I Have Hidden Your Word in My Heart--and I Misplaced It.

I like to think that I love God.
I know I love God, but I'm not gonna lie--I struggle with making daily scripture somethin meanigful to encorporate daily into my life. I get bored, or I will read a whole section without actually noticing what it is about. At first, I fell into the trap that I would miraculously find some daily inspiration. But let's be honest--that doesn't happen every single time we crack the Bible and read it. Then I started thinking that if I only could make a habit of reading scripture daily that just that time set aside would help change and mold me to be more like God. So I'd read--just anything--and hope that eventually I would find myself walking closer to God. Next, I picked a Bible study to help me have a focus. I pray, I read, but I don't change. I thought that spending a lot of time with God would help me be more like him. It happens with people, why not with God?
I'm a lot like David. Which--if you know anything about me, you know that I am not a fan of David. Maybe I'm not a fan because I'm a lot like him. I hate how he's supposed to be this role model because God chose him, but he doesn't make very good choices. I hate how even while he's making stupid choices, he's still Psalming it up to God--praising him, asking for his help, and complainig about his enemies. He is a man who, by his choices, you wouldn't be able to tell that he was a follower of God; but in secret he is continually in communication with God.
I am a lot like David.
God chose David, despite all of his running, selfishness, distraction, and inability to see his own fault. So what makes David a man after God's own heart?

I can't help but notice the overwhelming love David had for the "law of the LORD." He wrote entire Psalms about it. Check out Psalm 1, 19, and 119. He loved God's law. There's no denying, David had an undeniable crush on the law of the LORD. I think the thing that sets me apart from David--what makes him a man after God's own heart, and me just a distracted Christian who tries and quits--is this love of law that I seem to lack.

What does loving law say about David? Think about it: why do our parents make rules? Sometimes it's because they know things about life that we don't. They protect us, and they care for us. Could loving God's law possibly mean that David took solace in the fact that God knew how to order life better than he did? If I could somehow learn to love God's law more, perhaps it would help me give up the thoughts that I can have control. If I love God's law more maybe I'll be able to respect his timing, his decisions, and his will more.

I'm going out on a limb and saying that God's law is the Torah. Isn't that what Torah means? So now, I'm not just loving rules--I need to love God's word. I need to delight daily in it. I need to let it make me giddy. Just like David. Dance around playing my little lyre (where can I get me one of them?) and repeat scripture all day long.

Sound a little sarcastic? Probably because I struggle with making scripture interesting. I would LOVE to love to read the Bible. I would love to know God's Law inside and out. Dance around and sing psalms joyfully to God. But how does wanting to love scripture make reading it more interesting? If I'm going to take my daily Bible reading seriously, what has to change?

Someone oh-so-cheesily once said, "We don't read the Bible to master it. We read it to have it master us."

Loving God's law challenges me to believe that God knows more about me than I know about myself. And I know myself pretty well. So by reading the Bible I will not only learn who God is, but I will learn the divinity of his plan. I will learn who I am, and where I fit into his plan.
I can't read the Bible for daily motivation or hoping that the answer to my dilemma will be in the scripture of the day. I can't read the Bible for advice, I have to read it as a call to action.

If scripture tells me God's plan for me, I have to not just hear what he says but put it into practice. God's will for my life is his ultimate plan which is revealed in my actions coming from my hearing of his law. Transitive property anyone? My life is laid out in God's law.

Loving God's law was the center of David's existance. Something about David--despite all of his straying, running, hiding, and falling--was after God's own heart.
I like to think I love God. I like to think, also, that despite all of my running, hiding, falling, and quitting that something about me is after God's own heart. The thing that sets David apart from me is his love of God's law. Now to move past the struggles of reading God's word to master it, and just read it to love it.

I'll let you know.

Home, Home on the Range

Last night, something in the air made me particularly homesick. We'd had a soccer game earlier that night and I was angry about it and I just wanted to talk to somebody. . .but there wasn't anybody. I think this was the top of the hill, and my little snowball started rolling.
I lay in my bed wondering what actual friends I've made since I've moved down here. I've met people, I've hung out with people, but I'm not sure if I've found someone I can just call anytime and say whatever I need to say.
I moved down here because I needed peers. I needed a change because in Michigan, I had friends but they were all several years older than me, and all married--some with children. I needed people in my same stage of life. Oklahoma (for whatever reason) has them. And two nights ago I was reflecting on what it was about peers that I really needed.
I needed to move down here. God provided me with a job, a house, and the security of a familiar town. But last night I realized that I just wanted to be home.
I want to see my parents every day, and my brother, and my dog. The familiar sight of my street as I'm coming home from wherever I've been just gets me all excited inside. I want grey skies 3/4 of the time, and green grass all the time. And I want a brown February that's too cold for comfort. I want to feel like I'm in a place I can consider my home.
I still feel like I'm living in a dorm room--I've got my TV in here, the bathroom in here, my music in here, I have roommates. I spend most of my time in my room. If I was at home, I'd wander from family room, to living room, to game room. Watching TV's, reading books, sneaking fruit roll-ups from the pantry when mom isn't looking. When I'm at home, there are neighbors coming in and out. I can walk down the street into a neighbor's house and sit down with their dog and watch tv. I don't have that here. And I can't get over it.
I still can't get over the bad attitude I have about nothing about the churches being remotely familiar. Last night--dreading Sunday morning service, I lay in my bed and cried. I was so homesick, I couldn't do anything else.
I woke up this morning on my own. I looked at the clock, and my alarm hadn't gone off. I quickly showered and changed. I was mad that I overslept because I was planning on going to class at church this morning, and I missed it. But I was glad I hadn't missed church altogether. I know that God is going to help me get over this, but it's not going to happen if I just stop going to church altogether. So my roommate and I left and made it in time for service. Then it happened:
The preacher gets up and announces that he's going to introduce today's guest speaker. Today's guest speaker, who was one of his professors at Abeline. Today's guest speaker who was in town for a week teaching a Bible course and headed out of town today. Today's guest speaker who currently teaches Bible classes at Rochester College, up near Detroit Michigan. (My ears perk up.) Today's guest speaker: Dr. David Fleer.
I was so happy I almost started crying. Dr. Fleer had preached at Livonia for about 6 months when I was in high school while our church was looking for a new preacher. Dr. Fleer delivers some of the most entertaining, yet poingnant seromons and lectures I've ever heard. I love Dr. Fleer because you can see the sparkle in his bright blue eyes from the back of a dimly lit auditorium as he's preaching and whatever he says you can't help but hold on to. Finally--for the first time in the 9 months I've lived down here, something was familiar.

God moves in mysterious ways. I'm not so sure he's trying to tell me anything right now about where I am being the right place. But I know I've comitted at least the next 2 years to living down here. And it's going to be hard. But God keeps me remembering that he will take care of me. And that even when I'm down, he will take the time to remind me that he knows. He understands. And he's working, and moving, and will do what it takes to keep me on track. To keep me from giving up. Or shutting down. Or quitting. I like to quit. He listens, and when I'm homesick, he'll send a day that smells like Michigan--just so I can be reminded that it's okay for home to be somewhere else right now. He'll send a message to remind me that even though I'm far from comfort, he came with me.
I've said it before: I will probably never be able to call Oklahoma "home." But at least, now, I know that it can feel like home if I'm open enough to let it.

Living in my Memories

These are just some things I like to remember.

When we were little, we used to eat Cheerios and Rice Krispies for breakfast. My dad used to let us put a spoonful of sugar in our cereal. My favorite part was drinking the milk afterward and having that grainy sugar left in the bowl. My dad used to tell us that Rice Krispies were the only cereal that talked. We'd get really close to the bowl and listen.

My mom worked from like 4am until dinnertime when we were little. My dad would pick us up from the babysitter's house and we'd go to the park. I can't honestly recall if this was just a one time occasion or if it happened more often. We would play on the swings. A white car pulled up the curb and my dad would say "that car looks really familiar. I wonder who it could be?" We would run over and it was mom! She still had on her uniform and she would come join us. The ice cream truck came--we were never allowed to get ice cream truck ice cream because it was so expensive. But this time we got to. I picked the red white and blue sno-cone. And I dropped it in the sand. My dad got really mad.

Niki and I used to fight over which one of us got to play with Kali. I don't think it ever occured to us that we could all three play at the same time. I always wanted to play church. We'd pull out the saltine crackers and medecine cups of water and try to break off the smallest piece of cracker humanly possible. It seemed like that's what the point of the cracker was--to take the smallest piece possible. I would lead singing. My favorite song was "Oh Jordan's Stormy Banks." I had the whole thing memorized--which was probably good, because I used to think that the top line of the music went with the first two verses and the bottom line went with the last two.

One Christmas, we were all at Uncle Dick and Aunt Fran's house. I was probably in kindergarten, mostly because that's how old I was when my mom made the dress I have on in all the pictures. All the cousins wanted to watch E.T. and I was scared to death of him. I thought he was so scary to look at, I sat in my cousin Geoff's lap and he covered my eyes for every scene with E.T. and I watched all the other ones. Later that evening, we went into the basement and opened presents. My grandma had gotten everybody Lee Press-On nails. Mine were red, and amazing. Niki, and a few other cousins got ones that had a snakeskin pattern on them. I traded half my nails with Niki because I felt bad that she had to get the ugly ones.

I remember the exact moment in my life that I first realized that my name was not spelled as it should be to pronounce. I was in 2nd grade, and for attendance we had these little tags that if we were in school we had to pull them off the hook and put it in the basket. That way the teachers knew who was absent by whose tag was still left hanging. I'd been reading for the past couple years, but I was just starting to get really good at it. I'd started reading Nancy Drew and The Boxcar Children. One day I went to pull my tag down and I realized that it read 'Kari.' That did not spell "Kaudi." It finally occured to me why I had to explain my name to teachers. I was devastated. I went home and begged my mom to let me change the spelling of my name. She informed me (at times like this, I think it's okay for moms to lie) that children can't change their names until they are in 3rd grade.

I had worn my dad down. We were getting a dog. He wanted a Sheltie, and had somehow convinced me that this was the best dog one could possibly own. I was sold and excited. Mom wasn't so much. We went to this old couple's house and there were three puppies. I saw the one I wanted--his name was Brutus. He was $275. That was expensive--even my 8 year old self knew that. We met the daddy dog of the puppies, his name was Skippy. His hair was gray. We went to another house, but those dogs there just weren't the same. Not to mention they were WAY more expensive. So we went back and got little "Brutus." We put him in our recycle bin that we had brought from home and went to some pet store. My mom didn't want a dog. She didn't want the hair, and didn't want to do all the work. She went in to the store--I remember thinking that it was our way of making up to her that we got a dog she didn't want. We were in the van, while she was in the store, trying to think of names for our new puppy. My dad, for some reason, had something against the name "Brutus" and couldn't wait to change the name. His only idea was Alex--for Alex Keaton from Family Ties. My dad secretly looked up to him for being a republican with hippie parents. He's been a Michael J. Fox fan ever since. My dad decided that we should let mom name the dog, to make her feel better about it. She named him Zach. He was the best dog ever.

I had a really good friend my freshman year of college. We had nothing in common. He listened to country music and drove a big red suburban. He took good notes in psychology, however, and I was really dumb in the subject. He somehow convinced me that it was a good idea to go roller blading with him and it soon became a nightly event. We would go almost every night at 10 and we'd get in his truck and drive to the parking lot behind the Rochester Hills public library and roller blade all through the downtown area. It was great fun--my first college friend and we knew almost everything about each other. It was very comforting. When it got too icy to roller blade, we would still go on our nightly adventures. We went to Meijer and bought some vanilla ice cream (the best flavor, clearly) and went underneath this bridge downtown and we sat and ate our ice cream. We shared a pair of mittens and took our shoes off and put our feet in the freezing Clinton River. I haven't had a friend like that since him. Sometimes I don't think I ever will.

I left Michigan, on my own withouth my family, for the first time in April. I had my car packed up with everything I needed that would fit and I was moveing to Oklahoma. I waited until my parents were gone for spring break before I left--because I knew if I waited until they were back I wouldn't have left. We met in Effingham, Illinois as they were driving back up to Michigan. When I left that morning, I was the fursthest from home I'd ever been, with no plans of going back anytime soon. I was driving through Missouri, listening to a CD of my friend Eric's favorite songs that he'd made for me. The song went,
a song for when you go
to keep you company
a song for when you go
far away from me
a song for when you go to California
west of the city lights, across America
a song for when you go out on the interstate
under the power lines
I knew I wasn't going to California, but the truth was that I realized that I was gone. It was the strangest feeling. And I missed my friend. And I knew it wasn't going to be the same anymore. But that feeling of fear, expectation, lonliness, hope, and freedom is one that I will never forget.


I wish I had more pictures of my mom but she always would rather take them.