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.)

What has happened and what comes next.

That title sounds like this post will be some big dramatic announcement of something that happened recently.
But don't hold your breath.

2011. One of the best and worst years of my life.
What has happened:
Joy.
Confession.
Rejection.
Heartbreak.
Hope.
Travel.
Diagnoses.
Death.
Depression.
Anger.
Bitterness.
Movie marathons.
New house and new roommates.
Stress.
Frustration.
Tension.
Honesty.
Laziness.
Loneliness.
Writing.
Sharing.
Baking. So much baking.
Friendship.
Fear.
Uncertainty.
Grace Church Youth.
Music.
Prayer.
Weddings.
Catching the bouquet.
Family.
Kindle.
Today.

2012.
What comes next:
New year.
Reading.
Knitting.
Baking.
Recipe testing.
New classes.
Writing.
Prayer.
Solitude.
Change.
Compassion.
Uncertainty.
Learning.
Trust.
Weddings.
Finding out.
Planning.
Rejoicing.

"Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes."
["10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)" by Matt Redman.]

This is what I did in England (Part 5: Scotland and heading home)

One of the peacocks at Warwick

22 May 2011


Day 12: Travel Fatigue

York Minster

I am ready to be home. I’m ready for different people and familiar foods, places, habits, TV channels, accents, preaching, etc. I’m ready to tell people about this trip. I’m ready to sleep on my own schedule and in my own bed. I’m ready for time with my best friends and with my family.

After climbing up to Hadrian's Wall

I have been working hard to hide my frustration with people, from our group and the others. I have tried to be a peacemaker. God has given me the ability to see every side of an argument, and I have a tendency to defend anyone who is receiving insult (when they don’t know about it), and this is getting me in trouble.

I’m ready to be with people who get me. I miss my friends who can finish my sentences. I miss laughing with my dad and arguing with my mom.
I’m ready for summer to really start
                       for movie marathons.
                       for lying in the sun.
                       for learning how to play the ukulele.
                       for reading stacks of books.
Thinking about all of this is making it difficult to appreciate these days, but I don’t want to just block it all out.

Dr. Gerber in Scotland

I hope a good night’s sleep helps. I have lots of homework to finish in the next couple of days.

23 May 2011


Day Thirteen: Scotch Mist

I’m feeling better about life today, but I’m more ready to go home. The inclement weather and the fear of delays due to the ash cloud are making me anxious to get on a plane and get away from it. But I only want to do that if I can be assured that there won’t be problems mid-flight.

Right now I’m sitting in the open area on our floor, next to a wall of windows. I’m watching clouds scuttle by and birds fight the wind.

The Elephant House
The birthplace of Harry Potter

It has been a long day. Our tour this morning was less than thrilling, excepting the time when our guide singled me out for muttering. He had been telling a story as we stood outside of Holyroodhouse. It was windy and raining, and I couldn’t hear him so I was talking to the girl next to me about how much more effective it would have been to tell us this while we were on the bus. He pulled me to the front of the group and asked me about whatever he had been talking about. I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I couldn’t hear you.” Everyone laughed. He said, “Didn’t your mother tell you to listen to what every man says and to believe him?” More laughter. We were special friends for the rest of his time with us.

The dregs of my Elephant House mocha

Homework in the hotel.

Lunch was had at the “Birthplace of Harry Potter,” and I have been in the hotel since then.

24 May 2011


Day Fourteen: Traveling Home

We received a phone call late last night telling us to be ready to load by 2:45am. Krista and I were already planning to have an all-nighter, and the extra early departure solidified that plan. I ended up sleeping for about an hour before getting up and getting my stuff together. I managed to pack everything in the right amount of space, almost a miracle considering how much I brought and how much I bought over the past two weeks.

I climbed on the bus and fell asleep pretty quickly. I woke up around 4am to see the mist and fog over grey-green hills, with the sun just starting to shine through. It was beautiful. Then I started to feel carsick, so I closed my eyes and slept some more.

Now we’re on our way home. I’m sitting comfortably in World Traveller Plus, watching “The King’s Speech.” Characters include previous kings of England, along with a very young Queen Elizabeth II; Wallace Simpson, the American mistress/wife of the latest king’s brother; and Sir Winston Churchill. Thus far, it is a wonderful movie.

The flight is going well, although I’m feeling sick as I always do during flights. We are currently over the north central area of the Atlantic Ocean, but I unfortunately do not have a window seat and cannot see anything out the windows except the wings of the plane.

The past two weeks have been marvelous. I’ve seen and learned and grown. I’ve laughed and cried. I’ve gotten to know some wonderful people, and have realized how much I appreciate those who remained in the States. God has taught me about grace, love, patience, peace, healing tears, rest, joy, and the need to be flexible. He has granted me great patience with all of the things that could have been frustrating. I’m excited to go home and tell my family and friends about this trip, but I might be more excited to show them how I think I’ve changed.

I am so thankful for this trip and for all the hard work that went into it.

Just a few more hours. It’s odd to think that a plane can cross the Atlantic in the same amount of time it takes a coach to drive from Edinburgh to London.

 And now, I’ll return to my movie and perhaps a nap.

This is what I did in England (Part 4)

20 May 2011
Day Eleven: Return to Oxford and onto the Land of the Bard

"Dominus illumina mea."
"The Lord is my light."
The University motto.

Going back to Oxford was like going home. The streets were familiar, the shops were familiar, the Starbucks was familiar.

It was nice to have an official tour of the city, including New College. Our guide clearly knows the city well. She even pointed out several locations that were used in filming the “Harry Potter” movies. I’ll have to look out for them when my best friend and I have our HP marathon next month.

Anne Hathaway's cottage

And then on to Stratford. It’s such a quaint little town, and I can only imagine what it might have been like when Shakespeare lived there. It’s so cool to know that I have now walked in the steps of two of my favorite writers (Lewis and Shakespeare). I have seen their churches and their graves. I love that.

Shakespeare's final resting place

On a more personal and private note, I have now added another country to my list of “Places I’ve Had My Period.” This happens every time I leave the country. I had it on my 2007 trips to Canada and Jamaica. I also had it on my 2005 trip to Hawaii. It just comes at the most inconvenient times, but it’s good to know that my body is working properly. And with all of the walking that we’ve been doing, the cramps haven’t been bad at all.

21 May 2011
Day Twelve: Coffee with Strangers from the Internet

AJ and Melissa Leon are working with the Shakepeare Birthplace Trust’s social media presence. They have helped several important people connected with the Birthplace start blogs and Twitter accounts.

They and my dad somehow found each other online and got to know each other. They even visited my parents on a tour of the States last fall. I’d never met them, but because we were in Stratford, my dad wanted to make sure we connected in something that is called a “Tweet-up” (a meet-up organized on Twitter). We tweeted and texted and finally met at a coffee shop called Box Brownie. They serve the “best coffee in town” along with various pastries. AJ insisted that I try something that I can best describe as a sandwich. It’s a scone that has been split. Each half is spread with jam, and cream is the main filling. The scone is full of dried fruit, the jam is a perfect balance of tart and sweet, and the cream adds the perfect texture. It will definitely be on the menu when I open a bakery.

Shakespeare's Birthplace

Dad writes a devotional blog post every weekday at 300wordsaday.com. AJ reads it religiously, pun intended. He told a local minister about it, and the minister and Dad have talked a bit online. Dad sent a small rock with me and wrote on it “Paul, a tiny altar –Jon.” I was just going to leave it with AJ and Melissa. But, as Providence would have it, Paul and one of the world’s leading Shakespeare scholars, Stanley Wells, were meeting at Box Brownie this morning. I got to meet them both, which was very cool.

I have had opportunities on this trip that I could only dream of.