A Melancholy Alleluia.

Ever since I first read A Ring of Endless Light, which was a very long time ago, singing "alleluia" has had a special meaning for me.
If you have read the book, you will understand.
And, let me tell you, I have had many opportunities.
This school year, for example, we're singing Paul Basler's "Alleluia." We have it all year and I love it.

Last week we started a new piece for this semester.
It's in Russian, which I love. Seriously, one of my favorite languages to sing in.
It's called "Duh Tvoy Blagiy." (There are some diacritic marks that I'm missing there, and I apologize for that.)
I adore this song.

The thing is, the ending of the song, "alleluia," doesn't really leave you with a sense of overwhelming joy.
Or maybe that's just me.
But I don't think so.

As we sang it in rehearsal yesterday, in light of Sunday's post on grief, along with a lot of other thinking I've been doing, I heard it in a different way.
I sang it in a different way.

You see, we are made to praise God.
The way I see it, that's one of our primary duties as created beings.
And we are to "be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for [us] who belong to Christ Jesus."
(1 Thes. 5:18)

Sometimes, I just don't feel like being thankful. I don't feel like thanking God for everything that happens to me.
But that's not what the verse says. Paul didn't say "be thankful for the death of your grandfather," or "be thankful when you don't get asked out by that guy you've liked for-like-EVER!."
He said "be thankful in all circumstances. Yes, even in the Greek. Although I didn't look into tenses or anything like that.
I understand this as a general attitude of gratitude (yes, I just did that) toward God. For who He is and what He has done and is doing and will do.

I think that it's possible to be thankful for the things that happen that we don't like, and maybe I'm wrong and we're supposed to thank God for every struggle and every frustration and every bad thing that comes our way.
However, I don't think I should be thankful for temptation. I can be thankful for the strength to resist temptation, but should I really thank God for things the Enemy throws my way? I don't think so.
(This is one of those, "I'm open to hear another side of this" things.")

God can take our anger and sadness and bitterness.
By that I mean "God can handle us yelling at Him;" and I mean "God can take it from us if we let Him."
Been there, done that.
Let it go, friends.

And, in the midst of the sorrow and pain, praise Him with a melancholy "alleluia."

"I'm not over it." Or, "how Owl City breaks my heart."

On June 14, 2011, Owl City released his third studio album, "All Things Bright and Beautiful."
I fell in love with it immediately and listened to it on a daily basis.

12 hours after I purchased this album, my dad got a phone call from my aunt saying that their dad was being taken to the hospital because he was having trouble breathing.

I was at the church working on a project for the youth basement, listening to Owl City.

On June 20, 2011, my life changed forever.
My dad's dad, my Grandpa Swanson, died.

It was widely considered a blessing. He had been living for fifteen years with the effects of multiple strokes, along with various other health concerns.
His mobility was limited, his speech was slurred.
His wit, wisdom, humor, and driving skills, however, were unchanged.
Nor was his love for Jesus, and that was without question.

My parents had left that morning to take my grandma back to Illinois.
She had been staying with us that weekend.

I got a text from my mom while I was working, telling me to pray because things weren't going well.

A few hours later I got a call from Dad: "It will be today for Grandpa."
Mom called Andrew with the same message.
He was at rehearsal with the band.

I did what I often do when I am faced with a stressful situation.
I started baking.

"Don't let it hurt."

Andrew came home.

Dad called.

That was that.
There were no words. There were hardly more tears in that moment.

The cookies burned.

Andrew went back to rehearsal; I went to the mall.
I wandered around numbly. I went to Starbucks and was sorely tempted to tell the barista (who I know) what was going on. I didn't. We're not that close. I ended up at Target to buy a black dress.
"Blessings" by Laura Story played as I drove home.
Of course.

Andrew and I went out to dinner and then went back home.

He asked whether I had gotten the new Owl City album.
We plugged in Dad's speakers and blasted it as loud as we could take it.
I folded clothes.
We waited for Mom and Dad to get home.
I painted my nails.

We all sat around for a while, talking about the next few days.
We would leave the following evening, have dinner at Andrew and Allie's apartment.
I would stay the night there, less than two weeks after staying with them before the last time we would all be together as a family.
The viewing would be on Wednesday, funeral Thursday, Andrew would fly to Texas, drive to Wisconsin on Friday, traditional Wisconsin fireworks, graveside service on Saturday at the cemetery where relatives from several generations are buried, drive back to IL Saturday night, drive home on Sunday.

Owl City was the soundtrack for all of this.
I had four albums of his music on my iPod at the time, and it was what I listened to.
For that week and for the rest of the summer.

And now, ATBAB brings back the feelings of the summer.
It is a numbness mixed with sorrow and anger and hopeless crushes and Harry Potter movie marathons and frustration and warmth and bitterness.

I listened to this album last night while I was in Shiloh Prayer Chapel.
I finally really listened to "How I Became the Sea."
I had heard this song dozens of times, but didn't really try to understand or interpret it to apply to my life.
But, with nothing else going on around me, I finally made the effort.

"The great breakers broke again as I nodded off inside."

I don't know what Adam Young was thinking when he wrote this song.
I don't know whether he meant something deep or significant by it.
But, because I can interpret just about anything in the way I want to understand it, I take great meaning from this line.

After June 20, 2011, I deadened myself to emotion.
I decided that I did not want to feel joy or sorrow or anything in between.
I felt entitled to my perpetually bad attitude.
And I let it continue through last semester, until I finally broke down and admitted that I was mad at God.
I gave Him the list of grievances that I had been holding on to for six months.

"When the sky fell in, when the hurricanes came for me, I could finally crash again, and that's how I became the sea."

I couldn't hold onto it any more.
It was not my pain to hold. It was His to take and turn into something beautiful.
And He is.

But it still hurts. Listening to ATBAB last night was difficult. I usually avoid listening to the whole album at once. I have "Honey and the Bee," "The Yacht Club," and "Deer in the Headlights" in various playlists.
But why would I want to hear the "slipped the surly bonds of earth" speech? I was avoiding thinking of my grandfather's death, thanks. I'd rather not hear about more death.

I've thought I was over it.
I have thought that it would eventually stop hurting, but I don't know that it will.

Every time I see the photos from my brother's wedding with my smiling grandparents and remember that I won't have those photos.
Every time I see their card from their last Christmas together.
Every time I play the song I wrote a few years ago and played at the funeral.

Every time I listen to ATBAB.

It hurts. It will hurt.

But he doesn't hurt. He doesn't need assistance to walk or for people to listen patiently and quietly while he forms words.
He is dancing at the throne of God.
("But he was a Baptist! He wouldn't dance." Yes, my dad and I both had that response when my mom said that Grandpa was dancing. This is how we think.)
He is with his granddaughter, his parents, his brothers, and his Savior.

"And that's how I became the sea."

What I Have Learned From Don Miller (Part One)

I promised to write this post a few days ago, but I never got around to it.
Battle of the Bands auditions, reading, and other events of life got in the way.

I'm sitting at the desk abandoned by Melisa. She's off living a great story at Oxford this semester. I am incredibly jealous and I miss her, but I am here now for this time. I have responsibilities and opportunities this semester, and I cannot change that now.

I've been using this desk for the past week because I have never learned how to keep my own clear.
It's something that I was determined to change, but I'm not great at following through when I make promises to myself.

I'm drinking the first brewed coffee of a new can, watching "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," waiting for dough to rise so I can finish making cinnamon rolls, and trying to psych myself up to read about fifty pages of my US History books. I have Music Theory homework to do, two devotional books on Ephesians to start, Shakespeare to read and summarize, a song to finish writing, a cave to clean, laundry to do, dishes to wash, notes to type up and email, and probably a dozen other things to check of my nonexistent to-do list.

All that is beside the point (well, not completely, but that's yet to be seen).

Sunday night, my parents and I went to Wheaton to hear Don Miller speak. the topic was something about "life calling" blah, blah, blah. Really, it was about story. Don has learned, through the process of turning his bestselling book Blue Like  Jazz into a movie (to be released April 13), how to live good stories. He has learned that the elements that make a good story, in a book or movie, are often the same elements that make a good life. I learned this from him when I read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.
But not much has changed. I often think about the need to live good stories and to cut out the junk that keeps me from doing that, but living good stories isn't easy and I like things to be easy.

If you seek comfort, you will not be satisfied when the credits roll.


That's a paraphrase of one part of Don's talk on Sunday. And it smacked me in the face.
I really hate it when that happens, and it happened several times over the course of the hour and a half that we sat there and listened.

"A story is a character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it."

Now, I'm not entirely sure what I want. I want a lot of things.
I want to know what I'm supposed to do with my life.
I want a husband.
I want to live in a way that I am worthy to be called a child of God and the Bride of Christ.
(I wrote about cute couples almost two years ago.)
I want to bring change to someone's life.
Each of these is a separate story, all intertwined in the great story in which we all play roles.

I have learned much about conflict in the past twelve months. I have experienced it firsthand as I have struggled with God to learn about His love (just over a year ago), confession (the anniversary of that comes in about three weeks), rejection (March), anxiety and fear for my own life (May, as I traveled to England),  my grandpa's death (June), frustration with people (July and August as I worked four days each week in a hot warehouse, and September as I adjusted to living with people I didn't really know), confronting my anger and bitterness (mid-semester), my desire to find a guy to love me with a forever kind of love (my entire life, really), homesickness, wondering about my future, struggling to assert myself in healthy ways, facing my critical spirit and insecurity and arrogance, and so much more. It has been, as I believe I have written before, the most terrifying and exciting emotional roller coaster I have ever ridden.

I learned in my Marriage and Family class last semester how important conflict is if it is handled well. It can deepen a relationship. It creates a bond between those involved. Conflict isn't necessarily negative. We were created for conflict. Seriously. There was conflict before the Fall. For example, there was no mate suitable for Adam in all the creatures that had been created. (That's something I learned from Donald Miller. "Next time you complain that you can't find a date, think about Adam.") Take conflict. Give it to God. Let Him turn it into something beautiful. Use that beauty. Be a "wounded healer." (This is the idea of using what you have learned in overcoming your own struggles and experiences to help others over come theirs.)

So. That's what I'm processing right now. I'm thinking through the conflicts I'm facing right now. They are many, but none that cannot be overcome. My God is for me and He will not be defeated.

More to come later in the week.

January 22, 2012

Here's what I did on Sunday:

7:30: Wake up, get dressed, make coffee, put on makeup. You know, get ready for church.
8:05: Leave the house.
8:20-1:45-ish: Church, lunch, hanging out with friends.
2:30: Leave the house with everything I'd need for the rest of the day.
3:00: Meet with a new small group to make a plan to be mentored by a professor. Yeah, that's a pretty good way to describe that.
4:45: Get picked up from the professor's house by Mom and Dad to go back to church.
5:00-5:30: Czech Republic meeting.
5:30: Leave the meeting early to get in the car and drive to Wheaton College.
7:30-9:00-ish(Chicago time): Listen to Don Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, among other works) talk about how to live a good story.
9:15: Go to my aunt's house to chat briefly, get coffee, and receive my copy of Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie of TOMS Shoes.
Then we drove through fog back to Mishawaka, and my parents drove the rest of the way home.
I walked into a house that smelled like burned hot dogs, which is a terrible smell. The source of the smell, which still lingers in our kitchen, was actually burned microwave popcorn. I don't know the whole story.
I was awake until 3 doing homework and watching "Downton Abbey."

It was a very long day and nearly every activity involved some kind of conversation about the future.

Sunday School: We talked about abiding and resting in God, spending time with Him in order to create a deeper, stronger, more intimate relationship. It's something that I struggle with so much. It's so easy to get caught up in doing stuff for Jesus that I forget to do stuff with Jesus.

Meeting with the professor: I want to learn how to talk to people about Jesus. I am not the kind of person who walks up to people and asks them whether they know who Jesus is. I'm a seed planter. I'm a thought provoker. And I am built for relationship. I am built for incarnational missions. I'm built to spend time with people to teach and learn together. But I don't have much experience, and I want to learn from someone who does. So a group of us have decided to meet regularly and have conversations about how to have conversations.

Czech Republic meeting: I'm planning to go to Czech Republic this summer with the youth group I work with. I'm pumped. I'm nervous. I'm ready. I'm ready to train and to get to know the team. I'm ready to go and meet the people and work with them and teach English and be Jesus. I'm ready to see what God does in me and through me in the next several months.

Don Miller: So much good came out of this time, and there will be other posts about that. He brought up the need to do things with God. He talked about living a good story. And he challenged us:
"What if you had to pull out all of the meaningless days when you just watched TV or played Xbox; would there still be enough that was interesting to make a film?"
Wow. That just kills me. I waste a lot of time, and I know it. It has been a huge struggle for me, and I always want to change it, but I never really do anything about it.
"What if the things that go into a great story are the the same things that go into a great life?"
That was the premise of his talk. That's the premise of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years." (Read it. It will make you want to either take a nap or make a change. For my family, especially my mom and my brother, it brought about major change. Like, quitting jobs change.)
This will become a separate post, probably tonight.

So, yeah. Sunday was a really good day. It was exhausting and long and busy and I spent a huge amount of time thinking and contemplating my future, and wondering what's next. I still don't know. And maybe God's asking me what I want. (Read what I'm going to write for tomorrow. It will start to make sense.)