Breanna, I AM home.

In the middle of the night the Lord is teaching me about longing, for a home. I am feeling actual pain over wanting to see my Dad’s eyes and feel his embrace, touch my Mom’s quilts and silk flower arangements (eat her food!) see the game of lacrose my little sister will play this weekend, watch my brother grow an inch per day, sing with my home congregation, help encourage my persecuted sister in highschool, and my older sister almost to the finishing line of her university years, and I want to wittness my best friend fall in love. I can hardly breathe for the pain in some of these moments. Jesus, asks of me,

Secret Place

Recently an aquaintance of mine began posting blogs about the evils of myspace (agreed!) and the deeper issue of needing an understanding of the Lord’s jealousy for us to be intimate lovers who know and keep the “secrets of His heart”. That is precisely where I am at with this issue and this desire to have gaurded treasure in my life. I am so aware of the “OpenYourHeart– UpanBleedItAllOutEverywhereSoIllLoveYou” mentality of our culture. We are a fast food, fast friends, fast forward, fast sex, fast fall…generation. Where everything and everyone is way too easy to gain access to, and even vaults exist only to break into, like Ocean’s 11 and The Italian Job. We even glorify these wrong notions! My dear mentor Carrie Abbot, founder of the Legacy Instituite specializing in sexual integrity, teaches on this problem as being one of the most detrimental to marriages and relationships she has seen in all her studies and experience. It is not okay to engage in intimate revealing, incriminating, and often dis-robbing conversations with anyone prematurely much less those of the opposite sex! This makes me ask two very key questions:

1. When is the relationship mature enough to do so, what does mature look like?

2. How can we be be people of authenticity and even a certain level of transparency without violating that veil?

I have some answers of my own, but I would love to hear other’s thoughts first.

Look at Levi!!

 

Here I am with my precious little man, nephew

Levi Matthew Harri who is now 6months old,

 I love you bubble!!

7 days

What can take place in seven days? The whole earth: light and dark, creatures that crawl and creatures that swim, even man himself and woman in her glory, the pleasure of a father, the joy of a Lover. I have seven more days at the house of prayer and I am full of expectation, I want a creative miracle of rapid growth in my heart. This kite is flying to Israel and then real life in the work place, I am ready because HE says so. Here goes, ready set pray…

Wordless

I think, I am quite incredible at this moment for being able to balance 12 million things! Yet also incapable of anything truly great or noble. I am a wreck of cluttered love songs that have never been writen, clothes never worn, and ideas never fully pursued, yet I find great joy in these days of brokeness because they make my story great. You see, no story is great without broken glass to accent the perfection of the stains. If the glass wasn’t in peices people would never stop and stare. I am a stained glass window with imported shards from many ages. These past few months, 6 to be exact, have shaped so much, yes they are gold. But I have yet to figure out how they are so precious in any detail. I have spent more time with HIM in these six months than I have in 6 years, that’s worth it right there, but there are particular gains which, so far I can not explain. I know I have encountered the man Jesus, in ways I never before thought possible. I have found him in suffering, in pain, and in the bliss of unity. I have met him at night every night, in the dark when no one else cared to hear his voice. This is because I wanted to, and because I was struggling to breathe, and I needed the air of being with him, the only problem with having more is, once you have had it, you can never survive again on less. You die a little every day without the communion at the level you went to, you need the same amount of time and more, if you want your life sustained. If you don’t, if I don’t, I know I will die. My heart will slowly shrivel, forget, grow cold, and die. I am afraid of that happening, so I run a little faster, and find Him still there still calling, still promising the same intimacy I always knew I could have. The miracle is this, he already bore the cost! He already paid my way. My ticket has already been purchased, and all I have to do is, get on board and wait for instruction on what is “my way” up the mountain. Yes the way is steep, yes it costs all I have left, but there is nothing I can pay that could ever be enough to say what is deserved, as he said in his song about me, “if a man sold all He had for love it would be utterly scorned.” I cannot come even close, so I come willingly instead. I come without clothes of my own, but in his robes, meaning not in my effort, or my righteousness, but in his grace which keeps me. I am cold alone, and nothing can warm me except consuming fire. The fire which laves me here often expressionless amazed and wordless.

No Phone…No Car…No home…No Worries!!

Well, this adventure in Kansas City is fast coming to a close, I am leaving for Israel in less than 3 weeks and I am very aware of the berevity of opprotunity to stay (or rather become!) focussed while I am here.

So, the Lord rich in love and mercy comes to my assistance to aide me in this endevour by allowing me to be without a phone, a car, even an actual place of residence. No, I am not sleeping on the street, he is so faithful to provide through loving friends and family, but I don’t have any permanence to where I am living either! I have moved myself now 7 times in the past 5 months!! Last week I reached a point of pivot, I was planning to go on a “daily communicaton” fast from/with my closest friend Christine, to focus and depend emotionally more on Jesus, and that became really easy and early to do! My dad called me with the news that He and my mom were turning off my cell phone now for my trip to Israel, in order to save money and minutes! That puts a bit of a damper on a girl with no car, no home! I have to impose, graciously of course, on many to even get from point A to point B. For a fly about breez, whose only source of income (for the very little I need) is a foil here and a cut there…that’s a bit of a trial!!! For those of you who know me, I AM the hostess to the max, not the one making everyone else serve me!!! Now? I’m in this place it’s: “Oh, thursday instead of tuesday? Well, could you e-mail me? Can you write me a note? meet me at my house at this time? For sure? not for sure? No I have no cell phone now, I’m sorry no way to reach me. Oh can you pick me up??? can I live with you for a couple days, how ’bout a couple weeks? and the cheeks become redder and redder!

The distance from Hell…

Oh the beauty of the crux, the wonder of this paradox! Where do mercy and justice kiss? Where does a God of almighty wrath, and the God of uttermost Love make sense to the human heart? Oh at the cross, at the cross! That is the divine perfection of all reality, and all conflict is quieted by the loudest voice of all. Pain —is the word to which there is no reply, for where on earth is there a louder voice? Certainly nowhere, but in the moment of uttermost suffering. That word pain, reverberates on and on with unmatched volume until we, humanity, stop. The echo of matchless pain stops and we find Jesus, on a cross. Oh Jesus. There he hangs, he pants, he bleeds—cries out,

“…Forgive her…”

And he finishes more than just his life,

Jesus–indeed the name to which there is no response.

Psalm 22

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?

2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, and am not silent.

3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the praise of Israel.

4 In you our fathers put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.

5 They cried to you and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not disappointed.

6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by men and despised by the people.

7 All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads:

8 “He trusts in the LORD;
let the LORD rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him.”

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you
even at my mother’s breast.

10 From birth I was cast upon you;
from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

11 Do not be far from me,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death. for trouble is near
and there is no one to help….
14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax
it has melted away within me…

…a band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.

17 I can count all my bones;
people stare and gloat over me…

19 But you, O LORD, be not far off;
O my Strength, come quickly to help me.

20 Deliver my life from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dogs.

21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions…

22 I will declare your name to my brothers;
in the congregation I will praise you.

23 You who fear the LORD, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!

24 For he has not despised or disdained
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.

25 From you comes the theme of my praise
in the great assembly; before those who
fear you…

…I will fulfill my vows….

Amazing Grace.

Thank you GOD! The movie industry is not totally damned! There is yet something of substance and worth, still hanging on by a thread. This is the very thread I must grab hold of as an actress if I am to not only survive, but actually thrive as a Christian missionary undercover–as by the way we all are in the many roles God has places us in—within this industry. Tonight after an amazing extrapolation on the first few words of the book Song of Songs, “kiss me with the kisses of your word.” taught by the wonderful Mike Bickle, I went to the best movie I have seen in probably a year or more. It’s right up there with Luther, Winslow Boy, and Remember the Titans. It was so good, and Jesus was there, I felt His pleasure. I was so thankful for the way in which He was painted. I don’t want to give anything away, so please go see it. But I can barely even speak still after watching it. I will marry someone just like William Wilberforce, or I won’t get married, and I want to become something so world changing. “Oh God if what I am doing here on earth doesn’t effect some kind of change, and some sort of transformation then let me come home to you now, it’s not worth it otherwise. I can’t bear all this injustice unless it matters. I hope I matter here, I want to cause and shift with prayer, not just blow air into space. I must Lord, truly I must.

I will seek your heart on this more fervently now because of this man, this life, lead and lived by Amazing Grace”.