Today I am wonderfully glad that I went to the Carleton Christian community retreat this weekend for the first time ever, and I am thankful for those who asked if I was going (even though I'm an alum) and successfully convinced me. Especially as I am kind of at this funky place in life where I do not know how best to balance seeking relationships in the Christian community now that I have graduated, focusing on work and future possible doors, and getting to know my housemates while attempting to be a semi-real person, it was so great that we talked a lot about God's love and defining success
as knowing that God loves us and we love God back! And if we can set our
sights on that, we're doing pretty okay. Not as if that's super
easy, and we all go through ups and downs, but when we are like the
prodigal son (another theme of the weekend, and we are at times of our life more like the elder son when we get self-righteous and believe we have done A, B, and C and therefore we deserve X, Y, and Z) and come back to God with
humility and wanting to put God first, we are welcomed with God running
to meet us wherever we are. How cool as that!
My main takeaways from the weekend:
- I'm thankful for a weekend of writing, of silly dancing, of new
friendships, of spending time with God, and of being able to allow
flashes of vulnerability.
- I'm at this place where I want to pursue knowledge of God through the
Word, but it's a struggle getting my heart into that place sometimes... I hope my heart will continue to change because once I do sit down and get myself into both tackling theological questions and finding amazement, I know that it nourishes me. I have to learn to make the time to prepare my heart because when I do actually create that space, I am filled.
- One of the sermons we watched talked about struggling with temptations and reactions to things that may make us feel frustrated, jealous, self-righteous, insecure, etc., and while I have been trying to address those kinds of feelings with a reminder that "Love is patient, love is kind," the pastor reframed that intention in a really helpful way. Rather than either addressing anger as anger and trying to make it go away, or rather than focusing on some external ideal, we can focus on how God can work within us by saying instead, "Spirit, thank you for reigning in me in patience/peace/love (you can totally pick any one of the nine fruits of the Spirit, or whatever speaks to you!)." God is with us, and God is in us. Let God's light and love shine through you!
I also picked up my guitar tonight for the first time in a while, and after a couple of songs, I drifted into "Hallelujah" (Jeff Buckley) and realized how amazing this last verse in particular is. I may slip into bouts of non-feeling and floods of feelings, and I recognize life is a mess that we are all trying to get through as gracefully as possible, but I am trying to acknowledge the mess the best that I can so that I can truly just thank God and let my soul rest easily when it's all said and done.
"I did my best but it wasn't much, I couldn't feel so I tried to touch.
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you.
And even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the Lord of Song
with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah..."
And I'm thankful that when I slipped something I have been struggling with recently into the super-long life update/bible study email with one of my besties, her almost immediate reply was simply "Oh Kathryn, I'm so sorry!" and to ask if I wanted to talk sometime soon. What amazing things can happen when you try to open yourself up to love. Even when you are in a season (and I say when, not if) where you are feeling farther from God's love, when you move two inches towards it, it can come flooding back towards you in return.
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