Travel Week

Travel week is the week preceding a BFA school break… this week… the week to email every parent of boarding students to make sure I have the right flight information for all of them and then get bombarded with questions from those parents… the week to pray for and hope expectantly for miracles regarding visas… the week for flights to get canceled and then a mad fury happens to reschedule… the week of putting all the kids travel plans into one massive spreadsheet and then splitting them up into groups for van runs and assigning those van runs to dorm staff… the week for pulling together the travel plans for the 7 mission trips leaving on Saturday. Ahh, travel week… a task-driven and organizationally-minded, type A personality’s dream project: messy information that needs cleaning up and put into neat little boxes with or without bows on top.

I kind of like travel week except for the bombardment, visa scares, and hard-to-reach parents. So, I suppose it’s just the massive spreadsheet that I like; it’s a puzzle better than sudoku or crosswords because knowing the people (and knowing who’s always late, or who wouldn’t feel comfortable driving to a certain place) adds an extra dimension.

But to add to this travel week, the Personnel Office of normally 4 staff members is down to yours truly. Two are out for medical reasons. One is at a conference. The last travel week, I basically checked out from my Personnel responsibilities and just played with the puzzle. But, not this time! I’m ready to get on that plane to the States on Sunday. Just 5 tickets and 1 visa between me and two weeks of no self-imposed coffee drinking (yuck) to keep my eyes open just a bit longer.

My Chains are Gone

Amazing grace
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind, but now I see
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed
My chains are gone
I've been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood His mercy reigns
Unending love, Amazing grace

The Lord has promised good to me
His word my hope secures
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow
The sun forbear to shine
But God, Who called me here below
Will be forever mine
Will be forever mine
You are forever mine


I love this song and feel its truth resonating with my life more today than ever before. Everyone has made selfish decisions, got caught up in the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and pride of life. And for every single person and every single screw up, God's grace is sufficient.

Today I got to tell some friends about how God has and is transforming me, and it is just so stinkin exciting to see God working in and through me. I love it!!! It blows me away that despite how many times I mess up and how many people I hurt, nothing is beyond his redemptive capacity, and there is nothing he cannot use to cause growth and encouragement.

I feel like such a different person than I did 4 years ago. I am excited to look back and realize that but even more excited to be able to share the cause of that change. My chains are gone. I've been set free!

Doing Life

I love how God uses the crappy situations I always seem to put myself in to draw me closer to Him and remind me of forgotten truths and challenges.

In London a couple weeks ago, my friends and I stayed with an incredible lady with whom I got to have some great conversations. Even though we'd just met, the Holy Spirit and genuine desire to see a fully functioning body of Christ in both of us made it as if we could see one another through God's eyes instead of our own. I hope I was as much an encouragement and challenger to her as she was to me.

During one of our morning chats before anyone else was up, we talked about being single. She craves companionship and a godly male role model for her kids so much that it caused physical pain in my chest when I prayed for that for her. She is such a passionate and incredible lady, and I want so badly for her to have someone to share her tough prison ministry with.

As much as I long to have someone to do life with, I want it even more for her. And in that brief moment of unselfishness, she taught me a good lesson. I've heard sermon after sermon about singleness being a gift, a season, an opportunity, a time of preparation... and essentially, she was saying the same thing, but something in her words clicked differently in my heart. She made me want to be productive in my singleness by clinging to our God and spending umpteens of time with Him like I would a man. This is nothing new, nothing I haven't heard of or thought about before. But I haven't often seen it in practice. That singleness is a gift is something that women slightly older and more lonely than me say with a tear in their eye. But there was no facade with my new friend.

I don't like the awkwardness and giddiness of new relationships because I don't trust my own emotions very much. I don't trust the hype of newness and am quite adept at trying to rush through it to get to the part where we can just be together, in full confidence that both love God, love people, and love one another... not having to question the commitment. And THAT is how I saw my friend's day-to-day relationship with God. It's not new and wavering. They talk first thing in the morning about what her day will look like. She bounces ideas off of him, and they laugh at inside jokes. She calls him throughout the day without worry of annoying him. They work through problems together. They fight. They grow. She doesn't understand everything he says and does but knows without a shadow of a doubt that he has her best interests in mind. And so she trusts him and wants to get to know more of him every single day. They do life together.

She challenged me to embrace the same lifestyle, and I was so excited at the time... coming up with plans and ideas to help sustain the relationship and make it healthier and less one sided than it currently is. But, I'm an idiot and forgot all of that until today.

Because I am single right now, I have been sharing all those bouncing of ideas, inside jokes, multiple phone calls and email throughout the day, sorting through problems and such among a few close friends (in attempt to not wear any one of them out with the full force of my attention). Yesterday I hurt one of those friends. And today, when ideas, jokes, problems, and opportunities to argue and grow came up that I normally would've shared with that friend, I felt an overwhelming hole when I realized I couldn't.

But, although I am soooo talented at mangling good things, God is infinitely better at not only restoring broken relationships so that they are stronger than before but also saying “I thought we were going to do life together...? I'm still willing.” If I had not felt the holes, I probably would have wasted another day (and who knows how much longer) disregarding the opportunity to do life 24/7 with the creator. So although it really hurts to know that I hurt a friend, I am so thankful for God's faithful reminder.

Just the Cashews

Today has potential to be a perfect day. Katie and I stayed up talking until 4:30 this morning and then I had to watch one more episode of Lost. So I was anticipating to sleep the day away until I have to be at school this evening for our big outreach called Candlelight Dinner. But instead I got up for brunch with friends at my favorite restaurant around here and enjoyed the sunny 57 degree weather! It's gorgeous! I even came home and took a catnap in the sun on my roof (it's a flat roof) and did a little reading. So the biggest problem today is, "why do I have to eat so many peanuts in my 3 lb tin of mixed nuts to get to the cashews?"

London pictures and stories to come...

A Good Couple Weeks

Several people have told me that February is the hardest month at BFA. The relaxation of Christmas break is long gone, but the sicknesses that the students brought back with them still linger. Spring break seems a lifetime away. And it's cold- really cold. This morning, when I headed out to the bus stop at Sonne, where snow drifts were knee-high, the thermometer read -8 degrees Celsius.

February has been the hardest for me as well. Staff and students are dropping like flies from the BFA super-virus that is bred when all the students return from various countries with different sicknesses and then live in close quarters. We've had computer problems that corrupted the database that I do most of my work on. And the frustrations of not driving are teaching me to be more patient and rely on others, but frustrations nonetheless.

What is amazing, however, is that despite this being the hardest time, the last two weeks have also been some of the happiest I've had here. It starts with God fixing my bad attitude. Then it comes from having two incredible friends here. Cara and Timmy probably don't realize how much I've needed their support lately, but something as simple as them making me a CD of songs I like was a good slap in the face- a wake-up-people-care-about-you-and-want-to-help slap.

Cara walks into a room and makes it brighter, happier, and more fun. She is funny even when she doesn't mean to be and one of the most genuine people I've ever met. She has more energy and enthusiasm than I could even dream of mustering and brings spunk and laughter into my life.

Timmy is also fun, incredibly genuine, and makes me laugh a lot, but he's the balance in my world for Crazy Cara. He is passionate about loving and serving people, a hard-worker, and is not afraid to tell the blunt truth when it needs to be said. He brings wisdom, insight, and truth into my life.

I'm not really sure what I give them. I'm trying to be the kind of friend that friends like them deserve by loving, praying for, telling the truth even when it's not fun, and just being available to them. They are wonderful. Unfortunately the only picture I have of the three of us is from orientation last summer, and it's just our backsides. But here's one of them from Christmas Banquet.

So, I'm thankful for God fixing my attitude and for my friends. But I'm also thankful for time away from work! Last Thursday I went to Paris on last minute notice with a new friend named Peter. We left at 5am, rode the 3 hour train, did tourist stuff all day (Notre Dame, Louvre, Arch de Triumph, Eiffel Tower, French crepes mmm) then got back at 1am. It was a long, spontaneous and great day!


When I got back to my office Friday morning, the Witt girls had decorated it with streamers, tons of encouraging little post it notes, roses, and chocolate. How awesome are they?!

Then later that day, Cara, another RA named Anna, and a student named Leah, piled in my car (which I still own, but Cara drove) and went to Garmisch, Germany for the weekend to stay with Leah's mom. The house was full of other friends who had come visit that weekend as well and was a blast! Friday night was meat fest a.k.a. my version of heaven. Saturday morning the two married guys in the bunch that were visiting went out and got roses for all of us ladies and then took us to breakfast.
Then Cara, Anna, and I broke off from the group while they went skiing. We saw Zugspitz (the highest mountain around here that has family significance for me), Neuschwanstein and the King's Castle, and a hockey game! Sunday we went on an army base and bought all kinds of goodies that can't be bought elsewhere- like Orange Gatorade, Starburst Jellybeans, and Trail Mix- three things for which I am also thankful :)

Neuschwanstein

I'm going to London this weekend. It feels crazy to be doing so much traveling, but these are my first big places I've visited since being here. The cheap flights and free places to stay all happen to have come up during the month of February, the hardest month at BFA. What a blessing for opportunities to come at the time when I need it most.

License Update

Several people have asked for an update on the driving situation, and now I've realized that I never even wrote on the blog what I sent out to my support team. The short version is that there's a far-fetched chance that I could get an Alabama driver's license without an epilepsy restriction when I go back to the States next month and then exchange that for a German license. It would work on the American side. Three years of seizure-free behavior earns a clean license in Alabama (where I lived for 3 years), and I've been seizure-free for 3.5 years. The tricky part is the German side. You have 6 months to change over your license that was issued before coming here. I'm past six months, and it will be a new license. So I wrote to the German side explaining everything and asking for the needed waivers. I haven't heard anything yet.

Even if I find out it won't work, I might still drive to Alabama because I've got myself so psyched up to go to my favorite restaurants: Thai Emerald, Formaggio's, The Grape, and Waffle House for some key lime pie. Mmmmmfood. And then I would go sit at five points and soak in the life of the city for a while. Maybe find a lonely old man to play chess with outside the Starbucks like I did in college.

Detox

I got to spend the last five days at Maugenhard (Lane and Michelle's dorm for all you CFC people). The normal staff of 6 for the 29 high school boys was down to 3 with the Youngs off and one RA in the States, so I showed up and asked to be put to work.

The day after spending time in a dorm is crashing after a drug binge. It's a tough transition back into my office after getting to play mom for a bunch of crazy boys. I realize I don't have a clear understanding of what the dorm parents and RAs have to do since I've never stayed in one dorm for longer than a week. But it's like a drug to me... getting to take care of people in practical ways. Cooking, cleaning, staying up all night tending to the sick, putting them in their place when being punks, helping with homework, throwing snowballs, wrestling, watching them play rugby (and wishing I'd thought of bringing orange slices)... I love it all.