Sometimes, after so long, I forget the context of a favorite verse, and coming back to it, I am awakened to new meaning. The other day (and I am writing now for Easter) I read about Jesus being the bread of life—John 6:25-71. And the verse that has always been my favorite, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” struck me. Because you can see there is nowhere better to go, nothing but emptiness aside from Christ that it seems an easy question, so perfectly and bluntly put. Yet before, Jesus is preaching what I can only imagine sounded so crazy to the people, about eating His flesh, and drinking His blood, to receive eternal life. And the disciples (not the 12) asked, “this is a hard teaching, who can accept it?", in fear of being connected to the crazy man, ashamed of the message and they left. And now, still today, we as believers will be called crazy, stupid, and be mocked for believing this too. And Jesus asks, will you leave too, and Peter replies to whom shall we go? Your words are true, and they hold the key to eternal life. And you know what, Jesus doesn’t make it any easier for them. His message only gets increasingly more impossible, that He would die and come back to life, so we can live forever in Heaven? It can seem so mainstream, as we have communion and eat the bread that represents His flesh, and drink the wine that represents His blood; it can seem so mainstream living in a “Christian” culture (by this I only mean that most people in our country have a basic level of familiarity with Christianity), but it is really insane!, like eating His flesh and drinking His blood, and we are called, in the face of a world that is increasingly, and more than ever outspokenly, objecting to it. As well, I might add, anyone who has not has a personal encounter with God may well should! They are not easy words to stand by, they’re not normal! But they are the truth. And beautifully, Peter understands that despite the madness, despite how stupid, or ignorant, or insane we sound, there is simply no where better to go.

                And we have hope, a few chapters back, John 4:39-42, we see—some will believe by our testimony; our personal story of what God has done will be enough for them to embrace the Word. But then, when He comes to them , as He does, they will believe because He told them so. And those two things, working together will make them see, and leave them without a choice but to accept the most crazy of words that “this man really is the Saviour of the world.” That you, and they, like Peter and the 12, will be able to stand by Him, no matter how crazy it gets, because you know Him personally.

                I am not so smart, and I was not (by my definition anyway) raised as a Christian from birth. I don’t believe because the words were handed down to me, as so many people would have you believe. I don’t believe out of ignorance. I believe because I met Jesus one night, and came to an understanding of who He really was. I was an angry person. Angry and lustful and depressed, suicidal, spiritually dead, falling apart, in a downward spiral of my own sin that I saw no possible escape from. And I believed, deep in my heart, that that would be my lot for the rest of my life. There would be no end to my depression. There would be no day when I could consider myself clean of the deeds of my past. They could only get worse. But that night, on a hammock in the summer by a lake, I got it. Jesus forgave me, and if He could forgive me, I could forgive myself too. And I could be clean, and set free! Not to continue on my downward spiral, but to be lifted up, out of the pit, to be given another chance. That is why I believe. And because since then, since then, I have seen Him do miracles, work the impossible, in my life, and in the lives of others. I have heard His voice, heard as He used my mouth the speak them, and felt Him dwelling on the inside of my heart. This is for real. And you can call me a lunatic, because I know the words I stand by sound like madness to the ear, but they are true. They are true, and there is nowhere else for me to go.

                Time for a long overdue post. I’ve been in Sydney for a month and a half now, and have written approximately zero posts beyond a daily written journal which is of no use to you but is gonna have to inform half of what I write here so I don’t forget it all.

                This month has been so difficult, and so amazing, and there is a lot that I want to say, but I’m going to have start from this weekend, at Colour Conference. Colour is a huge gathering of Christian women, from Hillsong Church and all over the world. About 16,000 people were there this weekend, and there’s another one in Sydney this weekend as well. I don’t know what else to say other than it was completely life-changing. I usually have a lot of scepticism regarding these things; they’re very expensive, and this week my sister visited, so it meant missing two out of seven valuable days with her. But in a way I cannot even express, I know I was meant to be there, in that seat because the whole enormous event was somehow tailored exactly to me and God bringing me back to the land of the living. I said before, the last month was hard. One thing after another was going wrong, even as I tried to hold on to God and stay optimistic, because I was in Australia after all. But three things I realized. Just being abroad doesn’t mean you get an automatic happiness card. That when you are staying somewhere for 10 months, it’s not just a vacation anymore, it’s life, and as life it comes with all the emotions, daily happenings and problems as what you would expect of life anywhere.  And secondly, I didn’t have to exert such energy to be grateful. Yes, it’s a good thing to be grateful, but when you’re seeking gratitude as the ends, it just doesn’t work. In my effort to “appreciate what I had”, I lost sight of what I had, a God who loved me who could, in reality, help me get out of the ditch not just through circumstances, but by pressing into Him. Which, if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t doing. Thirdly, I had this mentality that the only news I should be updating people with was good news. Yet God made me see, what kind of gospel would it be if Jesus decided to disappear for a little while, come back a week or so later, and say, well, I died and it was really bad, but things are good now, no worries. No, He let people live it with Him, suffering included, not trying to make things seem better than they were, letting them live it and know Him so that when He rose again they would share all the joy and not think in hindsight, oh that’s nice, sorry it was bad, glad to hear you’re alive again! Silly. So, towards the start of March I was working toward these things, starting to get better, things were starting to look up. In the highlights of this period were scuba diving lessons, which brought me so much joy and I felt so at home and in place under the water and God drew close to me then too, on a day after church when (as a result of the message) I finally realized to stop praying for better circumstances and start praying for joy and happiness in Him no matter what. And FINALLY the next day, there was a day of sun, to break the awful and crippling near second flooding of the world that was my life in Sydney during February. And then came Colour Conference. Now would be a good point to mention that the only reason I was at this conference was because I had gotten a job, which, after training I had lost. Just a very unpleasant experience, which I couldn’t understand at the time why God would allow me to get a job and spend like I had a job, and then subsequently lose the job. Now I don’t know the whole heavenly story behind it, but I know two words that are in it. Colour Conference. The first night of the Conference was Thursday, just a two hour thing, like an amplified, extended church service for women, and Bobbie Houston spoke, reading from Isaiah 5:1-4. The Scripture talks about God, looking for good grapes in His vineyard (us, our hearts) and finding only bad grapes. And He asks, what more could I have done for my vineyard. And I really considered this question, and asked it of myself, because I don’t know, I think it had been a long time since I was anything resembling a fruitful vineyard. And so I thought about it, and I went home and read Psalm 103, and reading verses 1-5 really focused, more than just kinda reading as usual and considered, and realized, I was not actually believing that God loves me. Which sounds absurd, of course, in my head, I know God loves me, in fact it’s insulting to suggest otherwise. But in my heart, it wasn’t there. And it was very eye-opening. So I began to ask why and I realized that it was that somewhere along the line, I stopped loving myself. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know how to change it. But there it was, exposed and now I saw imposed on God as well.  He must not love me cause I didn’t love me.

So I go to Day 2 of Colour Conference, and wouldn’t you know, we sing How He Loves. Now this is significant in more ways than one. First off, for the whole month and a half I’ve been here, we’ve sung a grand total of maybe 6 or 7 songs (we sing 4 each service). And I think now it was in preparations for Colour, even though it bugged me. But How He Loves was not one of those songs, nor is it, to my knowledge, even a Hillsong song. It was just God speaking right to me, making me sing it and accept it. Even the night before, my thought process went “what am I going to do to accept that God loves me.” And here, as I sang the words, it was powerfully planted in my heart, giving me no choice but to accept it. And then Beth Moore spoke. Beth Moore. If you don’t know who she is, you should probably watch a couple of her videos before reading on, but she was the huge pull for me, why I signed up for Colour in the first place. We did one of her Bible studies last year, and she is so funny, and smart and brings out things in the Bible that you would never even think of or imagine could be significant. Unfortunately I can’t type out the entire message she gave, but before she even started the “actual message” she drew our attention to how John calls himself “the disciple Jesus loved.” How different, she asked, would our lives be if we always thought of ourselves as “the disciple Jesus loved.”  I wonder. But her message came from John 20:1-18, focusing on Mary Magdalene. Jesus’s body is gone from the tomb and Mary Magdalene is extremely upset and crying, and Beth asked if you feel like you’ve ever been close and you have mislay Him (vs 2). Yep. That someone has taken Him, you don’t even know who they are, but you don’t know where to find Him (vs 13). Mhm. But He knows where to find you.  She said Jesus delivered Mary from 7 demons, but He doesn’t just want to deliver you from something, but to something else. And if we haven’t made it from our “from” to our ‘to”, this is the weekend. And Jesus asks “what are you seeking?” (vs 15) and no matter what we think it is, it is Him (this really resonated with me as well). She prayed that He’d say our name (vs 16) and that we’d recognise Him when He says it, and I feel this weekend that He did. And now, we were here we are at Colour to see Jesus revealed, and He has a “go” for us too (vs 17). And now, we can be women who can authentically and honestly say, I have seen the Lord.”

So that is a lot, and not nearly as coherent as it was to actually hear it, I’m sure, but the whole thing, every word, every song, and every message that came after it (though none so much as this) brought me back home, back to Him, freed me to feel His presence like I haven’t been in I don’t know how long now. Free, renewed and revitalized to produce fresh grapes! And actually act. How long now have I not been doing what I was made to do. A long time. These “resting periods” or “transitional periods,” it’s time for them to end and for me to be me again, and love, and have joy and vitality and I just feel like I’ve been woken up from a very long and unpleasant sleep. And I am ready, again, to say with conviction, overflowing with the truth and worship that I had misplaced, I have seen the Lord!

Colour. I could talk about it forever, so if you want to know more, ask me, for now I’m going to give my best attempt at a balanced blog to cover a month and a half and not just one very significant weekend.

I arrived in Australia on February 6^th, now a very long time from now. We had our orientation in Sorrento, a beautiful beach town a few hours from Melbourne. It was the most naturally beautiful place I’ve been to in Australia so far, with rock beaches with small pools of water, stunning sunsets and even a cave that during high tides I think is partially underwater. We learned the basics there, and ate our first Tim Tams (addicting chocolate cookies) and after a couple days, headed up to Melbourne for just a day of sightseeing. Melbourne was lovely, so much more so than Sydney, and very artsy. The architecture was amazing, and I don’t think I would’ve been too upset to live there, but I wanted Sydney cause it’s the main place in Australia. I’m here now, and I can easily walk to Darling Harbour (a prettier version of Baltimore) and less easily, but very possibly, walk to the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge.  I’ve been outside of the city a little bit, going to the Blue Mountains one weekend, where I got to see the Three Sisters, and Jervis Bay another weekend where we camped, and even put up our own tents! At Jervis Bay we did surfing lessons which was cool, but as far as water sports go, scuba is definitely the pick for me. Surfing was kind of hard and it would take a lot more practice. We saw wallabies, kookaburras and parrots in the wild, and went to Hyams beach, with the whitest sand in the world. There I saw dolphins swimming in the water, which was incredible, and had a really nice God moment there where it felt like He was doing it just for me (I had separated myself from the group, walking down the other side of the beach, and only later found out they could see them too).  As for classes, despite trying to change two out of three of them to no avail, I actually like them all. I’m taking Australian Pasts and Places, Intro to Film (take 2), and Aesthetics. I only have classes Wednesday through Friday which is nice. Allison visited me this week too, which was great, and very much helped the homesickness.  She left too soon, but I lost out to a cat, and maybe a boyfriend too, but mostly the cat :P We went to Bondi, Darling Harbour, did lots of shopping, and the Sydney Opera House too.

 I’m going to try to update more often. I always say that, I rarely do, but bear with me, it’ll happen eventually. I love you all and if you’re reading this and I don’t know you, I guess I love you too : )

            God has robbed me of my ability to believe in coincidences.

            I sit in my room, trying to plow through the next chapter in the book I am reading, Nehemiah. I have learned not to force myself to read anything in the Bible, that if my mind is blocked, it may be because the words I’m finding hard to swallow at the moment will be the ones I need to hear days from now when they are relevant So I think, what do I read? I think of David, one of my second favorite people in the Bible, who was a solid person, an awesome guy and yet still had his issues. Lately I have felt so trapped in my sin that I can’t remember being “good.” I need a reminder that “good” people, too, fall. But I don’t turn back, I turn forwards, toward the psalms, and come to psalm 51. I usually don’t read the little pre-scripts that say who wrote it and when. But I catch David’s name, and so I read the rest: A psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. Can we say irony? Well, we probably could, but it wouldn’t be very accurate, we can only say God. God has robbed me of my ability to believe in coincidences.

            This is why I love David, why, if he was still alive today I’d move past the fact that he had multiple wives and probably marry him too. In the midst of being called out by God, and feeling filthy and sinful, the guy writes a song.

            “Have mercy on me, O God

            According to your unfailing love

            According to your great compassion

            Blot out my transgressions

            Wash away all my iniquity

            And cleanse me from my sin”

                          Psalm 51: 1-2

            I have forgotten how to be clean. I have been lied to and I have believed it, that since I became a Christian, in the summer after high school, and since I got baptized that November—that that was as clean as I was ever going to get. And that now I was going downhill, accumulating mud and only to be saved from it once I died, and so in my mind, I hurried that day along, more than joyful expectation, but a plea for release. This is the lie I believed.

            But David, who did love God before, sinned after, and what do you do then? You’ve already been saved once, baptized once, you can’t do it again. Well, you write a song, you ask him to blot out your transgressions and cleanse you from your sins once again.

            “For I know my transgressions,

            And my sin is always before me.

            Against you, you only, have I sinned            

            And done what is evil in your sight,

            So that you are proved right when you speak

            And justified when you judge

            Surely I was sinful at birth

            Sinful from the time my mother conceived me

            Surely you desire truth in the inner parts

            You teach me wisdom in the inmost place”

                            Psalm 51:3-6

            I don’t get away from it. It doesn’t go away—surely I was sinful at birth. And it follows me now. Becoming a Christian doesn’t render you perfect—it didn’t render David perfect, and I think he was a lot better than I am. It’s odd how when I am feeling sick in my sin I feel like I can’t be a Christian, like He won’t want me back, but He’s telling me, it’s not the fact that I have sin that is the problem—He died for that—it’s that I spend so much of my life believing that I don’t, so that it shocks me when it is brought to my attention. That is the pride issue that is really the problem.

            It’s also an issue how much more willing I am to give grace to some over others. Graceful toward David and Paul and yet so frustrated and judgmental toward Abraham, Sarai and Jacob. And I do it in the real world too. Certain sins are easier to excuse than others. Certain personalities compensate for the wrong they do more than others. And I afford myself a measure of grace too, maybe more than I allow for the average person, but still not inexhaustible. I became a Christian after doing something I could not forgive myself for. When cognitive dissonance (new psych term I learned this semester :P ) wasn’t enough and I was forced to really question who I was and what direction I was headed. And because, finally, there was something I could not forgive myself for, I understood what it meant to trust Jesus, and for Him to forgive you for what you can’t forgive yourself for.

            This semester, I feel like I’ve come up against failure after failure, and have seen how, “because I was authentic and loving before” just doesn’t cut it. And having lost my ability to forgive or make excuses for myself, for the second time in my life, I’ve had to lift that up to the One who can forgive me, who is strong enough to forgive me even (and especially!) when I cannot forgive myself. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God you will not despise,” (Psalm 51:17). I love the One who teaches me wisdom, grace, and love. It has been a long time since I have felt this joyful and this clean.

            “Create in me a pure heart O God,

            And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

            Do not cast me from your presence

            Or take your Holy Spirit from me.

            Restore to me the joy of your salvation

            And grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”

                           Psalm 51: 10-12