Not a Lot

I haven’t written here for a while. Mostly because there’s a lot of stuff going on – stuff I’m not going to put on a public blog. But needless to say, things have been a little bit hard lately. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and lot of avoiding of thinking, if that makes sense. Which is probably why I should NOT be blogging and should instead be trying to get some things done that I REALLY need to get done by Tuesday.

 

I leave Wednesday for California. I am SO excited for my sister and her fiance. It’s still weird for me to say that. It’s going to be even weirder in a week and a half when I refer to my sister and her husband. ACK. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get used to it. At least not for a year or so. You know? I have the bridal shower planned out though, and I am excited for that. I can’t go into detail here because SHE doesn’t know all the details and I am NOT going to give anything away!

 

In other news, I am biking. I think I have missed it. Because it’s been a long time since I’ve really done it. But I’m working toward doing RAGBRAI next summer, so I need to get into it some. Plus it’s a good workout. And I love the wind on my face. I think that’s part of why I love snowboarding, too, you think?

 

I’m sorry this is so “fluffy”. There’s a lot of stuff I “could” write about, but mostly it’s stuff I need to think through and process by myself before I post it for the world to read. Oh, and by the way? I love diet Coke.

 

Just sayin’

Nine Days

Hiya friends,

Nine Days.

That’s all that’s left until the Race for Hope.

those of you who have already helped to support me, my “thank you” could not be big enough. You are the people who make Vision Of Hope’s doors stay open. Most of you know parts (or all) of my story, but I’m going to give you a short version.

I hated life. I was slowly killing myself using all sorts of various methods. I was hurting. I didn’t know where to turn. I didn’t have any understanding of who God really was.

And then I was given an ultimatum, pretty much. I could find a long-term treatment center, or people would commit me. The other programs I had been in had not done any good, and some good friends recognized that I needed more than that.

So by God’s grace, I found Vision of Hope.

I can’t say that Vision of Hope has changed my life, but God definitely has.

And He has used VOH. I’ve lived here over a year, and have found hope where I never thought hope existed. It’s interesting to look back on the past year, and at the conference I went to last June, where I went through the motions and didn’t believe much of what anyone was talking about.

That same conference is in a week. And I am SO looking forward to it. VOH has given me so much.

They have shown God to me. They have supported me. They have been there when nearly everyone else had given up and walked out. And they’ve stood by me.

The amazing thing is that a program like this should be costing me thousands of dollars. I’m living in a beautiful home, eating well, able to have a job, counseling, support, and amazing interns (who don’t get paid) who are there for me 24/7.

And?

I’m not paying anything.

Nothing. Nada.

I have a part-time job. I don’t make much money. If I did, I would want to support this amazing place who gives girls a chance at a new life with God. A place that teaches girls that they don’t need their addictions if they are willing to follow and obey God. But I don’t have a lot of money.

I do, however, have a lot of friends.

And a lot of people who have told me personally that they are happy I am here and getting help. If every one of my Facebook friends gave up 2 Starbucks coffees this week, I could raise $4,000 for VOH. Please help support me (Kate)

Ten dollars. Ten.

That’s not a lot.

But together, it adds up to HOPE. It adds up to helping someones like me find that hope.

So please, please please help support me and VOH. It doesn’t take much, and you are helping to give me continuing hope, and a place to live, and food to eat. Ten dollars. That’s it. Please help make a difference for Vision of Hope.

I love you all!

Kate

::SUPPORT VISION OF HOPE::

 

Dominate.

I’m doing some word studies right now for counseling that are pretty interesting. I am studying Lordship, Dominion, Rule, Subdue, Lord, etc. In terms, not of me being any of those, but of God being all of those and me being UNDER Him and in submission to Him as, well, a slave. Since that is what I am.

I think I’m just going to write out a little bit about the words and what I find, and then draw conclusions from that. And feel free to interject your opinion as well, since I AM posting this on  a public blog.

LORDSHIP: “the position or authority of a lord”

LORD: a person who has power or authority over others

DOMINION: the power or right of governing and controlling; sovereign authority

RULE: to exercise dominating power or influence; predominate, to exercise authority, dominion, or sovereignty, to make a formal decision or ruling, as in a law

SUBDUE: to conquer and bring into subjection, to overpower by superior force, to bring under mental or emotional control, as by persuasion or intimidation; render submissive.

 

So. This is what God has over me. He is my Creator, and thus, He is also the ruler over me. On the flip side, that puts me as a servant. A slave. One who is ruled. One who is under said authority and dominion. I have been brought into subjection. I have been put under emotional and mental control, and I have become submissive to God, my authority.

It reminds me of feudal society in the Middle Ages. Really, I know that came long after Christianity, but it paints a good picture of what goes on in my mind when I hear these words. I am the serf on the manor, and my lord is over me, governing what I do and where I go. I do nothing outside of his rule. I am completely surrendered to him and his desires. I am not my own person. I am owned. I am a slave, in no uncertain terms. But, unlike many feudal societies, my lord is a good lord. He does not ask things of me that are impossible. He does not punish unnecessarily, and he does not exercise cruelty. How wonderful it must have been in the Middle Ages to have a lord who was kind! A lord who was not cruel.

And that is who I am right now. I don’t get to decide. Anything. I mean, yeah, I can pick out what I eat for lunch or what time I leave the house, but beyond that? I don’t get to decide how I react to things. I represent my Lord. And I react how He would react. I do what He would want me to do and what He tells me to do. I am not my own person anymore. I have been brought under His submission. But I need to realize that He is a GOOD Master and is not going to screw me over.

I think the point I really need to take away is that I DON’T HAVE A CHOICE. I am under. UNDER. an Authority. And I have no choice but to do what He says. This isn’t “Kate can do whatever she wants to” anymore. This is “Kate surrendered her life to a good Master and is under His authority”. He has given me good things. GOOD THINGS. I have no reason to believe He won’t be faithful, forgiving, merciful, etc. But as a result, I am under His subduction. I don’t know if that’s a word or not, but I like it.

The end. I think. Well, not totally. But for right now.

One Year and Counting…and Backwards Steps

God doesn’t do years. No, really. He doesn’t. Time is nothing to Him. He doesn’t need time. He operates outside of time. But me? I operate within time. And a year seems like a reallyreally long time.

I’ve been in Indiana for just over a year now. Did I imagine, even two years ago, that I would be living in a treatment center trying to get my life back? I wouldn’t have ever guessed it. I wouldn’t have ever dreamed it. But God knew. The whole time, God knew. And He wasn’t limited by my finite perceptions of time. It’s strange for me to think about the past year. In some ways, it has flown by. In other ways, it has dragged so slowly it’s felt like five years. I have learned so much. I’ve changed so much, I think. I usually don’t see change in myself, but I do see some the past year. For one thing, I’m a lot more authentic than I used to be. I’m more real. I am not playing games and running around in circles so much. I’m not constantly grasping at the shiny things to keep me from dealing with the real issues. Of course, I still do grab at them sometimes. Just not as much. And I’m realizing it more.

Today, though, is one of those days where I feel like time is moving very slowly. I am frustrated with a lot of things that are not even IN my control. And I’m still trying to control them. I’m frustrated because today is one of those days when it’s harder for me to see the changes in my life – harder for me to see that I’ve grown. It’s one of those days where I’m taking the two steps backwards instead of the one step forward. Sometimes, that’s necessary, though. I think I’m in a place where those two steps (seemingly) backwards are actually steps to lead me forward eventually. I just need to step back to work my way around a roadblock. Then I’ll be back on track. But even the backwards steps really are moving me forward in a way. It’s just hard to see that sometimes. But God sees that. He knew I would be stepping here next. And He is here with me while I walk.

Sometimes it’s necessary to fall a little bit before flying. And right now, I think the falling is definitely on my schedule. Not falling like collapsing in a pile and failing. Just falling, like tripping a little bit in order to regain my footing.

I get that I’m being ridiculously metaphorical in this post. Just work with me. Because there are things I’m referring to that I’m not going to exploit to the watching world. Things that are not going to be that public – at least not right now.

I like that God knows each step I take – the forward ones and the backwards ones – and He isn’t surprised by any of them. And He doesn’t leave me if I end up stepping back a few steps. He follows right along with me and leads me in the path that He already has marked out for me. I am so glad He knows where that is. And I’m so glad that I don’t.

Most of the time.

You Are God Alone

…A look at the Solitariness of God…

There is no one like God. He needs nothing. He is self-contained and self-sufficient. Unlike us, who depend so much on our God and on other people. We try to be like God in that aspect – self-reliant…but it doesn’t ever work. We come crawling back to others, whether psychologists, counselors, doctors – we depend on them to help us.

But God? He needs nothing. He was under no obligation to create us, or anything else, and He didn’t NEED us for anything. He didn’t create us because He could gain something from us. He created us to manifest the glory He already possesses. Here’s the example Pink gives in his book. Someone finds a watch in the sand. He determines that there was a watch-maker. That’s acceptable. But then, he continues by trying to determine the personality, etc. of the watch-maker. He is trying to bring him down to a finite comprehension, when all along, he really knows nothing of the watch-maker other than that he must have created the watch. He can’t claim to know the watch-maker. He can’t claim anything about him. Yet we try to do that with God, don’t we? We try to infer what He is like and what His qualities are, often without going to the absolute source where God makes Himself known. And He only makes known that which He wants to. He reveals only that which is necessary for us to know. His greatness is unsearchable. His kingdom has no end. We cannot, as finite beings, comprehend anything infinite. Yet that is exactly who God is. And He has given us the grace to understand a fraction – a tiny sliver – of who He is, because He is that loving. He doesn’t want us to walk blindly and to trust blindly, yet He also realizes that we have no ability to truly comprehend who He is and His solitariness. We can’t understand something so infinite, but we can use what we have been given to understand what He chooses to make known to us.

I am so thankful to have a God I can’t comprehend. If I could, He would be finite. And that is not who I want my God to be. Do I get frustrated easily? Yes. Do I want to understand everything about God? Of course – I’m human and for some reason I think that knowing everything about God would make it easier for me to follow Him. But God, in His ultimate and infinite wisdom, knows that is not true and allows me to only understand the very minimum, and to have faith in Him for the rest of it.

Shiny Baubles

Yep. That’s me. The queen of distractions. The queen of shiny things. The queen of reaching and grasping for ANYTHING in a desperate attempt to not have to face the gravity of what I should be facing.

I’m trying to change that. I’m trying to become a person who is not afraid to look my rottenness in the face and stick my tongue out at it, knowing that I can deal with it God’s way and move on with my life.

It’s not easy though. It’s not easy to erase a lifetime of distracting myself and habits that I’ve created in order to escape. But slowly, I’m starting to understand what I need to do in order to take sin seriously. I’ve been learning a lot about God’s holiness and his justice and what that really means. I read a lot about it last summer, but since then I’ve been kind of sliding along without really thinking about what it means for God to be HOLY. Really holy. And just. And righteous. But GOD is the standard. He is what I have to measure up to. He is the definition of everything good and holy and perfect, and there is no way I can EVER measure up to that standard. And yet God CALLS me to be perfect. He CALLS me to be holy as HE is holy! How is that even possible?

Well, it only comes through my response to my own sin. I can’t even start to become more like God until I recognize that I DON’T measure up, and that I NEED to respond to my sin. If I constantly distract myself so that I don’t have to take it seriously, I’m actually distancing myself from God. I’m purposely creating an uncrossable gap between me and my holy God, because I am refusing to recognize that I need to measure up to GOD’S standard.

On the flip side, if I confront my sin seriously, and recognize how I have failed to measure up to perfection, it is encouraging because God offers me immediate forgiveness if I just confess. If I admit that I didn’t measure up to God’s standard, and if I make a 180 degree turn away from that, God gently forgives me and lifts me up one little step on the ladder to His holiness.

It is only through His CONSTANT forgiveness that I am made to be more like Him.

And that is definitely something I want to take seriously.

As of Now

As of now, I am desiring to love more purely, give less selfishly, take more willingly, and pray more sincerely.

 

As of now, I am determined to recognize my downfalls and take them seriously, instead of looking to distractions of some sort or another so that I don’t have to think about them.

 

As of now, I am making the choice to spend less time thinking about myself and far more time thinking about God.

 

As of now, I am realizing that it will take a lot of practice to get there.

 

As of now, I refuse to condemn myself for not growing fast enough.

 

As of now, my opinion doesn’t matter; only God’s does.

 

As of now, God wins. I lose. I resolve to not constantly fight God and try to defend my useless arguments.

 

As of now.

Accountability

I read an article on accountability a couple days ago for counseling. It was actually really, really good and made me think a LOT about the whole idea of having “accountability partners” as a Christian. Yes, I’ve heard the term a LOT before, and I’ve even loosely “used” some of my friends as accountability partners. I say “loosely” because after reading this article, I’ve discovered that my idea of an accountability partner is totally flawed. Yet it’s what the majority of people think it is. This article gave me a new understanding of the term and what it means to have an “AP”. (That’s what I’m going to call it because it’s too hard to type out the whole word every time, and I’m lazy!)

 

Christians need accountability. That’s a given. We all know that. Really, everyone needs accountability. But what does that mean? I’ll tell you what it does NOT mean, but what we usually think it means. It doesn’t mean a person who will ask you what you’ve been doing or thinking. It doesn’t mean someone who will be on your back to get you to confess your struggles to them so they can pray for you, etc. Accountability is ACTIVE, not PASSIVE. I’m going to quote Philip Huber in his article. “Without recognizing it, accountability can easily become a way of abdicating responsibility. In asking you to hold me accountable, you become the active agent and I become the object, or recipient, of that action. This passivity can be a set up for blame-shifting. Recently I heard of a fallen brother blaming his accountability partners for their failure to hold him up to adequate scrutiny. If they had asked the right questions at the right time in the right way with the right persistence he wouldn’t have fallen. That is, after all, why he asked them to hold him accountable.”

 

How many times have I done this myself? A thousand, I’m sure, if once. But that’s not how it’s supposed to be. I am responsible for my own actions – no one else. It is MY responsibility to go to my AP and tell them what is going on. I need to take the ACTIVE role, not the blaming, dependent role that I’ve used to often. Like weightlifting – a good spotter won’t intervene too quickly. He’ll let you struggle and offer encouragement, but he won’t intervene until absolutely necessary, and even then, he won’t lift the whole bar, he’ll only take on the minimal weight to help you get out of the situation.

 

I also need to be as detailed as possible. Going to my AP and telling them, “hey, I’m struggling with pride” is NOT going to help me. They’re not there to drag information out of me. They are there to offer support when I absolutely desperately need it, and encouragement. If I’m going to play the active role, I need to be specific. I need to say, “hey, on Tuesday morning, I was struggling with my pride because I was trying to do xyz perfectly by myself and not asking God for help. Can  you pray that I’ll be able to ask Him for help and not try to do xyz alone and on my own strength?”

 

That is specifics. That is detailed. That’s what I need to get used to doing. It’s not up to my AP to continually ask me questions and pry things out of me so that I can place the blame somewhere else other than myself. If I’m struggling with something or sinning, I need to take the steps to change that, and one of those steps is talking to an AP or someone close about what it was that I was doing and how I need to change.

 

Anyhow, those are just some of my thoughts from reading Huber’s article. I have misused the accountability process in order to shift the blame anywhere other than myself, when that is the only place it ever needed to be placed. I’m sure a lot of other people have done this as well, or there wouldn’t be such a screwed up system and definition of accountability partners. But let’s just say that I’m going to definitely work on this and try to change my perspective. I need to hold MYSELF accountable first and foremost. I need to search MY OWN heart and my OWN thoughts and respond how God would want me to. Having the extra support of an accountability partner is meant to strengthen both them and me, and not to be a way to blame others for my own failures.

Saturday Night

I’m tired. My head hurts. And I’m content.

 

Do those go together? I think they can. Along with a lot of other things. I have so much going on right now with finishing up work training and trying to keep everything straight that I have to do. But I’m still content in all of it. Even in the middle of panicky nights, uncertainties, stress, memorization, and general craziness, I’m still joyful. Content.

 

And you know why? Because God is good.

It’s not quite as simple as that, and yet it is. God is good. He is in control. He knows what is best for me, and since I am His, He will not let anything happen to me outside of His sovereign will. And if He’s ordained it, then He’s got a way out for me if it’s something bad. And if it’s something good…well, then. 🙂

 

I’m learning. It’s a process. But it’s a good one, I think. I am learning to wait on God. To rest in Him. And to trust Him. Trusting Him means not worrying about ANYTHING because He has it in His hands. That is total trust. Do I suck at it? Yup. Lots of times. But all He asks is that I let Him pick me back up and keep going.

 

Psalm 130:5-6 says “I wait for the Lord. My soul waits for the Lord, and in His Word willI hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning. Indeed, more than watchmen for the morning.”

 

Wait.

 

 

Fluff

Hiya. So this post is maybe going to be kind of fluffy. The last couple have been sort of deep, I guess. So…what’s my excuse for not blogging at ALL last week and most of this week?

 

I have one. I promise.

 

The BCTC was last week – that’s the Biblical Counseling Training Conference for those who didn’t know. I spent the majority of the week in the “dungeon” or as I liked to call it, the catacombs, working on splicing mp3s and burning master CDs for the other guys to make millions of copies of to sell to conference guests. Ok, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t millions, but it sure seemed like it. Along with that, though, I got the awesome opportunity to attend a few sessions (yay!) and also to listen to chunks of different sessions as I perused the mp3s for coughs, sneezes, huge gaping gaps (is that redundant?), and other oddities. It was an amazing conference, from my end at least, and I am SO looking forward to possibly attending it next year.

 

And this week? Well, I got this thing called a job. I know, I know…it’s been a while. But anyhow, this said job requires some “intense” or “long” training, so I have been busy trying to juggle that as well as keep up with my phase II work and other homework. I’ve been reading some good books.

 

Last weekend I took a trip to I-O-W-A – home of the Boone County combine demolition derby (it’s in July, and yes, I’m going!). I got to spend some AMAZING time with people I haven’t seen for – oh, eight months or longer. There was a lot of teasing, mocking, and general pee-your-pants laughing. Like I said, amazing. I love my girls. Then it was back here to Lafayette to get ready for a busy week. And here I am on Thursday, feeling like I haven’t done squat this week, but I think I really have – I just have so much to do that it feels like I haven’t hardly put a dent in it!

 

On the happy side, I went to Meijer yesterday and picked up a couple things I needed. And a couple that I wanted. My earbuds for my iPod were kaput, so I found some “mostly” inexpensive and super cute pink ones to replace them. So now the whole world can’t hear my music PLUS I can take them out of my ears without them breaking and me having to put them back together! YAYS! I also got a receipt organizer, since I have to keep all of them and I have a tendency to lose things unless I have a specific place for them. And my new drug of choice – Tic Tacs. I can’t chew gum anymore and I’m tired of having onion-garlic breath almost every day until 8pm. So, I got my some Tic Tacs. AAAANNNDDD……let’s see. I know I got SOMETHING pointless, I just can’t remember what! Oh, a Cadbury Cream Egg!!! They’re OUT! Easter candy is OUT! That means PEEPS. And MICROWAVING PEEPS…..if I can talk the interns into letting me.

 

Anyhow. I need to start setting up a plan to pay back my bills, since I got my tax return and I’ll start making money sometime in the next month. I have more training to get through before I can officially start work, and they don’t pay me for training. (Yes, that sounds harsh, but if I took the time to explain it to you, it would make perfect sense!)

 

That’s about all I have for now. The next post will probably be the next chapter summary of “Slave”…which I am off to read.

 

Peace out, yo!