Sunday, August 10, 2003
Good Conversation
I went to Bettina's engagement party yesterday, and it was great not just because of the food, the decorations, or the people, but because of the conversations. It was really amazing because the conversation between Jen, Alice and I wasn't just everday catching up kind of stuff, we talked--pretty honestly, in my opinion--about how things were going in our spiritual lives and really shared our true feelings about things.
It's kind of funny, because even though Jen and I have been friends for so many years, it feels like we didn't start talking to each other about our spiritual lives until a couple of years ago, and we only just recently started going deeper (beyond just "I'm having troubles doing devos consistently"). I don't think it's a coincidence that this most recent growth in our friendship happened after Grenada. It seems like God didn't just open me more up to Jen, he also opened her up more to me. Or maybe it's a simple case of reciprocity: I was distant and more closed before, so it made it harder for her to share with me, but because I made an effort and commitment to share more with her, it was easier for her to do the same for me. And with Alice, well, I never really talked to her beyond small talk until Grenada as well, but now it feels very comfortable and natural to discuss personal things.
God has truly been strengthening and blessing my friendships recently, and I'm so thankful. Finally all those years of doubting my own worth to anyone else are being redeemed. I know that in the back of my head I've always wondered how much anyone could really care for me; I hated myself, so how could I believe that anyone else could truly love me? Sure I've been dealing with those feelings forr years, and I was mostly able to reason myself out of those days of low self-esteem quite a while ago, but I don't think I ever managed to actually get rid of those thoughts entirely before.
And I think that's another thing that happened in Grenada. I don't know when or how it happened, but I finally put to rest all those old self-doubts and accepted God's love for me. I still recognize how many faults and flaws I have, but now I have hope that God can and will continue to work to change the ugliness inside of me. I don't really feel the need to beat myself up over my flaws anymore, and that's a blessing.
On the last night in Grenada, Shamus (our host missionary) did this thing which our team now calls "the chair". We all sat in a circle, with the chair in the centre. He told us that if we felt God compelling us to share a burden or sin that was troubling us, we should sit in the chair and confess it openly, so that we could leave thar "junk" in Grenada. I'm not doing a good job of describing it, but I think it really can be a powerful tool for healing, as well as a test of the trust within a group. Anyway, the amazing thing for me was that while we were all praying that whomever God called would have the courage to come up, I didn't feel a thing. I didn't feel any sort of compulsion or calling to go up there; I couldn't think of any great burden or sin weighing on my heart. I'm sure that before the experiences in Grenada, I would have felt the need to confess something, anything, just because my self-hatred wouldn't let me believe that I was "okay", y'know? Even if God wasn't really telling me anything to talk about, *I* would have pushed myself to go up because I just always thought there was something horribly wrong about me. It was so freeing to realize that I actually felt at peace with God and myself; I'd talked and heard a lot about God's peace before, but I never truly felt it for more than a brief moment of time--my self-disgust was too strong to allow me such rest.
But back to my conversation with Jen and Alice last night. I think one of the best things about it was that when it started winding down, I felt compelled to ask them if they wanted to pray, and it didn't even feel all that weird to ask. The logistics of praying at a party were a bit weird--we separated ourselves from the group by going to sit on a swing-bench in a darker section of the porch, but we kept our eyes open so I guess people thought we were just talking and they started to come over until we gestured or told them that we were praying--and I felt a bit embarrased while I was praying because I know I was just rambling on and on in circles, but it felt right to be praying.
Actually, that's my Grenada impact #2: learning the power of prayer and developing a habit of praying more spontaneously.
Right from the get-go it seemed like all we did (and I mean this positively) was pray. In the airport, before we left, Alice was feeling a bit sick and had to go to the restroom, so the rest of us all prayed that she would feel better, and after a couple of Tums, she did. In Grenada we prayed before we went out to do anything; we prayed as we were driving for safety, and etc.; we prayed when people weren't feeling well; we prayed when it was raining and we needed it to stop to do our ministries; it felt like we were just always praying.
The most signficant times of prayer for me, however, came when Arthur and I were working on our workshop on sexual purity. We only learned five days before we left that we were supposed to prepare a workshop, and unlike the other workshop groups, Arthur and I didn't have, or didn't make time to get anything started. Luckily we ended up being the last workshop--on the Thursday of the second week, when originally we were to go on the Tuesday of the first week--so we had more time than anyone else to prepare. While most of the other teams only really spent a couple of hours preparing on the day of their seminars, we got together maybe two to three times to try to put things together and every time we started off by praying. Despite all the prep time, however, by the day of the seminar all we had was an outline of what we were going to talk about, and even that wasn't complete.
I never felt like I needed prayer more than that time from when we started working on the workshop until right when we started. The night before, even though I tried to sleep relatively earlier, I ended up getting the least sleep in my entire time there. I went to bed around 11pm, but woke up again at 12:30am because my mosquito net had fallen down. So I got up and fixed it, and tried to get back to sleep. The blasted thing fell down three or four more times during the night, and because I absolutely could not sleep with it around my face, I had to get up and fix it every single time. By the final time I was completely frustrated, and even angry with God. I just sat down in the washroom and in my head raged at God. Why are you doing this to me? Is one night without my net falling down too much to ask? All I prayed for was that my stupid net would stay up; you know I need my sleep so that I won't be dead tired for the workshop tomorrow. I was so upset I was almost ready to cry.
So when morning came, it was the day of the workshop and I was dead tired. I don't even know how I managed to survive that day. After lunch Shamus gave us a "mission challenge" and I know that when I wasn't actually sleeping, my mind was totally gone. When the talk ended everyone else did chores around the base while Arthur and I prepared for the workshop. Arthur wanted to take a shower first, and I wanted to do the same, but I knew I needed rest so I opted to take a nap instead. I slept for maybe fifteen to twenty minutes, which was good, but I still felt pretty groggy and out of it. At the end of our time, just before dinner, we had a complete outline of what we were going to do, and each of us had some stuff written for each of our parts, but I'm pretty sure neither or us felt particularly ready. For me, all I had was some verses, some points that I wanted to make, and some phrases and sentences written out, where usually I would have everything I was planning on saying written out in full. I recall saying to Arthur, sometime before we left for the church, maybe during dinner, that we should definitely pray before the workshop, when we got to the church.
Somehow we managed to get to the church on time, even a bit early (the other workshops had all started late), so the two of us sat down and prayed. I don't know about Arthur, but on my part it was a prayer of sheer desperation, I felt so completely unprepared. Even when I went up and starting doing my part, I felt like I was giving the most incoherent, rambling, and circular "speech" ever. But somehow, despite my "poor performance", the whole thing went pretty well. The part where Arthur and I talked was really short, maybe half an hour, including a testimony from someone else, but we managed to get a good half an hour, forty-five minutes of discussion in after that. That was really miraculous considering that sex/sexual purity isn't a topic that most people would feel comfortable talking about, and no one had really answered questions or said much in the other workshops--plus we didn't really have any discussion topics prepared. So with all my feelings of unpreparedness and whatnot, when it turned out as well as it did, I knew without a doubt that it was all God and not me or Arthur. Which was pretty much what I was learning the entire trip.
All of our VBS stuff was prepared pretty last minute, and a lot of times I had that same knowing that God was definitely working because I hadn't prepared properly at all. Another good example of that was my testimony for the Sunday service we attended. Before we left for Grenada, Sharon asked each of us to submit a written copy of our testimony. I threw one together pretty close to our departure date, and it was REALLY rough, and I definitely planned on fixing it up before actually using it. Then I totally forgot about it until the day before we left and I had to ask Syv to print me a copy (of my own testimony!) and to bring it for me since our printers were all out of ink! So yeah, I got the printout from Syv on Saturday night, read through it, realized that I didn't really need to change any of it, and figured I'd try to learn (re: memorize) it in the morning.
Sunday morning came, and after breakfast, before church I was frantically trying to learn/memorize my testimony. My own testimony! How ridiculous is that? Shamus saw that I was freaking out because I didn't know my testimony, and I told him that I was afraid that I would end up just reading the thing, so they all prayed for me when we prayed before we left. In the car, I quickly jotted down the main point of each paragraph so that I would hopefully be able to at least get what I really wanted to say said if I got completely messed up.
In the service, Sharon told me that I was going to be going up after this song, so I was waiting for it, but then all of a sudden Syv was there calling me up! Needless to say I was slightly flustered. I went up, put my sheet on the podium-thing, picked up the mic, walked out on the stage (away from my paper) and, miracles of miracles, just started talking. I had been SO worried about reading my testimony, but in the end I didn't even glance at my sheet once! I've always hated public speaking since grade school, and I always get really nervous before and during any sort of public speaking thing, but I felt totally calm while I was giving my testimony. I spoke slowly and clearly, and the words came out. I'm sure I stumbled and threw in a couple of "uh's", but overall I felt pretty darn confidant while I was up there; the words were just flowing out from me, from my heart, naturally. I didn't have to think too much about what point I was supposed to be making next, I just spoke, and it came out mostly the way I had scripted it.
Really, it was incredible, and definitely all God.
Anyway, I've talked a lot today, so I think I'll stop here.
Oh, but one last comment: feedback is great, and it really encourages me, but it isn't supposed to be necessary for me to post. When I started this blog my purpose/goal was to use this as a tool to push myself to do daily devotions which I could then discuss here (daily). Obviously that hasn't been happening--I've been talking about things of the past, and not the day recently--but I'm not willing to give up my original plan yet. I want to blog daily here once again because it's something I've committed to doing, regardless of whether or not I think anyone's reading this. So although feedback does help motivate me to post regularly, hopefully no one will feel like they must give me some sort of response so that I will continue posting. Hope that makes sense! I've been writing so much, my mind is getting pretty fuzzy. =P
I went to Bettina's engagement party yesterday, and it was great not just because of the food, the decorations, or the people, but because of the conversations. It was really amazing because the conversation between Jen, Alice and I wasn't just everday catching up kind of stuff, we talked--pretty honestly, in my opinion--about how things were going in our spiritual lives and really shared our true feelings about things.
It's kind of funny, because even though Jen and I have been friends for so many years, it feels like we didn't start talking to each other about our spiritual lives until a couple of years ago, and we only just recently started going deeper (beyond just "I'm having troubles doing devos consistently"). I don't think it's a coincidence that this most recent growth in our friendship happened after Grenada. It seems like God didn't just open me more up to Jen, he also opened her up more to me. Or maybe it's a simple case of reciprocity: I was distant and more closed before, so it made it harder for her to share with me, but because I made an effort and commitment to share more with her, it was easier for her to do the same for me. And with Alice, well, I never really talked to her beyond small talk until Grenada as well, but now it feels very comfortable and natural to discuss personal things.
God has truly been strengthening and blessing my friendships recently, and I'm so thankful. Finally all those years of doubting my own worth to anyone else are being redeemed. I know that in the back of my head I've always wondered how much anyone could really care for me; I hated myself, so how could I believe that anyone else could truly love me? Sure I've been dealing with those feelings forr years, and I was mostly able to reason myself out of those days of low self-esteem quite a while ago, but I don't think I ever managed to actually get rid of those thoughts entirely before.
And I think that's another thing that happened in Grenada. I don't know when or how it happened, but I finally put to rest all those old self-doubts and accepted God's love for me. I still recognize how many faults and flaws I have, but now I have hope that God can and will continue to work to change the ugliness inside of me. I don't really feel the need to beat myself up over my flaws anymore, and that's a blessing.
On the last night in Grenada, Shamus (our host missionary) did this thing which our team now calls "the chair". We all sat in a circle, with the chair in the centre. He told us that if we felt God compelling us to share a burden or sin that was troubling us, we should sit in the chair and confess it openly, so that we could leave thar "junk" in Grenada. I'm not doing a good job of describing it, but I think it really can be a powerful tool for healing, as well as a test of the trust within a group. Anyway, the amazing thing for me was that while we were all praying that whomever God called would have the courage to come up, I didn't feel a thing. I didn't feel any sort of compulsion or calling to go up there; I couldn't think of any great burden or sin weighing on my heart. I'm sure that before the experiences in Grenada, I would have felt the need to confess something, anything, just because my self-hatred wouldn't let me believe that I was "okay", y'know? Even if God wasn't really telling me anything to talk about, *I* would have pushed myself to go up because I just always thought there was something horribly wrong about me. It was so freeing to realize that I actually felt at peace with God and myself; I'd talked and heard a lot about God's peace before, but I never truly felt it for more than a brief moment of time--my self-disgust was too strong to allow me such rest.
But back to my conversation with Jen and Alice last night. I think one of the best things about it was that when it started winding down, I felt compelled to ask them if they wanted to pray, and it didn't even feel all that weird to ask. The logistics of praying at a party were a bit weird--we separated ourselves from the group by going to sit on a swing-bench in a darker section of the porch, but we kept our eyes open so I guess people thought we were just talking and they started to come over until we gestured or told them that we were praying--and I felt a bit embarrased while I was praying because I know I was just rambling on and on in circles, but it felt right to be praying.
Actually, that's my Grenada impact #2: learning the power of prayer and developing a habit of praying more spontaneously.
Right from the get-go it seemed like all we did (and I mean this positively) was pray. In the airport, before we left, Alice was feeling a bit sick and had to go to the restroom, so the rest of us all prayed that she would feel better, and after a couple of Tums, she did. In Grenada we prayed before we went out to do anything; we prayed as we were driving for safety, and etc.; we prayed when people weren't feeling well; we prayed when it was raining and we needed it to stop to do our ministries; it felt like we were just always praying.
The most signficant times of prayer for me, however, came when Arthur and I were working on our workshop on sexual purity. We only learned five days before we left that we were supposed to prepare a workshop, and unlike the other workshop groups, Arthur and I didn't have, or didn't make time to get anything started. Luckily we ended up being the last workshop--on the Thursday of the second week, when originally we were to go on the Tuesday of the first week--so we had more time than anyone else to prepare. While most of the other teams only really spent a couple of hours preparing on the day of their seminars, we got together maybe two to three times to try to put things together and every time we started off by praying. Despite all the prep time, however, by the day of the seminar all we had was an outline of what we were going to talk about, and even that wasn't complete.
I never felt like I needed prayer more than that time from when we started working on the workshop until right when we started. The night before, even though I tried to sleep relatively earlier, I ended up getting the least sleep in my entire time there. I went to bed around 11pm, but woke up again at 12:30am because my mosquito net had fallen down. So I got up and fixed it, and tried to get back to sleep. The blasted thing fell down three or four more times during the night, and because I absolutely could not sleep with it around my face, I had to get up and fix it every single time. By the final time I was completely frustrated, and even angry with God. I just sat down in the washroom and in my head raged at God. Why are you doing this to me? Is one night without my net falling down too much to ask? All I prayed for was that my stupid net would stay up; you know I need my sleep so that I won't be dead tired for the workshop tomorrow. I was so upset I was almost ready to cry.
So when morning came, it was the day of the workshop and I was dead tired. I don't even know how I managed to survive that day. After lunch Shamus gave us a "mission challenge" and I know that when I wasn't actually sleeping, my mind was totally gone. When the talk ended everyone else did chores around the base while Arthur and I prepared for the workshop. Arthur wanted to take a shower first, and I wanted to do the same, but I knew I needed rest so I opted to take a nap instead. I slept for maybe fifteen to twenty minutes, which was good, but I still felt pretty groggy and out of it. At the end of our time, just before dinner, we had a complete outline of what we were going to do, and each of us had some stuff written for each of our parts, but I'm pretty sure neither or us felt particularly ready. For me, all I had was some verses, some points that I wanted to make, and some phrases and sentences written out, where usually I would have everything I was planning on saying written out in full. I recall saying to Arthur, sometime before we left for the church, maybe during dinner, that we should definitely pray before the workshop, when we got to the church.
Somehow we managed to get to the church on time, even a bit early (the other workshops had all started late), so the two of us sat down and prayed. I don't know about Arthur, but on my part it was a prayer of sheer desperation, I felt so completely unprepared. Even when I went up and starting doing my part, I felt like I was giving the most incoherent, rambling, and circular "speech" ever. But somehow, despite my "poor performance", the whole thing went pretty well. The part where Arthur and I talked was really short, maybe half an hour, including a testimony from someone else, but we managed to get a good half an hour, forty-five minutes of discussion in after that. That was really miraculous considering that sex/sexual purity isn't a topic that most people would feel comfortable talking about, and no one had really answered questions or said much in the other workshops--plus we didn't really have any discussion topics prepared. So with all my feelings of unpreparedness and whatnot, when it turned out as well as it did, I knew without a doubt that it was all God and not me or Arthur. Which was pretty much what I was learning the entire trip.
All of our VBS stuff was prepared pretty last minute, and a lot of times I had that same knowing that God was definitely working because I hadn't prepared properly at all. Another good example of that was my testimony for the Sunday service we attended. Before we left for Grenada, Sharon asked each of us to submit a written copy of our testimony. I threw one together pretty close to our departure date, and it was REALLY rough, and I definitely planned on fixing it up before actually using it. Then I totally forgot about it until the day before we left and I had to ask Syv to print me a copy (of my own testimony!) and to bring it for me since our printers were all out of ink! So yeah, I got the printout from Syv on Saturday night, read through it, realized that I didn't really need to change any of it, and figured I'd try to learn (re: memorize) it in the morning.
Sunday morning came, and after breakfast, before church I was frantically trying to learn/memorize my testimony. My own testimony! How ridiculous is that? Shamus saw that I was freaking out because I didn't know my testimony, and I told him that I was afraid that I would end up just reading the thing, so they all prayed for me when we prayed before we left. In the car, I quickly jotted down the main point of each paragraph so that I would hopefully be able to at least get what I really wanted to say said if I got completely messed up.
In the service, Sharon told me that I was going to be going up after this song, so I was waiting for it, but then all of a sudden Syv was there calling me up! Needless to say I was slightly flustered. I went up, put my sheet on the podium-thing, picked up the mic, walked out on the stage (away from my paper) and, miracles of miracles, just started talking. I had been SO worried about reading my testimony, but in the end I didn't even glance at my sheet once! I've always hated public speaking since grade school, and I always get really nervous before and during any sort of public speaking thing, but I felt totally calm while I was giving my testimony. I spoke slowly and clearly, and the words came out. I'm sure I stumbled and threw in a couple of "uh's", but overall I felt pretty darn confidant while I was up there; the words were just flowing out from me, from my heart, naturally. I didn't have to think too much about what point I was supposed to be making next, I just spoke, and it came out mostly the way I had scripted it.
Really, it was incredible, and definitely all God.
Anyway, I've talked a lot today, so I think I'll stop here.
Oh, but one last comment: feedback is great, and it really encourages me, but it isn't supposed to be necessary for me to post. When I started this blog my purpose/goal was to use this as a tool to push myself to do daily devotions which I could then discuss here (daily). Obviously that hasn't been happening--I've been talking about things of the past, and not the day recently--but I'm not willing to give up my original plan yet. I want to blog daily here once again because it's something I've committed to doing, regardless of whether or not I think anyone's reading this. So although feedback does help motivate me to post regularly, hopefully no one will feel like they must give me some sort of response so that I will continue posting. Hope that makes sense! I've been writing so much, my mind is getting pretty fuzzy. =P
