Beautiful Insomnia

The older I get the more I hear, 'You look just like your mother!' 
I, for one, have always thought the pictures of my mom from her 20's and 30's are just plain gorgeous, so that exclamation always leaves me extremely flattered. 

Aside from looks I get my affection for books and words from my sweet momma, and my love for Scrabble.  I cry when someone really gets me laughing just like she does, and then there's the infamous Diet Dr. Pepper obsession. I can talk on the phone for hours and I have my own personal Dana for a best friend. (Will the real Abigail Boone please stand up..)   

I am so proud to be Jill Craig's daughter.  She shared everything she owned; every article of clothing, every bag of chips, every blanket, literally everything, and if I went to a Hindu school my friends would probably think she is Mother Theresa reincarnated the way I talk about her sometimes..but there is one thing I wish she'd kept all for herself.  

Insomnia. That's right Ms. Craig...you're getting the blame for this one.  I'll take credit for the forgetfulness and the bad handwriting, but the sleeping issues are ALL on you.

I am thankful for the stern words that taught me how to behave in public like a lady. I'm grateful for the spankings (they were few, I was the model child right Mom?) that taught me not to back-talk. I'm appreciative of the 'ridiculous' expectations she had for me to do my very best no matter what that meant. But I have to be honest, when I wake up 5 hours before my alarm and there's no chance of going back to sleep, I don't feel very thankful for the anti-sleeping gene. 

At 4:07 in the morning I'd had quite enough, but then I had a momentary lapse in my fury and realized that I find some of the coolest moments in the Bible when I'm up reading God's Word by candle-light at all hours of the night so as not to wake my roommate.  What I counted a curse is actually a blessing in disguise. No wonder my wonderful momma is such a strong woman of God, for all these years she's been getting a head-start on her Bible study by about extra 4 hours. 

I emailed her this morning to share this little thought with her, and then I thought I'd help mother, teacher, best friend Jill Craig pass her lesson along to an even wider community of children.  I don't have any lessons from God's Word this morning, but a beloved follower of Christ can teach us something with her unfortunate abnormality.  Sleep is needed for your physical health, but what does that physical health matter if you aren't nurturing your spiritual health too? Mom, you gave me the strange gift of super-human sleeping patterns and boy am I blessed to get that extra time with Jesus so many mornings. 

So thank you for the spankings, the shuttling to and fro, and the food you let me bite off. Those things represent a relationship between a mother and daughter that I would be so lost without.  But even more than a mother and friend, as my sister in Christ thank you for raising this insomniac to love Jesus so I can spend my extra 4 waking hours letting my Abba Father pursue me with His Word. 

Ugandan Bricks of Truth

This morning my church had the great pleasure of hearing the beautifully sobering story of Katie Davis, a 21-year-old American woman who is now the mother to 13 precious Ugandan girls. Her journey starts with a one year commitment to teach at an orphanage in Uganda when she was just a green 18-year-old right out of high school.  Almost four years later and God's sovereign plan has led her to a life of full-time mission work and single motherhood in a third world country.  I think I can safely speak for my Brookhills church family when I say we were all blown away by her obedience to the Lord's radical will.  But she simply asked us to consider, "How could I not say yes to Him?" Convicting doesn't even begin to describe that question.

Let's be honest. I was in tears and about ready to jump on a plane before she even finished speaking. And then she said something my heart really needed to hear.

Love the person in front of you.

I feel so selfish in college sometimes.  Maybe I'm alone in this, but it can be so difficult to pour into others when the whole point of school is to take care of yourself so you can do well in class. Sometimes I get so frustrated with that selfish feeling that I just want to skip this step of life and move on to the part where God lets me fulfill my calling. Katie Davis gave me a much needed reminding... Wake-up call Lacy, you can and should be fulfilling God's calling for you right now! I'm not just called to love people someday when I go wherever God sends me.  I don't have to wait till I'm ministering to children, college students, or women, in Alabama, Kentucky, or Ecuador...or to whomever and wherever God leads me.  I am a light on my campus this very evening. What a simple-minded epiphany.  I know I'm an ambassador for Christ every day, but something about the way it was said today just clicked differently.  Love the person in front of me. Love the cafeteria worker who won't take my number so I have to walk all the way home to get my card. Love the friend who borrows your headphones and never returns them. Love the brown-nosing classmate who obnoxiously answers everything right. Love your best friend, love your roommate, love your professor.  Love the person in front of you, no matter who it is or how they treat you. Such a straightforward truth but boy did it hit me like a ton of bricks. 

Uganda is so blessed by the obedience of God's faithful daughter Katie Davis, and I'm praising my sweet Jesus for the bricks she threw at me today too. 

More Organ

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best thought by day or by night
Waking or sleeping Thy presence my light
Be thou my wisdom and Thou my true word
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son
Thou in me dwelling and I with Thee one
Riches I heed not nor man's emptly praise
Thou mine inheritance now and always
Thou and thou only first in my heart
High King of heaven my treasure Thou are
High King of heaven my victory won
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's Sun
Heart of my own heart whatever befall
Still be my vision O Ruler of all

                                -Be Thou My Vision, Irish Hymn

I love hymns. As a member of Generation Y and a product of the digital age I realize I'm supposed to want hip church music with smoke and colored flashing lights and a loud bass that beats the bible's off the pew. But, I'd rather hear an organ and a small church choir any day. I'm one of those old-fashioned brats who misses searching through the hymnal for hymn number 684.  Now I don't agree with mindless worship; I despise passionless, impersonal praise of my sweet Savior. But look at the words of Be Thou My Vision... How can you find more passion and purpose than what stands behind those? 

I deeply desire to live out these lyrics. I crave Jesus. Radical as it may be, all day a thought has been flashing through my head that would make many of my Samford counterparts shiver and stare blankly at me. 

My prayer today is that Jesus will take my world from me.  Release me from the hold that clothes, electronics, friends, relationships, and the list goes on, have on me.  I want to want nothing but Jesus, and today I'm closer to that than I've ever been before.  

Be Thou my vision sweet Jesus. Give me joy in the infinite treasure You are instead of the temporary pleasures I've found in this life.  

Go read that delightful hymn again.  I can't find the right letters on this keyboard for my words today...

Troubled Hearts Take Heart

This past week I've talked to so many of my beloved friends who feel like life is swallowing them whole. If you've read my last few entries you'll know I'm not accustomed to that notion myself this semester... But I've found the perfect verse to cling to and after so many of my dear one's expressing such troubled hearts lately I can't help but spread the perfection around a little. 

"I have said these things to you, that in Me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."  

John 16:33

Like those multi-colored watercolors God uses to fill the sky with His promises, this verse is a rock-solid reminder of the covenant of my Abba Father. 'Life is hard, then you die.'  That brash worldly sentiment displayed on many a bumper sticker doesn't account for the joys Jesus brings us in this life, but it isn't totally false.  John 16:33 promises that as Christians we will suffer.  Following Christ doesn't ensure a sense of security or save us from the pains the rest of the world suffers from.  In fact, instead of guarding against them, following Christ guarantees struggles.  But when you have Jesus to lean on that brash saying needs to be altered just a bit.  Life is hard, so Jesus lived it.  He knows just what we're feeling as we feel it. Every changing emotion, every lumpy throat or welling scream also flashed through Jesus' body.  His heart beat the same as mine does, so it fell to the pit of His stomach just like mine does too. He knows, fully and completely.  

This world is full of difficult days, exhaustive work, tearful nights.  Jesus guaranteed the overwhelming feelings of loneliness and stress that wage war on us.  He isn't surprised by them and when they sneak up on us we can take solace in the thought that He planned for them ahead of time. And an even more brilliant and comforting concept is the truth that He overcame this difficult, exhaustive, tearful world.  Jesus lived in it, died in it, and rose and walked in it again.  Jesus wraps us in a love that already defeated the pains we fight feeling every day. 

This verse doesn't even need the meager explanation I've given.  Amidst the stress and strain of the world we don't need to feel beaten and battered, because Jesus holds us firmly in His sin-conquering hand.