The End of an Era

I finished the last Harry Potter book late last night...I won't say anything about it here because I know there are people still reading, and I think those who spoil the end for everyone are just rude and inconsiderate people. All I'll say is that it was an amazing book and I think I am going to miss hanging out with Harry on long summer days....happy reading everyone!

And, we're 1/2 way there!

It's been a long summer. I think that's pretty much the only way to put it. I knew that Hebrew would be tough, would require a lot of studying, but I honestly had no idea how intense an intensive language class could be. I am still enjoying it (most days...) and today translated Genesis 1:1-5 from Hebrew into English (so it took about 2 hours to do the 5 verses...which I know sounds ridiculous to most of you, but trust me, that's not too bad!) which was quite exciting--at least it shows that I've learned something in the past 5 weeks! There are 5 weeks to go...hopefully I won't go too crazy before they are up.

I had the chance to preach again at Burbank on Sunday, which was stressful in the midst of Hebrew but I actually had a lot of fun working with the text for the day (the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10), and had several people comment that they appreciated the way I presented the passage--usually the message we get is that we should be more like Mary, that she is the good sister and Martha is the bad sister, but I made the argument that based on the context of the rest of chapter 10 (with the story of the 70 being sent out to serve Jesus and the story of the Good Samaritan preceeding my story for the day) that we actually need to be both Mary and Martha--we need to be active in our world, we need to be servants, Jesus sends people out to ACT in his name, he doesn't want us christians to simply sit all the time, but that when we do act, our action needs to be grounded in our time with Him--the title for the sermon was "Contemplative Action" -- so you can draw more conclusions from there. :) My great friend from high school, Jenn, came down for the weekend, and it was wonderful to have her here and for her to have the chance to hang out with my Fuller girls:

Jenn, Jenn, me, Sophie and Becca after church
I have also been enjoying the final installment of Harry Potter and will be quite sad when I finish and no longer get to enjoy the wonderful world of him and his friends. I'm only on page 160, so I'm refusing to go to any websites that could potentially ruin the mystery for me--it's been quite a challenge knowing what to avoid!

Other than that, I'm not sure what else is new and exciting here--not a whole lot! Most of my days are spent in the library, alternating between studying Hebrew and researching various things for the sermon or the bible class I was teaching, and my evenings have been spent having meals with friends, more Hebrew, running, and enjoying a few novels--like I said, right now it's Harry, but I just finished a wonderfully-mindless book "Sammy's House" by Kristin Gore (Al Gore's daughter who has written a few books of a fictional character who works on capital hill--and who gets herself into all kinds of ridiculous predicaments.) Next up will be a book I've been waiting for--"Disconnected: Parenting Teens in a Myspace World" by Chap and Dee Clark (Chap is the professor of Youth, Family and Culture here at Fuller and is the prof I will be working for starting in the fall--his research and ministry to youth and families really is pretty incredible). And there you have it, probably one of the most boring posts I've written, but I felt like taking a break from the vocab flashcards, so there you have it....happy last week of July everyone!

This would be amazing....

I totally want one of these.

My beautiful "almost" niece at 7 months

Jean sent me the latest photos of little Bethie last night--she is already 7 months old! I get to meet her in September when we will both be in Minnesota at the same time (ok well I get to meet her again, I got to meet Beth back in Dec. when she was only 2 weeks old...) and I am very excited! So because I needed a break from the wonderful world of Hebrew I thought I'd share some of my favorite photos with all you wonderful people in cyber-land!

Happy 4th of July!

Yesterday Sophie, Jenn, myself, and our friend Barbara, who is in town for two weeks from Houston, went down to the Long Beach Aquarium to hang out with the fishes, enjoy a BBQ dinner catered by the aquarium and watch the fireworks. It was a wonderful day, fabulous to get out of the heat of Pasadena (it's been pushing 100 all week, and the coast is always about 15 degrees cooler) and very relaxing. The only drawback was the traffic on the way home! It usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get there, and it took us two hours to get home! Here are some photos from the day:Finding Nemo seems to have transformed aquariums everywhere--this whole tank was full of "nemos and dori's"Parts of Long Beach were beautiful! And it was a gorgeous night!

The BBQ set up outside the aquarium

Barbara and JennSophie made a friend!Sophie, Barbara, and PocketPocket demonstrating on the giant map where we were.

For 26 Summers

I'm not exactly sure what direction this post is going to take--it may be a rambling ride! I've thought a lot about "seasons" lately, and how our lives seem divided into seasons--sometimes literally by the weather patterns (ie: fall usually means back to school, winter--in Seattle at least--meant lots of time in coffee shops with friends or good books etc), or sometimes by the stages of life we go through. This is my "season" to be working on my master's degree, but I've also come to realize that this is my season of discernment, of inquiring into what it means to be a pastor, a season of growing pains as I adjust to a new identity and as I come to see myself as a pastor. We also have seasons that sometimes seem to be defined by our emotional state at the time--seasons of intense joy that might come with an engagment or planning a wedding, seasons of grief, seasons of healing from physical or emotional trauma. And sometimes, we are just in a season of waiting. I remember the spring before I had really gotten the answer from God as to what seminary or grad school program I was to pursue, I was living in Seattle and working as the children's intern at my church and one weekend I was on a retreat with some of the other Sunday School teachers. We were listening to the story of Jonah and were asked where we saw ourselves in that story, and I remember saying that I felt like I was sitting in the whales stomach just waiting for God to move, to make things clear. And He did, eventually, just not necessarily on my time table! I think Solomon was right when he wrote that "for everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven." And I think that sometimes we don't always know why we are in a specific season or have to go through a period of life. I was playing around on the wonderful world of myspace the other day and came across a new fabulous artist on a friend's page. Vicky Beeching writes some unbelievable songs (and has an amazing voice in my opinion!), and one that struck me right away is called "Twenty Six Summers" -- probably because it is summer and I will be 26 at the end of it...Anyways....if you want to hear it you can visit my myspace page and have a listen. I love the lyrics because I think they perfectly describe how I am feeling as I've thought through the seasons in my life:

"I don't know what the future holds

or what lies beyond my horizon.

The years ahead are just out of reach,

I think sometimes that You hide them

So I will walk by faith, not sight,

So that I'll take Your hand

Holding tight...

Through 26 summers

and 26 winters

I've laughed in the spring time

and I've cried in the rain

Though I've questioned the meaning

of some of these seasons,

it's true;

Faith left me holding on tighter to You."

The other thing I am realizing is that I have somehow entered into a new "identity" this past year. I'm still me, but I realized today in a very concrete way that as I have embraced this season of developing into a pastor, God uncovered some gifts and areas of my life I didn't really realize were there. Today my small group met to have a time of "closure" that we didn't really get to have during finals week for obvious reasons! We decided to have a time of affirming one another, and specifically naming the gifts we saw being developed in one another this past year. This is actually the third time in the last month that I have done this activity with different groups of people, and it's something we used to do in college a lot, every time we ended a leadership team or a staff of some sort we would have a time of affirmation. Anyways, a few years ago, I used to be able to predict what people would say about me when it was my turn in the "hot seat." My "role" was always the staff or team encourager, the one who would always be behind the scenes doing anything needed to serve the team. That was the skill set I had and thought that was how I was going to function in any staff I was a part of for the rest of my life. Apparently I didn't quite understand what God had in mind. In the past month as I have done this activity three different times, the comments I've received have changed drastically since the last time I did this about 4 years ago. I have been receiving words of "leadership," "teaching," "shepherding," "confidence," "firmness," "authority figure," "preaching," "communicating," and "joy." The first time I started hearing some of these things I tried convincing the speakers that they were wrong, that those words don't fit me. I'm the girl who is always in the back ground, supporting and encouraging from behind. The thing is though, I don't think I am anymore. I think that is how I acted for a good portion of my life because I was insecure in who I was, but in the past several years I have been put (ok sometimes thrown) into situations that have stretched me beyond what I ever had imagined possible, and as I have had to grow into these roles, I have had faithful people come into my life at just the right time (ok I no longer think this was a coincidence!) to specifically name the gifts they thought God was developing in me, and to walk with me through the seasons of "growing pains" as I continued to grow into the leader they all believed God was calling me to be. One woman told me recently "you don't get to hide behind the scenes anymore, you've been called to the front, and you need to now walk forward with confidence that God will equip you to do whatever it is He is asking."

I don't write all of this to say "see what cool compliments my small group and leadership teams have given me?!" I really am still in a season of wrestling with this new identity--who am I created to be, what role am I being prepared for, what ARE my gifts and how are they going to be used? I love that I am in a safe place to do this wrestling, and that I am at a wonderful church that lets me try out some of these gifts while making mistakes. It is just a crazy season of life is really all I can say! My good friend from high school, Jenn, and I created a saying when we went to college, that college was "weird." Everything from living with strangers, to sharing a bathroom with 40 other people, to the food runs at 2 am, to the moving in and out of buildings every 9 months--it is just not a "normal" stage of life (wonderful, but not normal.) Well, I've decided that if college was weird, seminary is crazy. Wonderful, fabulous, full of learning and wrestling and growing, but nonetheless, a crazy season of life unlikely to be duplicated anywhere else!

A Life Well Lived

First, I just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to all of you for the wonderful phone messages, emails, and myspace messages checking on me and sending encouragement and prayers this past week--it has been a long week, and a tough week, but the love and support from all of you was amazing! God truly has given me an incredible community made up of people all across this country--and actually world as several friends are overseas right now.

Today was the funeral service for Bill Flora, our wonderful friend from church, and it was an absolutely wonderful celebration of his life. Ok--well--the air conditioning in the sanctuary broke yesterday, and it's been over 95 here, and the funeral was at 4 PM with about 300 people packed into the sanctuary, so honestly, it was a little warm but the service itself was a powerful testimony to an amazing man. The front cover of the bulletin simply said "A celebration of a life well lived." And that's what it was. Bill lived in Burbank for almost his entire life, and was an algebra teacher and basketball coach at Burrough's High School in Burbank for his entire career. A ton of the people there today were former students of his that he had either taught or coached--his basketball players from 1952 showed up to pay tribute to a man who greatly impacted all their lives. He also was in the Navy in WWII and was an officer on a ship. There were several men there today that had been crewmen on that boat, and they talked about how after the war they would have reunions, and Bill was the only officer that would ever bother to come and hang out with men of a lower rank, but every reunion Bill would be there. He had no regard for labels, ranks, or titles, he simply loved people because he loved Jesus with all his heart and Jesus commanded us to love all those we come into contact with. He and Skip would have celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary at the end of July, and like their son said, they have spent 59 years as "one." It was always "billnskip"--one word, that's even their email address--and Ross said in his homily that from the beginning Bill and Skip have been there as an example to him and his wife of how to be parents and how to love your spouse with sacrifical love.

I realized today, that although no funeral is "fun" or is something anyone wants to go to, going to a memorial service for someone who had lived a full life and who loved Jesus with all their heart was a very different experience. The last several funerals I have been to have all been for people whose lives ended long before they should have because of cancer, car accidents, or other accidents--and in a couple of them no one seemed to know if the person believed in Jesus or not. Those funerals just felt hard, much harder than today. There was a lot of grief today, but the thing I realized was that no one in that room doubted it for a minute when Ross started by saying that a week ago, Bill got to hear Jesus say "well done, my good and faithful servant. Come! Come and see the mansions I have prepared for you! Come and rest in my presence, come and enjoy your new body, one that will never grow old or tired or sick!" Bill loved God with all his heart and believed in the promises of Jesus, and so today we got to truly celebrate a life that was lived to the fullest.

Today also made me realize how much I actually DO want to be a pastor. I have had so many of those moments this year, but today was another one. I wasn't even doing anything in the service, I was just sitting there and then mingling at the reception, meeting friends of Bill and Skip's from various parts of their lives and was hit by this realization that as a pastor, this is what I get to do, mingle and meet with people who wouldn't otherwise be in a church except for those key transitional moments in their lives. So as families come together to celebrate baptims of newborns, weddings, and funerals I'll get to be a part of those moments, and what holy, sacred times those are for families! I was talking to my friend Jenny today at church and she said she had a moment like that yesterday while officiating at her cousin's wedding--she is a graduate of Princeton seminary this year and is now starting the job-search but we were talking about how good those moments are that affirm our calls in life.

Ok that's enough random ramblings for now! Off to more Hebrew....well....actually it's off to bed...Hebrew studying comes early tomorrow!