Happiness is a choice.  Does that make joy – deep, abiding, life-giving joy – a choice as well?

Our mood, our state of mind, is a set of tinted glasses through which we view our world.  Some of these glasses are dark and dull, some are light, bright, and rosy.  State of mind is also like a painter’s palette…we can only use the colors we put on it to paint the picture of our life.

Why would anyone NOT choose the bright colors of joy?

I love my Dad.

Plain and simple.

His patience, his wisdom, his strength, his advice…all of this points me to Someone even greater than he, if that is possible.

And my father, in all his amazing qualities, is only a pale reflection of my heavenly Father. The characteristics I so admire in my daddy are even greater in God.

Whoa.

That is a reality I cannot process, but am content to embrace and rejoice in!

Sometimes, I have intense surges of emotions.  This usually happens when I am sitting alone in my room, but sometimes when my roommate is around.  Sometimes I have so many things to do, I cannot think straight.  Sometimes I have barely anything to do.  Most of the time, these emotions are negative. Loneliness.  Self-pity.  Unworthiness.  A defeated spirit.  Exhaustion.

Probably around half of the time, I just want to curl up in a ball and cry for a while.  Many times I do – cry, that is.  On rare occasions, I even allow myself the luxury of hugging a pillow while I cry.  Other times, I want to curl up in my bowl chair or bed and sleep – escape through oblivion.

I wish I was not like this.  I wish I were more in control of my emotions, or that I could really be honest with people and not feel ashamed.  I wish I had more will power to choose to be happy.  I wish I did not compare myself to others ALL THE TIME.  I wish a million things were different about me, because I so often overlook my own worth as a person.  Every day I am critiquing myself, thinking that I need to be more like everyone else (which is impossible…then I would be some freakish mutant, if I were to take pieces of all of my friends and fuse them together…), thinking that I do not measure up to some unspoken standard, that I constantly fail.  I have more issues than National Geographic.  When did this happen?

There is something irresistible about grace.

No matter who you are, you find drawn to it, like plants to the sun or children to ice cream.

You just cannot help yourself – it is that good.

Last week, I was scheduled to give a presentation in my theology class.  Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.  Not a bad read – I may actually read them if I ever find a spare minute.   The section I was to present was “On Regeneration and Repentance.”  I finished reading it the day before the presentation (oops), and was up quite late the day before I was to present, frantically attempting to recall what I had read so I could put the bare bones on a powerpoint presentation.

The long and short of it is that I did not have the material mastered when it was my turn to present, and that came through in my presentation.  I knew I did a terrible job (at least, according to my standards).  After class, I emailed Ken, my professor, my powerpoint slides, and apologized for my lack of preparation and poor presentation.  I assumed I would receive the grade I felt I earned – probably somewhere in the low B or C range.

I was blown away when Ken emailed me back:

“I reject your assessment of yourself.  You get an A.”

Now, to most of you (those of you who are not inside my head, anyway), this probably seems insignificant.  “Great, the prof decided to give me some slack!”  Or “Maybe I did not do as badly as I thought!”  This would have been a normal person’s thought process.

Nope, that’s not what Rachel thought.  Rachel was overwhelmed with feelings of shame and undeserved-ness.  Rachel stubbornly could not accept a grade she knew she did not earn.

Rachel thought, “Why is Ken giving me an A when I could have, indeed, should have done so much better?  I cannot accept this!”

Rachel even teared up as her thoughts spun in a totally different direction:

“Is this what I will be like whenever I stand before the Throne of Grace?  Jesus will extend his hand to me, welcome me with complete love and grace…and I will draw back, too ashamed of my filth and unrighteousness to accept his saving grace.  ‘I cannot accept your gift, Lord.  I do not deserve it.’  Is this what my reaction to my Savior will be?  How twisted am I?  What is wrong with me?”

I emailed Ken back, again asserting my lack of preparation, and now asking, almost begging him not to give me that good of a grade.  He wittily responded the next day with “you were predestined to get an A, whether you like it or not”.  Well played, sir   I parried back with some psychological principles about conditioning…still stubbornly refusing to accept the grace he was graciously extending to me.

A busy weekend pushed the matter out of my mind, until I had my weekly meeting with Ron Kopicko today.  Among other things, I described this situation and my frustration with it to Ron.  He confirmed most of my thoughts about my reaction, and added another:

The grace of this grade was not based on what I did, it was based on who I am.  Ken knows I am an “A” student.  Ken also knows some of my personal struggles.  So, for whatever reason, he has been teaching me a lesson in the irresistible grace of Jesus.

This is why I love Spring Arbor.  There is just something irresistible about the people here.  The love, mercy, and grace of God permeate this place.  Its a drug I cannot get enough of, cannot live without.

This grace is irresistible.

I am a person of extremes.

I am a hermit, or I am a social butterfly.  I am a model student, or I am negligent and inattentive.  I think that school is the best place to procure knowledge and truth, or a gathering of fallible humans simply professing the truth of their own opinions, and a complete waste of time.  At one moment I believe it is okay for me to eat anything I want and not be concerned; the next, I am engrossed with the intricacies of the health and nutrition of eat morsel I insert into my mouth.

Where is the moderation?

Granted, the above examples themselves are extreme, and many times I am prone to fall somewhere in the middle of them, but as I scrutinize myself, I observe the presence of these extremes.  This irks me, for I am of the opinion that in a great multitude of the topics and experiences of life, moderation is the key.  I would rather live my life in moderation between two extremes, rather than bouncing from one extreme to another (so that the sum of the bouncing averages out to “moderation”).

For example: I am terrible at fasting.  I know the proper reason for fasting (I think…at least, I know what I am supposed to do during a fast), but the inconsistent way in which I practice it, and the way I gorge myself after I have broken the fast is disappointing.  So I refuse myself the satisfaction of food to focus on God…and then I refuse the satisfaction of faithfulness to God to focus once again on food.  So disappointing.  So fleshly.  Jesus, this is why I need you.  I need your grace and mercies every day.  I cannot deny myself without you.

Hmm…I am not good at something.  I am not perfect.  Imagine that.    This means I have a reason to keep on living, to keep on trying things, to keep making mistakes and learning from them.  I have so much potential, so much room to grow!

I am not perfect.  But I follow one who is.  And herein lies my salvation.

I have been very busy the last few days.  But not necessarily in an inauspicious way.  My weekend was full to overflowing with people, homework, and good times.  And I was pleased.   I have yet to learn the art of balancing people time, homework time, God time, and relaxation time.  This is quite an enigma to me, one I am learning more about every day.

For the first time in a while, I am attracted to busyness, and find myself thriving on it.  I am getting things done, spending time with people, and not wearing myself out (yet).  And God may even be moving in the midst of it all – I felt led by God to talk to ask Connie from Chartwells how I could pray for her (and then do so), and she was palpably touched.  Yeah God!  Nevertheless, I do not know how much longer I can keep this up.  My solitude and attention to God has been adversely affected by my schedule.  Sorry Dad.

Today I received an email about a drought that is currently decimating Kenya – the worst drought in ten years.  Because of droughts in recent years, Kenya does not have stores of resources (like food) to turn to during this tragedy, and people are starving.  This caught my attention…actually, to be completely honest, the fact that only $17 can feed a family for three months is what caught my attention.  The organization, Mocha Club, had posted information about the drought, so I briefly read through it and decided to donate.  I am not writing about this to brag – I simply could not justify keeping $17 that I do not need right now to survive while people in Africa are starving.  So I donated.  Easy as that.

After donating, I looked at some other projects Mocha Club is promoting, and in glancing over the five or six brief descriptions, my eyes settled on one about clean water for refugees of Darfur, currently residing in Sudan.  It only takes one US dollar to provide one refugee with clean water.

For an entire year.

One dollar.

@$%^&#$*?!?!?!?!?!

What. The. CRAP.  If it only takes one dollar to provide clean water for a year, what the hell are we doing?  Why doesn’t every African, no, every person on the face of this planet have access to clean water?

What are Christians thinking?  What are world leaders thinking?  What am I thinking?  Why AREN’T we thinking?!?!?!  Aren’t lives more important than that new pair of shoes, than going out to eat on Sunday, than buying that five dollar Starbucks coffee?!?!   Oh….if we would just STOP thinking about ourselves and our own desires for just a little while, give up some of our creature comforts, we could make such a difference in this world.  So let’s do it.

God help me.  Help me channel my indignation and frustration to positive ends.  Help me stop accusing and help me begin something positive.  And God, please help Your Church learn to do what is right.

Link to Mocha Club’s emergency relief needs:

https://www.mochaclub.org/emergency-needs

Today I read the first seven or so chapters of Revelation as a sort of devotional, and also in an attempt to finish reading through the Bible.  As I read the four or so pages which contain said chapters, I was once again struck by the vivid imagery in chapters four and five.  They are quite easily my favorite chapters in the book (besides chapters twenty-one and twenty-two).  I LOVE the image of God, high and lifted up on His rightful throne, surrounded by the continual praise of the elders and living creatures.  I TREASURE the depth of the imagery of Jesus, the Lamb that was slain, standing in the midst of the heavenly throne room, doing what only he is worthy of doing – taking the scroll from the Father’s hand and opening it.  And I GLORY not only in the content of the “worship bomb” (term courtesy of Prof. Richard Cornell) in chapter five, but in the description of the response of the elders and living creatures and angels and creatures on earth to the Lamb’s actions!!  What more can someone in love with Christ desire than seeing him magnified, glorified, celebrated and worshipped as he rightly should be?!?!  SO GOOD.

Another exercise in discipline for Rachel.  She only has eight (now seven!) minutes to complete a post for today, October 13 (in her mind, the previous post was for the 12th…the one before that was for the 11th…she just took a while to get her thoughts together).

Is my posting every day, these random thoughts and ideas, even worth it?  For instance, is this post, a random conglomeration of ideas and/or words actually worth the time it takes me to type it and you to read it?  Probably not.  So I should figure out something useful or profound to say…

I met with Ken Brewer this afternoon to discuss grad school.  We actually talked more about my past, and his, than we did about the future.  I outlined the difficulties of my summer to elucidate why I am averse to the idea of graduate school, and Ken told me a bit of his story.  His experiences normalized mine, and his advice – more or less, keep lines of communication with God open and be real with Him – was reliable.  If only we had talked about this during the summer, perhaps I would have avoided the heartache and struggle I endured.  Yet, after talking with Ken, I know now that enduring the struggle, though painful, has left me more mature, further along the path of faith than I would be if I had avoided it all.

I persevered through desolation.  Consolation must be on the horizon.

And I fail at posting before midnight.  Sigh.  Tomorrow, tomorrow, there’s always tomorrow…

In rebellion against the chains of homework and organized learning, I am posting to consume the last remaining energies of my brain before slipping into that sweet oblivion that is sleep.

Hmm…now that I said that, I really am uncertain what else to say.  Today was a busy day for me.  It was basically go go go until after dinner.  And if I wasn’t going, I had my time scheduled.  Nevertheless, God was able to break through my neatly laid out day and use me.  I love it when He does that    And the strangest thing is that today, it happened exactly when I didn’t plan for it to.  It just happened.

Today is one of those days where I finally comprehend why Gina and Audra say that sleep is such a waste of time.  Truly, it is – we spend roughly one third of our lives in this semi-/unconscious state that does not seem to be very productive.  If I didn’t have to sleep tonight, I would get all of my reading done, plan Bible study, read a book completely unrelated to school, facebook people I haven’t talked to in ages, figure out how to better love others, pray, read my Bible, worship…I could do so many things!  If only it were possible to have an IV drip of coffee…intravenous caffeine.  Mmmm.  Liquid energy.  I’ll need some more of that in the morning.

But this brings up the whole question of what I am – am I a human doing or a human being?  Why the drive to always do so many things?  Are we not created in a finite fashion for a reason?  Because we cannot and should not try to do it all?  If only I could really learn that.  In order to learn to be, I have to recognize the necessity of rest and sleep.  I will do so shortly.