There I stood, on the Precipice.  Afraid to jump into the darkness of surrender, yet afraid of what turning back meant.  Jumping meant surrendering all, everything.  Jumping meant giving over ALL control over the future, over fears, over hurts, over my will…everything.  Turning back gave me a chance to try and control and manage my life.  Even though all these years of managing/controlling have led to frustration and despair, it still seemed like a better option.  Turning back meant that I would be without the One.  It meant forever trying to fill the void of life with things that I could come up with…emptiness.

I have been here before, many times.  I never like being here.  There is so much confusion.  So much anger.  So much fear.  Every time, I turn back…I turn to what I know, what I can do, what I can manage.  Here I am again, time to make a decision…

Having jumped, I am still alive.  The moments after the jump were very thrilling.  Every moment, I felt more a live and free.  LIFE!  Entering into surrender was life giving. The path into the darkness was so full of light.  Things seem darker, now, than in the moments from jump to landing.  Even though it is dark, something is different.  Something is in the air.  It is a subtle but wonderful scent.  HOPE!  When I breathe deeply, I can feel the hope filling my lungs and entering into my blood.  Then, it courses through my body, with strength and courage to move in the darkness.

Only One is Light and can speak into the darkness, giving direction and meaning.  Only One knows where the next step will lead.  Only One knows the plan.  Only One is trustworthy.  I must relinquish fear.  I must trust, the One…

In September of 1998, I made a decision to invite Christ into my life.  Since then, I have seeking to keep Him as the Lord of my life.  God has done an incredible work in my life, changed me in many ways, and has used me to proclaim His love around the U.S. and in Russia.  He even had me to serve as a full-time campus minister for 6 years.

Through all this, I have mostly felt a battle inside.  Like there was something still missing or that my heart was divided.  No matter how much God showed me about his love and his provision for me, I just couldn’t seem to allow myself to embrace His gift, fully.

In July 2006, God started repeating a theme of Surrender, in my life.  I knew that He was calling me to move to a deeper level with him and that He wanted to move me from my initial place of salvation to a place where I was really fully surrendering and following.  The problem was that I wasn’t “READY.”  I still had too much fear, too much still messed up and too much pain to be willing to fully trust someone with all of me.  Plus, I had people break their word too much to want to make some commitment to surrender all, because I knew I couldn’t keep a commitment like that.

From that time on, things started to get harder.  Even though I had some of the most incredible intimate times with Christ, of my life and some amazing “TASTES” of God, the problem was that my heart was still divided.  The more I saw and tasted that the Lord is good and saw His love and provision, the more the internal battle seemed to grow.  I knew that I couldn’t live without continually tasting God, but I also knew that I wasn’t ready to give Him everything.  So, He patiently waited and loved on me. 

The more I tried to get my life ready to surrender everything, the more out of control things became.  I spiraled downward, deeper and deeper, into impurity, lust, compulsive spending and eating, distancing myself from my friends and my True Friend.  The more I tried to commit to Spiritual disciplines, the more I felt resentment growing toward them and what they stood for. Everything seemed to be okay on the outside, but I started to feel more and more gross as time went on.  You know when you get that feeling, right before a nasty flu…you can’t see symptoms but you feel like you just want to vomit…maybe that would make you feel better.

As this continued to grow, I felt this “need” to either “sell-out” or “get out.”  I really felt like I need to make a decision to either surrender everything, or I need to turn my back and walk away from my total belief system.  I just couldn’t do it anymore.  I felt so sick, like I was walking around covered in vomit and just trying to smile and hide it.

In the last two weeks, everything really started to come to a head.  I felt like I was standing on a precipice and a decision needed to be made, and I was so scared.  Scared that I couldn’t let God into the dark rooms of my heart, but more scared that I would turn from Him and dive into a world that would destroy me.

Monday, March 17, 2008, I went to the Tent of Meeting, at my church (Named after the place where Moses would go to meet face-to-face with God.)  It was just another effort to get some crumbs from God’s banquet table.  Instead, God had other plans.  He was here to call me to surrender, again.  I was still afraid of so many things, and was sure that I couldn’t keep the commitment.  I felt assured that He would and could deal with EVERYTHING if I would just be willing to surrender them into His hands and let His will be done.  I was tired of fighting, and through brokenness, I surrendered it all to Him.  And, He is taking it all and dealing with it all.

I see that there is long road to taking me where God has for me, but for the first time in my life, I truly have hope for the future and feel free to live, fully surrendered to God.  As the days go on, I truly feel more alive and more free.  No longer is my heart divided between fear/mistrust and wanting to be deeply intimate with God.

Right now, Anchorage is having what they call the “Fur Rondy.” I’m not exactly sure what it is all about, but I know they have it when it is cold. It goes for over a week, and this last weekend we went to check it out. After all, we need to make sure we are “learning a culture.” Some things that happen during the festival time are a carnival…yeah, that’s right ferris wheels and carnies…try riding a ferris wheel in 10 degrees …they also have sled dog races, fur auctions, theatre productions, snow sculpting, snowshoe softball, outhouse races, and ice bowling…to mention a few things.

So, my roomies and I headed to the ice bowling to try our hand at this wonderful sport…as a side note, we have done more bowling this winter than I have done in 4 years. There is nothing that I can compare to chucking a 16lb. ball across a frozen pond and trying not to fall on my arse. It was a good time, and I got my highest bowling score ever. Yay me!

Here’s some photos:

Perfect Ice bowling form

First, I must say that I am amazed at how many people are coming to this blog, even though I haven’t written on it for a while.  It is quite interesting to me, because I just quite going places if they don’t update…like a certain friend of mine on staff in Montana

So, this last week, I spent a little time in bookstores and saw a couple of book titles in the religious relationship section that I’m not entirely sure how to take.

The first was If Men are Like Buses, How do I Catch One.  Are you serious?!  Okay, so men may be big and smelly.  We may even be easy to get stuck in a rut (route) and we can sometimes go wherever we want (not that this is a good idea, necessarily.)  But, Seriously!  A bus!  And why is some woman writing how to catch men/buses anyway.  That’s just the kind of girl I am looking for…one who stands on a corner and waves me down   ?????

 The second is, Men Are From Isreal, Women Are From Moab.  Well, a couple of weeks ago, I wouldn’t have thought anything about this, but I have been listening to a great sermon series on the Book of Ruth, so this jumped out at me.  Of course, this book was written by a man.  Thanks, dude!  If you are familiar with Moab, you will understand the problem.  If not, the problem is that no self-respecting woman would really call herself a Moabite. (Okay, so Ruth is from Moab and is redeemed, but let’s think about Orpah and the other Moabite women.)  And a man calling a woman a Moabite isn’t something that I would think she would cherish and go to sleep smiling about…maybe crying.

Now, I will admit, I haven’t read either of these books and I don’t intend to either.  It is just that some of the titles that people come up with leave me wondering…are you serious?

 If I ever write a book, somebody remind me to think about the title

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

…Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

(from The Way of the Wild Heart, Eldredge)

Well, I really can’t tell you how much this poem strikes at my heart.  These past few months have included some major battles and I feel like I haven’t been able to hold too strong.  It is my hope that one day I will be able to “get there.”  And, I do believe that with God it IS possible.

So, today, I got back in the saddle again.  Tomorrow, I’ll get back in the saddle, yet again, and see where the King leads me…

My buddy, Wes, got a new game for his PS2.  It is called TimeSplitters and is about some dude who runs around the time continuum and kills bad dudes and such, trying to stop the evil genius who uses crystals to rule the world…or something like that.

N-E-Way, we had a couple of days of cold weather, here in AK, and thought that we could have a good time.  Well, we really just wasted some time. (I actually named my character “Wasted” because that would reminded me what happened to the time.) 

The best part about this game is the bonding that Wes and I were able to do as we teamed up, as a couple of monkeys (no really, those were our characters…Wes was a cyborg monkey and I, well see the title of this blog…)  In our teaming up, we were able to run around and through explosives and shoot heat-seeking missles at “robots.”  Truly an enjoyable time.

The problem is that we played too much on Thursday and Friday.  So much so, that I had a dream last night and we were actually TimeSplitters…only we weren’t monkeys   It is pretty sick to have a dream like that…so vivid and all, but the worst part is that Wes dogged me…I saved his hinder and he ran out the door and left me to defend myself and run around some crazy haunted-like mansion.

Well, I guess I better lay off the video games for a while…

The good news is that the rest of Team Yeti has arrived, after the break, and we will start working this Monday.

Hiiiiigh-Yahh!

In other mullet news…

iTunes music store has 118 references to mullets.  Including, but not limited to: Santa’s got a mullet and Mullet Man (both songs); #3…With a Mullet (album); and Mullet Hunters (one of many bands with “mullet” in their name.)

Rock On Mullet Nation!

So, I had this idea that I just had to try out a mullet.  About 4 weeks ago, my sister cut one for me and I rocked it out for a while.  I guess I still had this part of my soul that was lost in the 80’s…the ducktales I grew then just didn’t seem to be enough.

Truth is, I can’t really rock the mullet.  In fact, I thought it looked pretty dumb, but I just had to try.  Well, there is another chapter of history, in my life, laid to rest.

 Goodbye, sweet mullet, goodbye.

Well, it has been quite some time since I wrote, and now it seems too much to try to catch up.  I guess I’ll give it a try.

The last 6 weeks have gone by very quickly.  Yet, they seemed to have also trudged by.  I think that I was used to going at a pretty intense pace and then had some time off, so it seemed slow.  However, I was in a lot of places the last few weeks and never really felt like I was anywhere long enough (except North Dakota…that was plenty)

I was in Bismarck, N.D.; Columbus, MT; Glasgow, MT; back to Columbus; Portland, OR and then up to Seattle, WA.  All of that in the course of 4 weeks.

Now, I am back in Wintery Alaska, where I am living in the most snow I have every lived in.  It is a winter wonderland…everything is white.  Even the trees are covered in a beautiful coat of glistening whiteness.  (I am hoping to get out and do some snowshoeing, but it needs to warm up to above zero before I’ll be ready to spend some time out there.)

This week our team took another turn.  We had another member decide that this wasn’t the best place for her to be.  Understandably, when she is the only girl with 3 dudes in a new place.  Honestly, it is hard to be the team leader and see your team dwindle, but I am hoping that we will be able to finish this year out strong.

Today is one of the teammates B-day, and I am at a loss for what to get him.  I love buying gifts but I prefer to get gifts that have meaning or something a person wants…he just bought himself a jacket that I would have gotten, but he beat me to it.  Oh well, we are going out to dinner tonight (I hear this place is one of the best in town) and then we’ll probably go see Eragon.

 Well, that is about all I have for now.  I would expect to have some more to write, soon.

 Until then…

These are lyrics from one of my favorite Musical Artists.  I was driving around today and this song was at the end of a CD mix I made.  I didn’t expect it, but it really just caught me.

Have You Ever
Written by Shawn McDonald

Have you ever wanted to be someone else
Have you ever wanted just to be someone
Have you ever wanted to reach your dreams
Have you ever wanted life to be more than it seems
I have tasted of a love so wide
That it stops all my time
I have tasted of a love so deep
That it blows my mind
Have you ever wanted to reach up and touch the sky
Have you ever wanted to pack it up and say good-bye
Have you ever wanted someone to care
Have you ever wanted someone to be there
He is sweet, He is sweet
What your looking for
Is my sweet, sweet Jesus
What You’re looking for
Is my sweet Lord

I can say that I spent a lot of my life asking those very questions. Wanting to be somebody.  Wanting to be somewhere, anywhere but where I was.  Wanting somebody to notice me.

Well, I wish that I didn’t have those wants any more.  I wish I could say that I am totally satisfied, because I should be.  The truth is, when I look to Jesus and live my life in, by and for Him, those longings are completely fulfilled.  It is just that I don’t always keep my focus on Jesus.

Make no mistake about it, though, I tried finding the fulfillment of those longings in many areas.  And, the truth is, I NEVER found lasting fulfillment in any of my deepest longings, apart from knowing and following Jesus Christ…my Friend, my Satisfaction, my Savior, my Creator, my King.

Have you found fulfillment?