HAILSTORM
[written for a friend in need]

Hail-storms of hurt-words
Come barreling down;
Warm rays of sunlight
No longer found.
Unexpected and whirling;
Hardened and cold;
Invaded by dark clouds
Angry and bold.
A bruise here, a scar there
Salty rain-tears descend
Lord, strengthen me;
Lead me to the storm’s end.

What I learned at camp:

Miracles happen.

I spent last week at another camp, which is a ministry of our Lutheran synod. The theme of the week was "Cross into the wilderness", about how God leads you through the wilderness -- whether it's a physical, emotional, mental or spiritual wilderness! -- and gives you everything you need to face challenges. Our group went on a four day "overnight". We all got massive hardcore hiking backpacks and were allowed to bring ONE extra shirt, ONE extra pair of shorts, a few pairs of dry socks and a sleeping bag. That's it. No toothbrush, no deoderant, no clean underwear, no pillow, nothing soap-related, etc. We filled our packs with 4 days worth of food, cooking/camping gear and gallons of water and set off. Theoretically, we were supposed to hike about 3 miles a day. We'd spend each night at a different campsite around the perimeter of the camp property (in the midde of the woods, of course).

Well, we got lost. A lot. We'd hike a mile or two only to find we'd been going the wrong way, so we'd have to backtrack to our original starting point (so we'd have hiked about 3 miles already with nothing to show for it) and THEN hike another three or so miles to the actual site. We had no tents, only two supremely large tarps. We'd tie a rope between two trees and throw a tarp across it and stake down the corners to make a tent-like structure, then we'd put the second tarp inside and sleep on top of that. But the ends were open, leaving plenty of room for rain to blow in.

There were no bathrooms, obviously, so we went to the bathroom in the woods. We had one roll of toilet paper which had to last 13 people for 4 days, so the counselors rationed it. And, you weren't supposed to use the TP for peeing -- "That's what leaves are for!" announced our counselors gleefully (we glared at them). This might not be a problem for the guys in the group, but it was slightly more uncomfortable for us girls. THAT was an experience.

Oh yeah, and it rained the entire four days. Not just mere drizzling, mind you; we're talking torrential downpours and thunderstorms and wind whipping it into your face. Now, I LOVE rain. I am a big fan of doing crazy things in the rain (I've gone to outdoor concerts in the middle of a tropical storm, gone boating in a thunderstorm, I go running and/or dancing in the rain fairily often, etc, etc) and for the first three days, I was honestly loving the whole camping in the rain thing. I mean, yeah, within an hour of leaving we had no dry clothes; it wasn't exactly fun to sleep in a drenched sleeping back and wet socks are rather uncomfortable to hike in, but I was still loving it, despite the circumstances....but by day 3 I'd had it. We all had. We were sick of each other, sick of being wet, sick of hiking, sick of being lost, sick of the whole experience. We begged our counselors to let us just go back to camp and skip the last day of the overnight. We were miserable and complaining and rather peeved at each other.

They were adament, though, that we stick it out and not go back to camp; at least, not yet. We could handle one more day, they said. Especially since the theme was about trusting God and doing things you thougth you couldn't do.

We disagreed. Eventually, they compromised. Since we couldn't seem to find our final campsite, they agreed that we'd circle around and stop back at the camp (briefly) so everyone could get some dry clothes. Then, miraculously, my counselor, Kathryn, pulled some strings and got permission for us to stay in a building on the edge of camp property called the Old Lodge. It was old, creaky, leaky, smelly and falling apart, the windows and doors didn't quite close, but it had a roof and four walls and we were thrilled. We hiked out there and for the first time in three days, the idea of being dry was within our grasp. Our moods improved drastically with just that thought alone!

But it gets better. Some other counselors, hearing how miserable we'd all been and how rotten our overnight experience had turned out to be, surprised us. They came out to the Old Lodge with hot chocolate, cake, ice cream and other goodies and had a surprise party for us, which was just so unbelievably sweet and wonderful and unexpected that it made some of us girls (yes, me included!) burst into tears!

Here's my favorite part. Our Bible story for that day was the one about Moses and the Israelites in the desert during the Exodus. (See Exodus 16) They're at the point where they've been wandering for awhile and they're hot and tired and cranky and running out of food and just plain miserable. They're all complaining to Moses that it would be much kinder just to admit defeat and go back, because it was just cruel of him to keep them out there to suffer. So Moses appeals to God on their behalf and God blesses them with manna and quail to keep them going.

I absolutely love the parallel between that story and our own notorious overnight experience. I love how similar they are -- just like the Israelites, we campers were miserable and tired and cranky and fighting with each other and begging our leaders just to admit defeat and take us back. And Kathryn appealed on our behalf and God turned things around so we had a slightly warmer, much drier place to stay for our final night and some excellent "manna" (cake!) and "quail" (ice cream!). In the end, our group, who, just 5 hours earlier had been hating each other, had a great final night of our overnight -- we all stayed up really late, singing and talking and actually bonding instead of fighting, and it was a pretty awesome experience! (I actually think that story would make a pretty good sermon. I'd like to write a sermon about it, if I can find the time.)

I love the fact that this is a real-life example of how the stories of miracles in the Bible are TRUE! I know a lot of people (me included, sometimes!) look at these unbelievable stories of God taking awful situations and working miracles in the Bible on a grand scale, and it can be awfully hard to believe sometimes. We often look for huge, incredible miracles in our own lives, things that copy the Biblical accounts exactly. And if we don't see water turning into wine right before our eyes and lepers being cleansed after going for a swim...if what we see doesn't meet our expectations, we tend to decide that these stories are really nothing more then mere fairy tales -- great stories, but they don't impact our lives.

But I'm sure you've heard stories of people with cancer being MIRACULOUSLY cured (could these be today's lepers?); people without food finding themselves the recipients of some kind of charity or aid...might this be current examples of God working miracles in TODAY'S society?

See, our overnight experience proved to me that miracles DO indeed happen! Sure, bread and birds didn't exactly come raining down from the clouds, but God took a situtaion and performed a miracle. Maybe the problem isn't that there's a lack of Old Testament-scale miracles in today's world -- maybe the problem is that we're expecting to see things exactly as they happened before, rather then looking for miracles in the context of today's society.

Look for a miracle today! Expect a miracle; watch for a miracle; look for God's intervention in your life. You might be surprised :)

Three Things I've Learned Today...

...Which I feel are my responsibility to share with you all, so that you don't have to go through the pain and suffering of making these discoveries yourselves:

1. TV is evil. Ok, so not quite. (But sometimes it is. Spongebob Squarepants is an excellent example.) But really, it would be more fitting to say, TV is distracting. Don't watch it while trying to write. I was watching one of my all time favorite movies today, To Kill A Mockingbird for about the 40 billionth time. For those of who haven't seen the movie (to which I say - GO WATCH IT! It's one of the few movies that does the book it's based on justice), it's set in Alabama. Thus, all the characters have very Southern accents. Well, as I was watching this movie, I had my laptop out and I was also working on a story. At first, I was all excited because I'd been very productive and written a lot. However, I went back to re-read it and found that my main character -- a 15 year old girl who lives on a mountain in India -- was speaking with a Southern accent. Just like Miss Maudie and Scout and Jem. Ooops. I guess have a lot of editing to do *sigh*

2. Those with bad aim should not be trusted to put their own eye drops in. Seriously. Now, I have to put eyedrops in occasionally when my allergies act up, but that's only occasionally, and usually I can get by without making a total fool of myself. But today I woke up with pink eye (pink eyes, technically, since it's both of them) so I now have to put two drops in each eye every 2-4 hours. For the next five days. Which is a lot of drops. Which is a lot of opportunites to totally miss my eye and instead hit my nose, chin, and once (somehow) my ear. Yeah. Don't exactly know how that one happened....

3. Rainy days exacerbate procrastination. Seriously. Or maybe it's just me, which is also entirely possible...now, I LOVE rainy days, LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE them; don't get me wrong. And today was one of those perfect rainy days; it was cloudy and foggy and the rain was just cleansing and wonderful and refreshing, not depressing or annoying. But I am sorry to say that rain ALSO makes me lazy. It makes me want to spend the entire day curled up on my bed reading and writing and staring out the window and not accomplishing anything. Add to the fact that the two main things I needed to accomplish today -- Chemistry and cleaning my room -- are two of the most awful, intolerable and traumatic activities I can think of, and, well...it was hard to find the motivation to do either of them. But I tried. I did a little Chemistry, and, well, I DO still have all day tomorrow to clean my room.................

Blinded by the light...

My brother has been walking around the house for the past two days, randomly bursting into choruses of the song, "Blinded by the Light". I'm really not sure why, quite frankly. I didn't even know he liked that song. In fact, I didn't even know he knew that song existed, let alone knew the words to it.

Actually, I don't think he does honestly know the words to it. Because he just keeps singing the same line, over and over and over and over again, getting progressively louder at each repetition. "Blinded by the light...Blinded by the light! BLINDED BY THE LIGHT!! BLIIIIINDED BY THE LIIIIIIGHT!!!!!"

(Have I mentioned that the singing gene just doesn't seem to exist in our family? Apparently it wasn't just me it skipped. My dear brother didn't have any luck in that category, either. *sigh*)

And when this chorus met my ears for about the 7,402nd time, I realized that maybe, just maybe, this was something bloggable ( < new word. How much fun is that to say? Bloggable bloggable bloggable!)...that maybe there was a way to tie it in to today's post. It's worth a try, right?

While listening to the radio the other day, I heard a story...hopefully I can remember it:

A hurricane ripped across the coastline, pouring intense amounts of rain down on the inhabitants. Cities were flooding, the water was rising and people were crying out for help. One man climbed on to his rooftop to avoid the rapidly rising water in his house. He looked up to heaven and called out, "God, save me!"

The man had loved God all his life, and truly believed that God would reach down and save him from this disasterous situation. He watched for God's hand to come down from heaven; he listened carefully so he wouldn't miss God's voice when it told him what to do.

As he was listening so intently, a rowboat floated by with a neighbor in.
"Do you need some help?" shouted the neighbor. "Climb in my boat!"
The man on the rooftop shook his head. "No, thanks!" he yelled back. "God's going to save me!"
Rowboat man shrugged and rowed away.

Well, the flood waters continued to rise and rooftop man was growing impatient. He thought maybe God hadn't heard him the first time, so he called out again, even louder, "God! Save me!!"
He stared up at the heavens, watching and waiting for the moment when God would come and save him from the floodwaters.

While he waited, another boat came by; this one even bigger then the last. Half a dozen people sat in this boat, but there was still plenty of room inside. One passenger held out a life vest.
"Hey there!" called out the passenger. "You need some help? Here! Take this!"

But rooftop man shook his head and held out his hand. "No, thanks!" he shouted back. "God's going to save me, you'll see!" The people in the boat shrugged and headed off to another rooftop.

Now, the rain had started up again and the situation wasn't exactly getting any better. Rooftop man realized that God better hurry up and do something here. He was getting pretty nervous. "God!" he called out again. "Please, God, please save me!!"

The waters had almost reached the top of his roof. The man danced around anxiously, on his tiptoes, knowing that his miraculous rescue would come any second and not wanting to miss it.
Unfortunately, he was interrupted by the sound of a helicopter.

The helicopter came closer and the man heard a voice coming through a bull horn say, "You there! Hang on! We're sending you a ladder!"
"No!" the man shouted back as loudly as he could. He shook his head again to prove his point. "No, that's OK! God's going to save me!"

Looking rather surprised, the helicopter folks nodded and shrugged and moved off to go find another person in need of rescue.
Well, a few moments later the flood waters had risen so high that they swept the man off his roof. He tried his best to swim away, but in the end, the current was too deep and he drowned.

When the man got to heaven, he said to God, "God!! I've loved you and served you all my life. I've been a faithful follower of your Word. I trusted you to save me! I cried out to you and you didn't do anything! You ignored my prayer, God! Why didn't you save me??"

God raised his eyebrows and looked at the man. "Are you kidding me?!" he said, surprised. "I tried! I sent you two boats and a helicopter! What more did you want?!"

In this story, the man was so sure that God was going to save him. He had this expectation that God would do something totally, incredibly, earth-shatteringly amazing in order to complete the rescue mission. The man was expecting a huge-scale miracle! He was waiting for the hand of God Himself to reach down and save him; he was waiting for God's voice to command the waters to recede. The man cried out, "God, save me!" and trusted God to do so. The only problem was that he was so focused on the powerfulness and miraculousness of God, that he missed the smaller miracle right in front of him.

He was blinded by the light, so to speak. This man believed so strongly that God could and would make unbelievable, inconceivable miracles happen (the "light") that he was unable to see that sometimes, God delights in using the ordinary to do extraordinary things.

The point is that sometimes, we get blinded by the light, too. We get so caught up in reading Bible stories about manna falling from heaven or angels saving people from fiery furnances or the mouths of lions being closed that we forget about the everyday miracles, too.
The thing is, God provides for our every need. If we need it, he's already got it taken care of. He hears every single one of our prayers. And he answers them -- often in ways that we wouldn't expect.

We need to make sure that our expectations don't interfere with our vision. It's great to believe that God does amazing things -- He certainly does! But don't let yourself get so caught up in the extraordinary that you miss all the incredible things he does on a smaller scale.

The most amazing thing God's done in my life? Bringing my best friend into it. There were no lions, fiery furnances, voices from Heaven or manna falling from the sky. In fact, the very first time I met my best friend, I hardly even talked to her. It wasn't an extraordinary day by any means; it was a picnic. But it was the start of the most amazing and important and incredible and yes, miraculous friendship I've ever experienced.

Is there something in your life right now that you are praying for? Are you waiting for God to answer a prayer? Be careful that your expectations of HOW he is going to answer don't interfere with your realization that he HAS answered it.

Don't be so busy waiting to hear God's voice that you miss the rowboat and the helicopter right in front of you. Sometimes God might give you an incredibly obvious answer to an incredibly complicated situation. It's easy to overlook the everyday answers to prayers -- the best friend who called to say Hi when you were feeling low, the brother who started singing obnoxiously when all you wanted to do was focus on writing a blog post, the dog who barked continously for you to take him for a walk so you could enjoy a gorgeous day...

Be ready and waiting for the ordinary AND the extraordinary. If you EXPECT God to do great things, He will. But beyond that, you've also got to be looking for these BIG things -- sometimes in the smallest of places. Don't be blinded by the light of God's greatness -- let his light illuminate things you might have otherwise missed.

Contrary to popular belief....

....Running is not about math.

Not at all.

In fact, it has nothing to do with numbers.

This is what I discovered today.

Now, I know. I'm sure some of you are taking a deep breath and geering up for a big argument that no doubt starts with something along the lines of, "Well, actually MMSG, the sport of running has an awful lot to do with math. You see, there's rather important concepts like oh, say, distance, minutes, seconds, miles, kilometers, time, calories, speed, the distance/rate/time formula...all of these, believe it or not, are related to math and have an awful lot to do with numbers. So you see, you are very wrong."

Ok, fine. You've got a point. Maybe I should word it differently...

Running should not be about math. Or, for that matter, numbers.



I'm a relatively new runner. I only just started running last month.

But regardless, in these last few weeks, running and I have gone through a lot of phases.

When I first started running, there were a whole bunch of feelings, though most of them centered around the general idea that, "This is great! This is the coolest thing I've ever done! I love it!". Week one was mostly made up of excitement about trying something new.

By week two, however, the novelty had worn off. Excitement was replaced by exhaustion and thoughts like, "Oh, man. Shouldn't it be easier by now?! Ugh. I can't do this. There's no way I can keep doing this!" dominated my consciousness. I was tired and wondering how much longer I could keep it up. Was this really the right sport for me?

Week three hurt, quite frankly. If nothing else, it tested my resolve and determination.

But week four dawned bright and I found myself redoubling my efforts. Motivation soared as I hit the I've-been-running-for-one-month milestone and I pushed myself harder than ever; determined to prove how much I'd improved. Week four hurt, too, but at least I was proud of myself.

Week five was much the same; in the midst of a million other commitments I crammed in time to run... because I had to, after all. I had to get in those extra 10 minutes; I had to do that extra mile, I had to run a fourth day. I had to push myself even harder; I had to beat my best time; I had to get better and do more.

And today is the start of week six. And today also happens to be the day that I've had an ephiphany.

Which brings me back to the statement: Running is not (or should not) be about numbers.

What it boils down to, is that I have finally realized that when I am totally focused on miles, minutes or m.p.h., I'm not having fun.

I started running because it was fun. Because it relieved stress. Because, in the midst of a totally crazy life it gave me time to think my thoughts without distractions. I thrived on the time I spent running on my little country roads, surrounded by forests and birds in the distances and cornfields. I loved the solitude. It was refreshing and invigorating and it made me feel good.

But I allowed myself to get caught up in getting better; doing more; going further. My motivations shifted. Instead of wanting to run, I dreaded it, because I knew I'd be pushing myself even further and becoming even more exhausted. Instead of looking forward to something that had, just a few weeks ago, relaxed and refreshed me, I found that I was instead dreading this thing that was, ironically, causing me more stress.

The over-achieving perfectionist in me dominated the dreamer in me. And I wasn't happy anymore! It took a deer, an icy wind and a drenching rainstorm today, during my run, to make me realize that in a few short weeks I had -- all on my own -- managed to ruin one of the few things that made me happy. I had allowed the numbers to invade!

Here is what I told my very best friend about my revelation-of-a-run earlier today:

....It was an interesting run. I decided to do my favorite route and I set out under the looming, ominous, gloriously dark gray storm clouds praying the rain would hold off til I got home, with the goal of beating my current record, if even only by a few seconds. The first half of my run was great -- for the first time in a month, I felt like I've made some progress. I found that I was running for longer periods without slowing to a walk and I felt really good. So I kept pushing myself and pushing myself and soon I was gasping for breath and every muscle in my body was screaming, "No! I can't take anymore!" and I felt like I was going to throw up. At that point, I realized that if I was pushing myself to the point where I was making myself ill then clearly I'd lost sight of all the reasons I'd started running and I needed to chill out and rethink my priorities (I think all those endorphins make me all philosophical-like. The strangest thoughts go through my head when I run!).

As I was arguing with myself about all this, I turned a corner and quite literally almost ran right smack into a deer, who was just as surprised about our meeting as I was. I think we were only about a foot away by the time it lept one way and I veered the other way. It was pretty cool! (And a pretty stinking big deer, too, I might add!!!)

ANYWAY, now, (in my continued philosophical state) I wondered if perhaps this was God's way of telling me to slow down and enjoy this run, rather then push myself to total exhaustion. And since at that point, I was nearly doubled over from cramps, I sort of had to slow down to a "brisk walk" anyway.

It was at this point that I finally realized it was raining 9and, unbeknownst to me, probably had been for quite awhile) and I was rather wet. Drenched, actually.

So -- here I am, two miles away from home, drenched, caught in a downpour; being blow about by an icy wind [it's only about 50 degrees today anyway], in pain from intense running and already exhausted, and what do I do??

What do you think? This is me, we're talking about.

I stopped and looked heavenward and, in a very Hollywood-movie-like way, spread out my arms and twirled around in the decending drops and said, "Thank you, God, for thunderstorms."...

Is there something in your life that you are dreading right now, even though you used to enjoy it? Maybe it's because, without you realizing it, your priorities have shifted. Maybe you're doing something with different motivations or for different reasons then you originally intended.

There's more to life then numbers and being the best and beating records. Sometimes, you've got to do something solely because it brings you joy and helps you appreciate life. Sometimes, you just have to dance around in a thunderstorm.

"Life isn't about learning how to avoid the storms. It's about learning how to dance in the rain."

p.s. I really REALLY like the title of this post. It's one of my favorite phrases! It just occurred to me that it might be a good title for this blog, instead of "Upon a Thought", which I don't really like. I might change it. Hmmm!