to think about who were back then and who we both are today.  My roommate and I didn't really get along very well then, and we haven't really been in touch with each other that much for the past 10 years, but just recently realized that we have a mutual friend (random story) and reconnected.  This morning we were talking about the difference between "then" and "now".  Back then, we were two innocent little girls in Bible College who could hardly think of anything to confess in prayer during chapel, and who thought the measure of a spiritual giant was a consistent "quiet time".  Today, we look back over the past decade of our lives and both of us have been "dragged through the mud", if you will...but we both would not have it any other way. 

In a million years I never would have thought that I would have ended up where I did.  But now, our view of God is different.  Our view of ourselves is different.  Our view of life in general is different.  In no way, though, do I feel as though I've arrived.  I am thankful...so thankful!!!...that the Lord doesn't leave where we are, but that He does whatever it takes to bring us to the places where He receives the most glory. 

He is good like that.