It's been a really special day in Philly, celebrating my grandfather's life and the lasting legacy he leaves behind. We enjoyed a packed Quaker meeting this morning, which spilled into a really nice afternoon and evening with the family. The weather couldn't have been more stunning and truly, the only missing piece was the celebrated one, himself.

My sister and brother-in-law will take me to airport in a few hours for a 6am flight to D.C. From there I'll make a 20ish hour trek to Ethiopia, and then a final five or so to Entebbe, Uganda. Not terribly psyched about this air-time, but "a process is required," so I'm slowly learning, "in order to reach a true destination."

I'll be in touch when I'm able.
Blessings to you,
abbie

Dear Friends,

I hope this email finds you well.

Wanted to pass-along my whereabouts and warn you of a lacking correspondence through August. Freshman year of grad-school is complete and I’m grateful to share that my summer will be spent in Jinja, Uganda. The first week will be sporadic in location and service, but my remaining time will be at Amani Baby Cottage (www.amanibabycottage.org), which houses orphaned and HIV/AIDS infants. Days will take part in mundane and massive roles like sweeping floors, changing diapers and holding babies—a dream and honor that exceeds words.

Time online will be sparse, but I’ll update the journal at www.keepingyourfaith.com as often as possible. Snail mail will be an option, too (delivery ranges from 2-3 weeks):

Amani Baby Cottage
Att: Abbie Smith
P.O. Box 1799
Jinja, Uganda

May the Rest of God go boldly before your summer.
With Love,
abbie

I didn’t cry much as a kid. One memory that stands out though, was New Year’s Eve, 1989. I was traveling with my family, lodging at a Day’s Inn somewhere between Charlotte and D.C. Approaching midnight, my young senses were tiring, yet a fresh determinacy latched to my eyelids. “The end” was growing close and I was growing more and more desperate to be with it—to be with 1989. It seemed the end of an era to my eight-year-old mind, and I was crushed. Devastated. How could it leave!? How could it depart so quickly and never come back!? Was it really never coming back!? I couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t want to deal with it. I was mad at the year. Angry that it would enter my life so richly and yet hold the audacity to depart. Tears poured as the television dropped the Times square ball. I simultaneously made every effort to “save the year” by scooping its last breaths into a salad dressing bottle. 1989 was gone. Death had confronted me.

And it did so again last night.

After 89 incredible years (I didn’t put that number connection together until now), my grandfather died. It wasn’t a painful death, or an unexpected one, but it has been painful and unexpected, because it was death.

I went for a walk after I found out. I was at a friend's house, who lives on a street that somehow never ceases to catch my emotions off-guard. Massive trees shade it by day, while night decorates it with hints of moonlight, painting an exceptionally magical glow. Daylight was still at hand though, as I departed in search of some cognition of the dangling news. As the road neared its end, I turned left down a side street, intrigued by its backdrop of the day’s setting sun. Memories of my grandfather were flowing at this point, with strands of life’s questions sparking like fireworks. Red roses flirted with emerald grasses and blue-hued birds painted the landscape. I felt stunned. Awed. Challenged by life and death. And channeled toward some essence of greater Life and Governance over death. I couldn’t help but recall the day before, too, when similar feelings engaged me at the ocean. Waves so protective and unending…yet so intimate and aggressive in their pursuit of my presence on the beach.

I settled on the curb to watch the remaining beams of sun dip into the horizon. David Gray’s lyrics of, ‘…life in slow motion…somehow it don’t seem real,’ reverberated in my mind. It was the longest sunset I’ve ever seen. Minutes felt like hours and if it weren’t for brisk air and friends I wanted to return to, I would’ve stayed for the remainder of the night. I was paralyzed by the moment—the moment entering sorrow and death, and off the same fence, entering satisfaction and life.

I feel a lot like I did that New Year's Eve. My tears are challening the reality of my Grandfather's passing, fighting so hard to make death un-die. I just want to be with him. I just want to be with his life. But I can't. His time on earth has passed. Like 1989, his year is finished. What I know now, however, that I didn’t know as an eight-year-old, is that 1989 would never fully leave me. Given memories and memorable shapings (and being stuck in a glass jar in my attic), the reality of that year's existence can't leave me.

When we let reality in, it scars us. When we let ourselves be real, and let something be real with our selves, we’re touched in a way that can never fully leave. Though death became a man named my grandfather last night, etchings of that man’s life will never be fully lost. To that end, I am grateful.

"Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling"...

One of the best books I've ever read.

A MUST for any teacher, parent, student, or person concerned with humanity.

Have you ever felt inconclusive? Unable to synthesize, or tie-up a thought? Here I stand. And mind you, I was never one of these people. Especially in writing, I’ve always been able to begin, body and conclude a work quite easily. Not anymore—in writing, or otherwise. The Lord has brought me to new frontiers, where bearings and clarity are yet to be told. So take the following two entries for what they’re worth—unfinished and undone in many ways, but believing, by faith, that Sight is coming.

***

Behind the Sunglasses and Script

Hope. A word overused, yet underrated. Four letters capable of taking a life, or letting one live.

I’ve never allowed myself to attach to hopes as I have this semester. In the same breath, however, I must say I’ve never gotten comfortable with the blind risk of such doing.

I’ve intentionally hoped in a lot of things lately. And doing so has forced me out-of-control, a haven I’ve rested in for far too long. But what do you do when your hope doesn’t respond? When your heart’s longing doesn’t pan out? I liked a boy. I hoped it would work out. It didn’t. I hoped my drug addict friend would find shelter, security and a Savior. To my knowledge, she hasn’t. I’ve hoped in various decisions, grades, mirrors and what felt like monologues with God lately, to no avail. I’m still waiting. Still “hoping” in the dark. Believing in a seen hopelessness. There may not be a more crazy phenomenon.

Hope never fails and yet hope never promises. It never ceases to exist, and yet never shoves its existence. It’s a choice. A surrender of sorts. To what though? To a desire …to an end…to God? Where is hope leading and where does it come from? And how much deference can a hoping heart take?

I’m writing this in a posh coffee shop in Beverly Hills (Peets, if you’re ever hoping for the best latte known to man). I don’t get to this part of town too often, but I always seem to learn a lot when I do. In a matter of minutes, I’ve been confounded again by the hurry, the hiddeness and the hurt exposed by this population. They’re no different than the rest of us, really, but seem that way due to exaggerated investments in sunglasses and sullen faces sealed with masks and masking agendas. Their hope in the next deal, or the next distraction, diet, or dream is just as deep as ours—just more glamorously displayed.

Everyone wants to look like they’re going somewhere. Like they have a purpose in walking through the door. Everyone hopes they’ll look the part—they’ll hide the fact that in actuality they’re a big act. They’re not the real deal. Everyone hopes they can keep the lie covered—the lie that they’re not the person people think—they’re not the put-together persona that people assume.

But what if people found that out?

What if people realized we weren’t what they thought? We weren’t what they hoped for? Could we stand it? Could they stand us?

To hope that no one ever sees ‘the real us’ is to hide from life. And to hide from life is to die.

Leaning into hopes and hoping into what feels like pure desire—and then seeing hopes and desires fade, or take-on rejection, hurts. And hurting feels bad. It needs help. It’s tired. It cannot do life alone. But as we mentioned above, no one wants to take-on such an existence, so we hide behind sunglasses and scripts. But what I’m starting to see is that hurting holds just as much Life as healing. Pain carries just the same weight as pleasure. Neither can ultimately exist without the other.

The death and resurrection of Jesus was one movement. They go hand-in-hand—one doesn’t work without the other. To die in Christ is to be born again. And to live in Christ is to continue dying. To continue hoping. Hope can wait, but it never fails. Hope can hurt, but it never dies.

Lord, help us keep hoping—help us keep believing Your end as the primary mover of every hoped for beginning.

The Lord has brought me on a journey of purging this year—purging through minutes and months of sought after pleasure that used to hold me—but now don’t. Used to keep me full, but now do quite the opposite.

Why would God do such a thing? Such a purgation?

Well, I can’t answer that question in full quite yet, and maybe won’t ever be able to on this side of heaven, but what I can say is this—the stripping that has taken place and that which is in process, or in denial, is right. It’s true, valid movement that I wouldn’t change for anything. That said, however, it’s been the hardest of my life. Not because I moved to California (surfing is fun), or fell into a community that ushers me toward knowness like never before. Such “externals” have been sweet. Internally though, by far, it’s been the most stretching of my life. But also the truest, deepest and maybe first in which I’ve actually lived “alive.”

Life to this point had been a series of experiences and exposures where I discovered a great love for loving people and a greater love for doing so in the name of God. Whether through relating, discipling, writing, serving, or performing, I learned to love and “let be loved” a “saved” Abbie. (In case that’s not as clear as it needs to be, I didn’t need Jesus to love or be loved…I had “been saved” and was thus attempting function out of that position). You can see then, that most of my love was out of, or into, a hiding space, a space of strengths and outward ability.

A lot of that has died this year. Some by choice and some by the grace of God’s stripping. I’ve died to a lot I thought I knew—knew about my self and the world and my self in the world. I’ve died to a lot of habits—habits I knew were bad and habits I thought were good. I’ve died a lot of prides, positions and presuppositions. And I still have a lot of dying to go—a lifetime, in fact. But the irony here—the Greatest irony of All, I think—is that in choosing these deaths, I’ve started to live. By Grace’s allowance encouraging me to die, I’ve actually started to live. To truly be with people—to behold the weights of friendship. To truly be and be alone—in its wholeness and its state of sorrow. Only a Divine Spirit can shadow these risky landings. Only a Savior can hold them. I need the saving grace of Jesus if I’m going to live today. No longer do I spend days medicating with gifts and identities done with excusing masks that’s it’s, “for the glory of God.” Rather, in learning to cry-out for a Savior, I’ve been able to be weak—to embrace my given nature of weakness and need. To laugh. To cry. To be scared, to be hurt and to be helped.

Don’t let me get off this easily though—the last month, in particular, has found me running back to old ways of coping—old wavelengths that separated me from my self and others. I will go to a lot of extremes to avoid the Truth. To avoid being known, loved, liked, or seen. I will empty my life for another, in order to avoid letting another see my emptiness. My imperfection. My confliction. My desperation. But what I cannot negate is that I have tasted truth this year. I have tasted enough of a freedom in weakness—a peace in surrender, that I at least know it’s ‘there.’ It’s willing, if I let It.

The choice, then, remains one of my will.
Am I willing to choose God, when He cannot be felt?
To choose Him, when His ways are yet to be seen, or certainly understood?
Am I willing to trust God?

LORD, moving into these final weeks of school, help us be mindful of Your perspective.

***

"The Faith to Persevere"
Oswald Chambers: My Utmost to His Highest (May 8th)

Because you have kept My command to persevere...—Revelation 3:10

Perseverance means more than endurance— more than simply holding on until the end. A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, but our Lord continues to stretch and strain, and every once in a while the saint says, "I can’t take any more." Yet God pays no attention; He goes on stretching until His purpose is in sight, and then He lets the arrow fly. Entrust yourself to God’s hands. Is there something in your life for which you need perseverance right now? Maintain your intimate relationship with Jesus Christ through the perseverance of faith. Proclaim as Job did, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him" (Job 13:15).

Faith is not some weak and pitiful emotion, but is strong and vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love. And even though you cannot see Him right now and cannot understand what He is doing, you know Him. Disaster occurs in your life when you lack the mental composure that comes from establishing yourself on the eternal truth that God is holy love. Faith is the supreme effort of your life— throwing yourself with abandon and total confidence upon God.

God ventured His all in Jesus Christ to save us, and now He wants us to venture our all with total abandoned confidence in Him. There are areas in our lives where that faith has not worked in us as yet— places still untouched by the life of God. There were none of those places in Jesus Christ’s life, and there are to be none in ours. Jesus prayed, "This is eternal life, that they may know You..." (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.

i’m wondering this morning, Lord. Wondering where You are? Who You are? And what, in fact, it means that YOU ARE (by way of participl’ing “I AM”). I’m wondering what it would mean to “be with” You. To be with I AM. To engage with YOU ARE. Can I? Should I? Are you worth the risk? Am I worth the right?

“I will come and heal You. But truly, truly I say to you, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.”

born…but I was born—am born—what does it look like to be born again?

“In order to be born, you must be willing to die. To let go. To go back. In order to be born, you must be willing to leave what you see. To loose what you understand as living. To lose control. To lose power. Leadership. Destiny. Destination. Security. Entitlement. Balance. Structure. Safety. Solidarity. In order to be born, you must be willing to Trust—to take assurance in things hoped for, and surrender to that which you cannot see. To that which is Me.”

but who are you?

I AM.
Keep faithing. I AM coming. That is what I do.

what does that look like? how do I live?

“When you lose the world, you gain the Truth. When you let go of the seen, you see the unseen. You see that I am here. You see that I am He. You see.
You find what you were made for. You learn what you are worth.
Become like a child. Let me raise you. I have food to eat that you could not conceive. I have roads for your life that astonish your deepest dream.
I want to lead you. I want to let you. I want to Father your heart.
I wonder if you will let Me?
I wonder.”

***

“When the woman saw that she had not escaped his notice, she came trembling and fell down before Him, and declared in the presence of all the people the reason why she had touched Him, and how she had been immediately healed. And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

My iPod is blaring tunes from, "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot," compliments of Sting. Problem is, if I let my soul be my guide today, I'm going down. Further down. Further in. And I'm scared to death.

I've never felt this vulnerable. Exposed. Raw. Without bearings. I've never felt like such a child...such an infant, really. I am sad. I am angry. All I want to do is be held. All I know to say is, "Help me."

I woke this morning asking God what prayer was? Who He was? How in the world I got on this Journey? How in the world my surface interactions with it/Him have kept me in the game? There have been external professions and promises and heights of jubilation. But there has lacked an inward journey. There has lacked a soul willing to be piloted inward. Or a Pilot, with a soul willing to go inward.

This new place of surrender is overwhelming and uncomfortable and beyond anything I've ever known. I'm scared I won't come back. I'm scared I wasn't anywhere to start with.

To be honest, the Lentin season didn't do much for me. I justified it by saying I recognize Jesus' saving death and resurrection every day. Why should I feel a compulsion to join cultural Christianity's holiday recognition (even though the Easter bunny perk is pretty tempting...joke)? What's been striking though, is how much the post-Easter week has brought to my attention. What would this week look like were we one of Jesus' disciples? How would it feel to 'know' now that his Story was true, but to embark on a telling of that Story to the world? To your neighbors, family, enemies? Would you quit your job? Go to the mountains to pray? Would you schedule a meeting to create a strategy, or come-up with a church name? Would you cry that he was gone...begging his willingness to return? Or maybe cry in joy that he was here...allowing life as you now know it to truly be Life?

For me, I think I'd be overwhelmed. I think I am overwhelmed. The cost has been paid...the "proof" laid before us. But now the question is can we believe? Are we willing to follow? The Journey has been paved before us. The journey to the end in some ways, but the journey to the beginning in many others. What does it look like, why does it hurt so bad, and how long will it last? How much further down can we travel, God? How much further in can we bear? Why must we go? And to where, O Lord, is it that You're going?

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” Luke 9:23-24

Lead me, Father. Hold me. I want to come after you, but I know not the way. I need You. Help me.