fine

we had a dhop prayer time last night. it was so great to see everyone. we haven't gotten together in about 2 weeks so we're all acting like we're long-lost siblings. renee (our fearless leader) asked if anyone needed prayer, and i suddenly realized i did. until that moment i hadn't realized how overwhelmed i was really feeling with life, the wedding and the things i've been trying to work out with God. it was crazy how prophetic some of the prayers were. someone was just praying out a picture meant to be an analogy, but without knowing they had mentioned some key words that were the specific thing that has had me discouraged and overwhelmed. it was pretty cool.

i don't know how God can take this flawed bit of humanity that i am and make something that gives Him glory, but He promised that He can. i just have to choose to believe He makes all things beautiful...even me.

and on a practical note, i was able to use the gift card i won at work to pay for all but $5 of my shoes for the wedding. how great is that?

this week will work out just fine. just fine.

wedding

how can a wedding be so stressful when i'm not the one getting married? i'm just a bridesmaid. all i have to do is wear the funny dress and walk down the isle before the bride does, right? wrong. in the next 2 days i still have shoes to buy, nails and pedicure to get, shawl to buy and packing for the night before the wedding that we girls are spending at a hotel. i also have to squeeze in practice time for 'the song'.

actually, the dress is pretty nice - especially for a bridesmaid dress! i altered it myself (i'm very smug about it, too) and it looks just like a pro did it. i feel only normal levels of 'i look fat in this'. the thing i'm feeling the most nervous about is singing.

when they first became engaged they asked me to write a song to do at their wedding. i said yes, but with the out that if i couldn't come up with anything by february they could pick a song for me to sing. needless to say, they ended up picking a song. it's a nice sappy christian love/wedding song, perfectly in my range, and my friend nathan is playing guitar for me.

the problem is that i don't like to solo. i don't like it at all. i get super nervous. strange, since i've been singing in front of people since i was about 6...but always with a group. i'm sure i came out of the womb singing, so i'm not worried that i sound bad, i just feel uncomfortable being up there alone. i love singing backup with a band, and the feeling of being one element of a big sound. so many of my friends are such talented musicians that it's amazing to rock with them. this will be nothing like that. i also find the post-solo compliments awkward. come to think of it, i pretty much find all compliments awkward.

so i'm trying not to think about it. it'll be what it is and the happy couple will be so happy they won't even remember my song. as long as i can keep in mind there's champagne and a dance floor at the end of it all i should be fine.

i'll let you know how it goes.

flawed

today i am discouraged.

that's the plain truth. i don't say that to elicit pity, i say it because it's always worse if you keep it to yourself. i cried like a baby all the way to work as i told God all about it, but i still don't feel resolved.

the thing that discourages me is me. do you ever set about to change something in your life that desperately needs it, only to realize that the picture you had of how it will be all nice and pretty when you're done is not reality? it's not that it won't be better, or that you can really afford not to change, it's just that at the end of change you'll still be flawed. that's how i feel...horribly flawed.

the truth is that God has a way of taking the messes, sin and wounds in our lives and making us better at the end than if we'd never had to go through those things in the first place. i'm desperately trying to remember that today. i'm also trying to really absorb that Jesus is forever 'flawed' too, with scars on His body that will remain for eternity. so i'll continue to cling to my God since it is He who lifts my head.

righteousness & justice

i've had something rattling in my mind for a few weeks about righteousness and justice. those two words are generally together when they're mentioned in the Bible. righteousness is Godly character, or better put, the character of God. justice is God's fierce love allowing us to see how we need Him. justice is God allowing the concequences of sinful choices and mindsets to reveal how desperately we need Him, and how deep His grace really runs.

God's justice never looks the we think it should, because it is rooted in His love, which does not have hooks and is not self-seeking. when God judges it always destroys the things that keep us from knowing Him. His judgement against sickness is healing. His judgement aginst fear is love, beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, praise for dispair and fainting...so that we would be like trees of righteousness, planted by the Lord to display His favor.

i just see so clearly that God asks us to embrace righteousness and walk in His character because only then will we be satisfied with His justice. when He brings salvation and reconcilliation instead of punishment, when He leads someone to be broken for their own sin instead of continuing on a path that will bring them to destruction, when the widow forgives the murderer, when the victim forgives the molestor, when the satanist receives Christ, when the unfaithful wife pleads for her husband to return. only when we allow God to bring His character to our lives can we truly walk out grace that is demanded through His justice.

spring?

the weather here has been unbelievable. it's been sunny and 75º (that's about 24ºc for you non-americanos), and we haven't even been bothered by the ash from mt st helens' eruption. i guess it all blew the other way. the rain is supposed to return the end of next week, but for now it's bliss.

i need to get a camera. i feel a sense of loss as i see the amazing beauty around me with no way to capture what i'm seeing. i just want so badly to share what i see, and for people to see how beautifully God painted the sky, or how lovingly He placed each blossom. i want them to know how much He loves to see us marvel at what He made.

every time i see a breath-taking sunset, a rose, a tree, the stars, the ocean, i always think about how God knew, from before there was time, that i would be right in that spot right then seeing whatever it was that caught my eye. When He made the first birch tree that spread seed to grow trees that would spread their seeds for thousands of years, He programmed it to make the very tree i admired, the vary way i admired it, and He was thinking "sheena's really going to like this one!". every sunset He paints above me He thinks, "she'll really like this one. i'll make this bit a little redder and that bit a little pinker...she'll love that!". what a beautiful God.

time

i had quite a weekend, yesterday especially. it was one of those days that makes you feel the movement of life and the passage of time. i started the day with a chat to my sister (did you like that nice british phrasing?) who told me that someone dear that i haven't seen in a few years may be moving here, which got me all nostalgic. i had to get off the phone with her because i was meeting up with my friend, navani, who is visiting from tulancingo, mexico. i hadn't seen him in about two years, so it was awesome to hang out and catch up. he and his older brother are like my kid brothers...they even call me sis.

navani wanted to go to a spanish-language church service that is pastored by an old friend of mine named ben. it's the spanish-speaking community of my old church, city bible. i hadn't been by since they started spanish services, so this was a good excuse to get over there. it happened to be the day ben's baby was being dedicated, so his parents were visiting from nicaragua, and lots of people were there that i haven't seen in ages. it was cool to be surrounded by spanish again...though i've forgotten most of what i knew.

after spanish church navani and i grabbed a bite to eat and talked about life since we last hung out. he caught me up on some major things going on in his life. it was so awesome, but also very humbling to realize that as he talked about some of things he's facing he was worried that i would be upset by some of his less-than-ideal choices, and that he sincerely wanted my advice. it was awesome to be able to show grace when he was afraid of judgment, and the conversation that followed was such a cool opportunity to speak of what i've learned (through walking it out in my own life) of God's love, forgiveness and longing, and what it means to make choices in our lives that fuel our longing for God. At the end of the conversation he asked me to email a friend of his, a friend that is just discovering the relational side of God and His love, and share some of what we'd talked about over lunch. how amazing is that?

after lunch we went to music millennium and i finally got my hands on the interpol cd i was unsuccessful in ordering online. once i gave my friend a ride back to beaverton i popped in 'turn on the bright lights' and found myself reminded of the way things were two summers ago, when i used to listen to that cd all the time.. it doesn't seem like that long ago, but so much has changed in me and in my worldview that it seems like a whole other sheena. I truly thank God for that!

so that was my pretty-strange-awfully-weird-blast-from-the-past kind of day.

who knew?

i found this quoted somewhere...

"Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life."

-Harvard University Rulebook, 1642

books

i'm a bit of a blog junkie. when there's alot of dead time between calls i make rounds on news sites and blogs. i don't know if it's bad blog manners to post on strangers' blogs, but i've done it anyway...but mostly when it's people who are friends with people i know. that makes it okay, right?

i was recently at a blog that had a nice book discussion going on. i really like books. no, really. last time i moved i had 8 boxes of them. i've been trying to minimize my collection, but it's sometimes hard for me to part with them. i've made it easier by giving books i love to people i like that i think will enjoy them. i find jane austen and cs lewis the most difficult to part with, but it's bad to be too attached to things.

i also have a nasty habit of getting myself into several books at once. i decided about a year ago to get back into classics and more challenging reading. i read my first classic in 5th grade (that was 20 years ago - good grief!!). i about frightened myself to death finishing treasure island by flashlight in under my covers ("pieces of eight! pieces of eight!"). i read robinson crusoe and oliver twist that year as well. reading was my favorite escape, and one of the nicest things i remember in my childhood was my parents reading us on many an evening. we read the narnia chronicles, the hobbit and lord of the rings trilogy, chesterton, williams' spiritual thrillers, agatha christi...i could go on.

i picked up war and peace last summer, and about the same time bought umberto eco's baudolino. i also started a edward rutherfurd novel in august called london. i found another copy of jane austen's sanditon that i'm dying to re-read, and i flew through red moon rising in january. i need to finish war and peace, but i get a bit yawn-ish in the battle parts and end up putting it down for weeks at a time. i'm about 3/4 through it, so i should just tough it out since i really like the non-battle parts.

baudolino is odd. it's the first eco book i've read and feels like a funny dream...you know the kind that starts out normal and ends with george washington chasing you through the grocery store on horseback, or some other such strangeness. it's really well written, if a bit vulger at times, but had me laughing out loud the first page. i really only have a few more chapters but it's so out there i've put it down for the last few months too.

london is a really cool book. like rutherfurd's other novels, this one takes a geographic location (london, i'm sure you figured that out) and follows it from pre-history to the present. it's historic fiction at it's finest. i'm such a sucker for history.

after that i'll be jones'n for something else to read. maybe a few somethings.

music

i hadn't thought about interpol in about a year and a half, and yesterday i suddenly had an overwhelming urge to listen to their first album. i almost busted out travis's 'invisible band' because there's a track on it that reminds me of an interpol song. strange.

i've just ordered another copy of 'bright lights' from amazon about 2 hours ago. i had a copy on long-term loan from a friend (that's the diplomatic way of saying i wasn't going to give it back), but it was broken one night when a bunch of my friends piled into my car and started dorkin' around. the oddest things happen when your car is packed with friends.

i'm a getting tired of all my music. i need some suggestions. bands/artists i really like are coldplay, interpol, kenna, travis, delirious, nickel creek (when i'm in an americana mood), U2, suba, almost any bossa nova or anything rooted in brazilian jazz - especially ambient mixes. i love jazz, salsa/tropical (as long as it's not cheesy) and r&b without raunchy lyrics...which can be hard to find.

so if anyone has any suggestions i'd love to hear them.