24-7

tonight we start a 24-7 week of prayer at the DHOP. i'm looking forward to it. i love seeing people i don't normally get a chance to see and being able to pray with them. my friend ben is coming back from australia (he was visiting home for a month) and he'll show up mid week as well. it's going to be a blast.

we had our halloween costume party at work yesterday. some of the costumes were so funny. my friend christian came as a girl and won. if you met him you would've been as amused as the rest of us that he pulled it off. my half-hearted attempt to be english was pathetic. i kept slipping into a scot accent...which is worse than my english accent. it was pretty funny. coincidental, too, because yesterday in training we spent the day talking about booking london hotels and becoming familliar with london sites. it's a bit torture to sit here and talk about there, but our trainer pretty much told us we'd all be going on the london-paris fam trip, which i think will be january. i hope i can take a few of my vacation days on one end of the trip so i can see a few people. my birthday's in january as well. it would be pretty cool if i end up spending my 30th birthday traveling.

lunar

we're having our office's halloween party tomorrow. i was planning to go as the eurostar, but couldn't come up with an inexpensive costume that would allow me to sit comfortably all day in an office chair. someone told me i should be english for my costume. i think i will. i've got a nice cordouroy hat, black trousers, a lovely cardi and a bad attempt at an accent. it should do nicely i think...as long as i nickname everything. i'll have to study up my british phrase dictionary before i go to bed so i'll have funny things like "take the mickey out of 'em" floating through my mind tomorrow. if i had any english co-workers i wouldn't attempt it, but i don't so its fair game. i don't feel a bit bad about it after all the grief i've been given on the dave gorman forum for being a cliché northwestern american working for starbucks for 3½ years.

saturday begins another week of 24-7 prayer at the DHOP. we had one in september and it was awesome. i work downtown so i'll be there after work most days as well as sunday afternoon. i gave myself a few nights off, but i'm sure i'll end up down there anyway. it's so fun to be there with everyone that shows up. last time we did this there was a tangeble difference in the spiritual atmosphere downtown. i don't expect anything different this time.

the weather here has just turned Novemberie. it was supposed to rain yesterday but it was sunny and clear (though cold) instead. this also made for an amazing sunset and perfect viewing of the full moon and lunar eclipse last night. it was so beautiful. today it was 50º and raining but i wore flip-flops to work because i didn't have any other pink shoes to match my pink shirt. i'm sure i looked fabú with my wool fur-collared peacoat and pink flip-flops. what can i say? i'm a fashion diva.

death

i keep getting email about my friend sally that died last week. i knew her from a forum (www.davegorman.com/forum) on which we both posted. i started a poetry thread and she was a writer too, so she posted on the thread quite alot. we started emailing eachother about two years ago and discovered we were both christians. when i visited her in august it was to see (for the first time) a good friend. she had been fighting cancer for more than 12 years, but aside from that she had lived a difficult life.

i sat in her home that day and we filled in the gaps about our lives and walks with God. as she told me about her life she shed many tears, and i found myself in tears as well as i saw in her eyes the pain she still lived with that had nothing to do with the state of her health. my prayer as i said goodbye to her and got on the train was that she would not only be healed in her body, but in her heart. now she is.

i know separation was not God's original intent, but rather the by-product of sin (and the reason Jesus made a way for us to be with God). this is why death is so painful for those of us left behind. but i can't help feeling a little jealous of sally who is having her morning coffee with Jesus today...with no more sorrow, pain, tears or heartache.

web moron

carlos is right, i should put a counter thing on here. the sad truth is that i am completely stupid when it comes to web technology. it's not that i think i wouldn't understand it, i've just never had anything explained. i found the counter i want to add, but have no idea what to do with the info they gave me to put on here. until someone schools me i'm just a web moron.

today has been a bit difficult. i forced myself to leave my stero off for the drive to work so i could spend a little time with God and i'm glad i did (not that i would ever be sorry i did). not only did i start tour training today, but i also got an email that a friend of mine in southern england lost her battle with cancer last night. it wasn't unexpected, but you're never quite ready for that news.

i guess i'll go get dinner before my session at the DHOP tonight.

resolve

a raging torrent my one thought’s become
when once ignored it brews tempestuous
within this flood i find resolve undone
as thoughts of you break into consciousness

and even as renouncement flees my lips
your sweet smile within my mind i see
repression never truly does eclipse
the warmth of just one word you speak to me

then how shall i this longing heart dissuade
from calculating every word and glance
and every complimenting phrase parade
i see now my resolve has not a chance

my resolute renouncement brings no gain
you haunt me like a bittersweet refrain

S. Littlehale

Latin America

daydreaming about london wasn't enough yesterday, so they had us all attend a meeting after work for the launch of the latin american tour department's 2005 brochure. since about 7 years ago when i decided not to take a trip to buenos aires i haven't thought much about going to south america. it's all been on the 'life to-do list', but in the back of my mind. if only someone would pay me to travel. i need a job as quality control for hotels, or as a travel writer. maybe i should just win the lotto.

i just want to see it all! machu picchu, iguasu falls, buenos aires, tierra del fuego, easter island, myan ruins, rio...i could go on. i'll be spending dead time between calls today pouring through the brochure.

dreaming

it's so nice to be out of the house...even if it's just to go to work. i'm fortunate in that i love my job. my new desk is in the tour department though, so i have to listen to people talking about hotels and attractions in london. it's hard not to daydream about jumping on the jubilee tube line to my friend Janelle's house, or jumping on a train to york or edinburgh. (sigh) my passport is feeling neglected.

the nice thing about today is that i get to have trainees sit at my desk with me and listen to calls. one of my friends, Laura, got hired here and is one of the trainees. i hope she's one of the trainees that sit with me today. it's kindof a compliment that the supervisors think i do things well enough to have trainees listen in. it's also a great way to get to know the newbies.

i guess i'll go eat my lunch now.

bored?

i guess i am. there are plenty of things i could be doing right now, yet here i am again. as i said in my first blog, i still don't think my life is that exciting, but i've still managed to post more than once a day. it's the novelty of this live journal thing together with being stuck indoors with this pathetic cold. i'm too fuzzy to focus well on anything important, but not sick enough to be passed out the whole day. i can't wait to go back to work tomorrow.

i watched the 6-hour pride & prejudice mini-series last night so i was pretty much tv'd out today. i did write a song though. it's been ages since i have and i really like it. it's in 3/4 time which i've never done and always wanted to. i found some guitar chord i really like but have no idea what it is, so i used it in my song. i'll have to figure it out because i just wrote a star on my music sheet wherever that chord goes. thank God for musician friends that don't laugh at me to my face when i come to them all the time and ask, "what chord is this?".

rain

we get loads of it here. i'm one of those odd creatures that likes it. today i woke to the sound of showers as i was cocooned in my warm blankets with the gentle patter of the rain on the window. today is beautiful in a soft hazy fairytale rainy kind of day. for some reason days like this make me feel God's nearness even more than the sunshine - though i'm not saying i don't like sun!

Steven Lawhead in many of his novels refers to 'the time between times' when the passages between the natural and spiritual are most thinly veiled. the time between times is a moment in temporal transition, like sunrise or sunset, autumn or spring, birth or death. days like today.

another thing i think about on days like this is the way God makes beauty of the curse of sin. as i look out the window at the green space behind the house i know there is death and decay all around. there are leaves falling to rot on the ground and dead needles under the evergreens. there's mush and mud and dead birds and all various other signs of the curse imposed on nature. but as i look my eyes see majestic firs, shiny holly and a tangle of green, yellow, red and crimson leaves dancing on their branches. knowing all the death is there i still only see beauty.

what a God.

beautiful

october is my favorite month. it is by far the most beautiful time of year in portland. today i'm stuck indoors thanks to this lovely cold, but it's the best saturday weather. it's alternately overcast and sunny, so you have those nice patches of warm sunlight pouring through the window in which to cat-nap.

sunsets have been amazing lately. they've been so beautiful they make you ache inside. i think the junk in the air from mt. saint helens' ventings have contributed to this, but overall october is just amazing here. it always makes me sad when the last leaves evacuate their posts, but that won't happen here for several more weeks...or until the rain really gets going. they're saying we won't have many more sunny days after next week, but that's always how it goes here. it'll rain from late october until june. the only respite from the rain will be the icy week in late january and the sunny 65º week in late february.

so i guess i'll go nap in that sunshine while i can.

sleepless

it's this dumb cold. nothing else but jetlag gets me up at this hour. i even left the DHOP early from my session last night to go to bed. i was too tired to lead much so i put out art supplies and different people took turns doing devotional worship on their instruments. God and i had a little chat while i was there. He reminded me of a picture He showed me about 5 years ago.

we were at a sunday meeting of our church plant team about 6 months before we actually launched, and we were sitting quietly waiting on God. we weren't to talk or sing or anything...just listen. coming from a more charismatic church background this was not something i did alot. here's what God showed me;

i was deep sea diving with God. we were in gear and He was the expert diver, i was the novice. not only have i never done a dive like this, i don't know that i ever would. it frightens me to think of going into the depths of the cold ocean with nothing but the can of air on your back to keep you alive. no to mention the odd, creepy and dangerous things lurking in the dark of the water. so with this all true, God showed me doing this dive with him.

as we left the surface i was more and more fearful. the amazing thing was that i was right beside the Lord, could even grab His hand if i wanted, and i still felt unsafe and afraid. i knew He still wanted me to go deeper into the dark deep cold blue blackness. in my mind i started to argue with Him, telling Him i didn't want to go down there, and that it was scary. the odd thing was that as close as He was to me i didn't feel warm fuzzies, and didn't feel safer. He has always the one place i could go to feel safe and held and protected and secure. instead i felt vulnerable and afraid. He finally just asked me, "Sheena, do you trust Me?"

the last 5 years of my life have been intense. not only did we start the church amidst bizarre opposition, but personally God started me on a journey that has meant i've had to face incredible fears that were driving forces in my life without me even realizing it. the emotional effects of neglect and abuse in my childhood were crippling my life and somehow i couldn't see it at first. He's often brought this picture to mind in the last 5 years. He has never left me, but has always asked me to trust Him as he leads me deeper into the darkness to confront my fears and the unknown. this is faith. this is the choice He asks of me. that He's reminding me of this picture means we're going deeper. i'm a little wary of what that means for the next season. all that remains is to choose trust Him.