2013 Likes and Dislikes

As the New Year approaches, it’s always a good time to reflect over the last year and make some goals for the new year.  I came across a post that had resolution ideas.  One of the ideas was to make a list of things I loved about this past year.  I decided to make a list of things I loved and things I disliked as a way to reflect over the past year.

Things I Loved about 2013

• Adventure Camp with international students (hiking, fishing, kayaking etc.)
• Being introduced to the music of Ben Rector
• Freedom from a confined schedule and work environment/starting a new journey
• Seeing God provide in extravagant ways
• Traveling internationally with my mom
• Frequenting Burgess Falls
• A sleepover at my friend Mashaael’s house
• A deepening friendship with Sindy
• Cabin weekend with the girls
• Watching all the Harry Potter movies with my mom
• Incorporating more candles and keyboard time into my life
• Harry Potter World (aka Universal Studios) with Crystal
• Discovering Matt Chandler
• Discovering ‘Come Thou Fount’ has five verses
• My nephew inspired new nickname, ‘Cocoa’
• Many Sunday introvert Sabbaths
• Psalm 46
• Discovering ilikegiving.com
• Frequenting Dogwood Park
• My first ever Staycation
• Book Club Sisters
• Summer time veggies
• Free DVD checkouts from the library
• Laser tag birthday party
• Morning sun washed walls
• Extra family time
• Being single
• The Gathering Band EP

Things I Disliked about 2013

• Trying to adjust to a non-confined schedule as a meticulous planner
• Having to depend on God to provide 
• Abundant Seminary reading
• The time consuming nature of my classes
• Constant headaches
• Cold fall and winter months
• An inconsistent schedule and small chunks of times interrupting ability to get a lot finished
• Mashaael moving to California
• Busy work, stress, frustration, and insecurities in accomplishing my goal
• Minimally employed yet to quote my dad, “busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.”

Five most meaningful blog posts/lessons of the last year

These are the posts that have stuck with me over the last year.  I have perused these words for the sake of my own soul several times.  

1.  Wedding Musings

2.  New Adventure

3.  I'll Bleed My Heart Empty

4.  Finding Eden

5.  Far As the Curse is Found

Five most popular posts

1.  Wedding Musings

2.  My Grandpa, the Pirate

3.  How Cando the Christmas _____ Card Began

4.  What to Do When a Tree Falls on Your Car

5.  Why I Quit Reading the Bible

  

How Cando the Christmas ______ Card Began

Many of you have received a Christmas card from me over these past few years.  Others have seen my craziness displayed on Facebook.  There are still others who first saw a card and then later met me exclaiming, “Oh, you’re Cando the ______!  I saw your picture at ______’s house."  

I thought it would be fun to give some background on where this started.  I spent two years working at a party store.  We also sold a ton of greeting cards and it was my job to order and stock the cards.  After a while the whole greeting card industry became a bit ridiculous.  I stocked cards addressed to:

Mom

Dad

Parents

Friend

Nephew

Grandmother

The Postman

the dog

From the cat to the dog

You get the point.  Little old ladies would come in and buy stacks and stacks of cards to send to each relative/pet.  It seemed to be so impersonal.  I resolved to be done with the silly things.  

Then one day I found a silly picture of myself and decided to glue it onto a piece of cardstock.  I decided that if I was going to give a greeting card, I would make it memorable, make it so the person never wanted to toss my card in the trash.  Below are a few birthday cards I sent:

I am the birthday fairy.  When I tap you with my wand
you get one year older.  Oh my!  I must have beaten
the crap out of you. (borrowed from another card)

I would sing Happy Birthday to you but I'm a little horse. (also borrowed)

I sent this for a friend born on St. Patrick's Day.

I made a rule to never give the same card twice.  I also decided that I would sit down at the beginning of the month and make cards for all the January birthdays.  This became problematic and laborious when I ran out of creative juices.  It also didn’t help that I forgot about making the February cards until March.  I quickly ran out of steam and my card making days came to a halt.  

Then one year around Christmas time, I was sitting around thinking about life.  I somehow found myself wearing reindeer antlers.  I mused that I could send out a single card to all my friends at Christmas time and it wouldn't be so time intensive.  I also decided that I would only do it if I could make them laugh with it.  So my first Christmas card looked like this:  

2008

Only a small handful of people received that first card.  I was testing out the reactions to see if those few people enjoyed the card.  They did.  Most thought it was hilarious and a few thought it was creepily funny.  The following years are below:

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013 - From the island of misfit toys on Rudolph.

2014

2015

2016

2017

Far As the Curse is Found

Joy to the World!

The Lord is Come!

Let earth receive her King!

That little babe that was born so long ago, didn’t just come to make a good story.  He didn’t come so that 2,000 years later we would have plastic figurines to place in our yards of mangers and animals and a tiny baby.  He didn’t come just to live a good life.  He came as King.  He came to live and die and then come back to life to CONTINUE to reign as King.  He came to eliminate sin in our lives.  He came to bring blessing and light and life and hope and joy and peace and love to every single dark-filled, curse breeding place on this planet.    

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found,

Far as the curse is found,

Far as, far as, the curse is found.

"The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened."  -Matthew 13:33

Oh, Jesus.  May You come with power this advent season and fill all the dark places in this world with Your light.  May You fill all the places of hatred with Your love.  May You fill all the places of despair with Your hope.  May You fill all the dead places with abundant life.  May You fill all the places of fear and unrest with Your peace.  May You fill all the places of misery and sorrow with Your joy.  Like the leaven, may you come and invade and take over lands and hearts in this world and make us like You.  And finally, please come and make Your blessings flow far as the curse is found.  

Anticipation

Today begins the season of anticipation.  I wait not for shiny new gifts that I will grow tired of in mere months.  I wait instead for the day set aside to celebrate the birth of a King who came to bring salvation and to restore all things that the fall ruined in this world.  

I am celebrating by reading through Ann Voskamp’s Jesse Tree again this year.  Another way I wait in anticipation is by focusing on meaningful phrases from Christmas Carols.  The phrase for today was:

“Light and life to all He brings.”

I love this phrase because it reminds me that Jesus didn’t come to make us good or save us from being bad.  He came to give us life and to save us from the death that sin brings. 

5,000 Gifts

5,000 gifts and still counting.  Check them out at my here when you have a chance.  You may be one of my gifts!

Oxymoron Pt 3 - Popular/Easy = Destruction

Thus far in this series, I have discussed the oxymorons of Righteous Sinner and Free Slave.  My last oxymoron:  the popular road is easy and leads to destruction.

“Enter by the narrow gate.  For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.  For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”  -Matthew 7:13-14

This passage has been haunting me for weeks.  Somehow our American Christian culture has conveyed this idea that following Jesus is easy.  All you need to do is say a prayer, believe he died and in turn you can go to heaven, your life will be better and you get free passage into heaven.  This is true to a certain extent but as discussed in my last post, it is only half of the truth.  The rest of the truth is that in order to gain this life, we must die the death of self and become slaves of Christ.

C.S. Lewis said,

“He, [mankind] had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself.  In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.  Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor - that is the only way out of our ‘hole’.  This process of surrender - is what Christians call repentance.  Now repentance is not fun at all.  It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie.  It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years.  It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. - Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like.  If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back.  It cannot happen.”

So life with Jesus means our initial death.  It also means that the way will be hard not easy and that it will not be the popular path.  If you are a Christian and life seems to be mostly comfortable and easy for yourself and your friends or that following Jesus has cost you little and had little impact on your life, it may mean you are on the popular path that leads to destruction.  The reason this passage haunts me so much is that first, few find the path that leads to life.  A few doesn't mean most.  I would guess it means less than 10%.  The other reason I am haunted is that as John MacArthur says, 

“The wide gate is not marked ‘This Way to Hell’; it is labeled ‘heaven,’ the same as the narrow gate.  It just doesn’t go there.”  

I am not saying that all roads lead to Heaven.  What I am saying is that the enemy is crafty in his deceit and has labeled many roads "Heaven" that in reality lead to Hell.  I remember my dad telling me about a dream he once had.  There was a path in the center with stairs that went up and up and up.  On the sides were these downhill trails and he chose the downhill trails because they were easier.  The problem was that every downhill trail led to a dead end and he would have to backtrack to the stair path.  He realized that the only acceptable path was the hard one up all those stairs.  

Yes, the gate that leads to life is a hard way.  It doesn’t mean that we have to walk a hard way to reach life or do a bunch of good first to earn favor.  Entering the narrow gate is our life.  Jesus has already paid for our ticket into the gate but life from that point will be hard and the Holy Spirit will walk with us along that hard path helping to strengthen us and enabling us to finish the long arduous journey. 

I have spent the last month or so learning about a world religion and Eastern culture.  In the East, many people place a higher value on honor than truth.  Many will adhere to a known deception if it means gaining the favor and honor of their families.  They prefer the deception to truth that will be accompanied by shame and being ostracized by their families.  I heard of a man who on his deathbed believed the truths about Jesus but refused to follow because it meant his family would disown him and he would die his last days alone.  The cost was too great for him.  I heard of another man who likewise believed the Bible but has yet to follow Jesus because he will not do so until he is willing to abandon all.  The only remedy for this man and many others in this shame/honor part of the world is that they truly encounter the glory of God.  When a person sees God for who he truly is, lesser affections will melt away in light of greater affections.  Like the parable of the hidden treasure in Matthew 13:44, with joy, a person will abandon all to get the greater treasure of eternal life and abundant life now in Jesus.  

My goal today has been to be a pebble in your shoe, or a slight irritation that you can't ignore.  Do you call yourself a Christian?  Have you died the death to yourself?  Have you abandoned all to follow Jesus?  Is this an ongoing abandonment?  Are you comfortable?  Have you truly encountered the glory of God in such a way that with joy you gladly abandon all to gain Christ even if it were to eventually mean you would die alone in this life?  Will you be one of the few who find the hard and narrow way that leads to life?  

“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” -Phil 2:12

“Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith.  Test yourselves.  Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? - unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” -2 Corinthians 13:5

“Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.” -2 Peter 1:10

I do not pretend to think that a person can lose their salvation.  I do think that some people are on the path labeled “Heaven” that is actually leading to Hell and don’t know it.  This whole time they think they’re on their way to Heaven but it’s been the wrong path the whole time.  

As always if you have questions, feel free to comment below or email me at lookingforgreenergrasses@gmail.com 

I'll Bleed My Heart Empty

I have been on a new journey for quite some time now.  For years now I have hoped to move to ‘The Land that I Love‘ to live a life of light and truth amidst darkness.  I recently visited ‘The Land that I Love‘ and as I flew home, I was resolved more than ever to live there.  As I flew, I listened to the words my friend had written and thought of this place and people.  I later discovered that he was also thinking of this place and these people as he wrote the words:

We’re bleeding for answers that no one can know

Sheltered by doubts and we’re left all alone

Left all alone

But you are the truth, God, in you and you alone

In you there’s a fire that no one has known

No one as known 

Be the fire, be the fire that burns up the night

Be the hope, be the hope that gives us new life

Be the song, be the song that rescues the world

As I flew, I knew that I wanted to be a part of the answers, to no longer leave people alone with doubts, confusion, and unanswered questions.  I want to share the fire of truth that will burn up the night and give new life and rescue.  The bridge in the song says:

I’ll bleed my heart empty if you’ll fill it up again

I’ll bleed my heart empty if you fill it up

I’ll bleed my heart empty if you fill it up again

And again as I sung those words my mind, heart and soul in unison, I was reminded again that He is indeed Worthy. 

The trip showed me that me moving there is becoming more and more of a reality and that my time in Cookeville could come to an end as early as July.  That night, heart, soul, mind in unison I told God that I offer myself on the altar for him to do with my life as he pleases.  

All these thoughts have made me sentimental.  I typed out an email to some very dear friends of mine letting them know how much I love them and am thankful for them.  Realizing we won’t always live a block away meant I didn’t finish the email without shedding some tears.  A wise woman told me recently that when you feel like grieving, you should do it right away.  And so I grieved and my grieving turned into worship.  

I found myself in awe that God would count me worthy of so many great and treasured friendships.  I found myself in awe that God would count me worthy of the spilling of the blood of his Son.  Awed that He would count me worthy to participate in his ministry of reconciliation.  Humbled that he would consider taking my offered life on the altar and actually use me in spite of all my insufficiencies and weaknesses.  I realized that sacrifice is not so much about having to give up something but rather it’s about getting to give.  

Do you understand the magnitude of all of this?  I found myself uncontrollably weeping yesterday, not because of grief but because of indescribable JOY!  We have nothing to offer, NOTHING outside of our sin.  We are despicable and rightly deserve to face the full fury of God’s wrath.  We have nothing that would cause God to pity us or love us.  We are wretched, every one of us, living in utter rebellion against him.  It would be like us humans gathering an army of cockroaches and bringing them into our homes as pets, feeding them and teaching them to do our work and loving them and dying for the little pests.  

And yet he came near... 

out of love... 

and spilled his blood... 

to wash us clean... 

and make us his sons and daughters... 

and give us life...

and restore us into his image once again...

and invite us to participate in his work.

It is scandalous and unthinkable and yet it is true.  Hallelujah, what a Savior!  So I will gladly bleed my heart empty for the one who opened up his veins and bled them dry for me.  It is a privilege and I am humbled.

Oxymoron Pt 2 - Free Slave

In my last post I gave examples of biblical oxymorons.  I ended with the scandalous oxymoron that in Christ we are Righteous Sinners.  Following Jesus and taking his righteousness is a pretty sweet deal but it is not one that comes without a cost.  In order to take this deal, a person must give up their rights and become Christ’s slave.  In Luke 14, Jesus talks about the cost of following him.  To follow him, a person must place him over family, must be willing to die to themselves and must renounce all.  He said that those who are unwilling to make those sacrifices cannot be his disciple or benefit from his righteousness.  The Greek word used for this concept of slavery is doulos.  According to John MacArthur it meant “a person who was literally owned by a master who could legally force him to work without wages.  In other words a doulos was a person without standing or rights."  When we choose to follow Jesus, he becomes our Master and we become his slave.  

By giving ourselves over to be slaves of Christ, we become this oxymoron called Free Slaves.  To borrow the words of Edwin Yamauchi,

“It means that we have been captured, beaten, and enslaved.  We discover, however, that our captor is a Despot [Dictator] of love and mercy.  Neither is there anything slavish or servile about our slavehood, for we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear but the spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15).  Nor has our reduction to slavery been a debasement or an abasement... We have been elevated to serve in a heavenly court and have been invested with a higher nature.  [It also] reminds us of our ransom from another master at an incredible price.  It was not with the fabulous sums of all the royal estates we were bought, nor was it for handsome features or some prized skill we were purchased.  But rather unlovely, without any merit, rebellious at heart, we were redeemed with the precious blood of the Master Himself.  Having thus been bought by Christ we are entirely His.” 

To follow Christ and submit to him as a slave, we become the freest people alive.  He not only pays for our sin and give us his righteousness but he also begins to kill the indwelling rebellion that lives inside of us freeing us from anger, selfishness, rage, impatience, mistrust, fear and replaces those sins with his nature of love, selflessness, patience, joy, trust, hope, peace, self control, kindness.  We are free to walk in abundance of life and are weighed down by death less and less.

Check out this oxymoronic song in preparation for the last post in this series.  

I believe in the love of God
It is an orphan's wildest dream
It is a narrow little road
It is an ever-widening desert stream

It is portrayed in the bread and wine
Let it fortify my bones
It is more than just a sign
It is the fountain from that desert stone

It is the path where the humble go
It is the narrow not the broad
It is the pathway down the hill
To the graveyard of the living God

The love of God is the hymn of hope
Let the needy join the throng
Let the widow hear and cope
Let the crippled rise to sing this song

I will leave this road for the narrow

Click here for Oxymoron Part 3

Oxymoron War Part 1

ox.y.mo.ron noun \ˌäk-sē-ˈmȯr-ˌän\ - a combination of words that have opposite or very different meanings.  

In my recent travels, this sign became a conversation piece.  Note the contradictory nature of the words.  How can something be both genuine and fake at the same time?

It reminded me of the movie ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’.  In the movie, the main character and his father had oxymoron wars.  Check out the clip. 

  

My friend Jeremy and I had our own oxymoron war.  In the end, he won the but in my defense, I had only slept about 4 hours out of 48.  Here are a few from our war:

Icy Hot

New and Improved

Dead Man Walking

Ugly Beautiful

Adult Child

Deafening Silence

Bitter Sweet
Sweet Death

You get the point.  As we talked I began to think about how Christianity has many oxymorons.  Here are some examples:

God Man (Jn 1:1,14,18)

Resurrected from dead (Mt 28:6-7)

Blessed are the poor in spirit (Mt 5:3)

Blessed are those who mourn (Mt 5:4)

Rejoice when persecuted (Mt 5:11-12)

When slapped on the cheek, offer the other cheek to be slapped (Mt 5:39) 

Love your enemies (Mt 5:44)

Born again (Jn 3:3)

A loved/saved life will be lost (Jn 12:25, Mt 16:25

A hated life will yield eternal life (Jn 12:25)

A lost life will be found (Mt 10:39,16:25)

Death yields life (Rm 8:13, 2 Cor 5:15)

Better to give than receive (Acts 20:35)

Possibly the most scandalous biblical oxymoron is the concept of Righteous Sinner.  “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” -2 Corinthians 5:21. We are sinners and rebels.  We cannot do enough good to make up for the wicked rebellion against a perfect and holy God.  In spite of this rebellion, Jesus took our sin and gave us his righteousness making us righteous sinners.  It is scandalously beautiful.  It is illogical and yet true.  

Please comment below with your favorite oxymorons both funny and spiritual!!!

Click here for Oxymorons Part 2

The Chronicles of a Recovering Worry Wart

So my last post discussed how I feel like a princess some days because of the abundant provision of God in my life.  Before I get the reputation that I have this faith thing down pat or that I’m a superhero Christian, I want to set some things straight.  I am a recovering worry wart.  If you were to ask my mom she would let you know that I tend to stress over the tiniest of details.  She would also let you know that I have made vast improvements over the past year.

During college and the first few years after college, finances were a huge stressor in my life.  It seemed as if I was always coming up short to pay bills.  There was a season where I didn’t have a job and felt as if God was telling me to trust him.  I failed miserably.  I asked God for his help often but doubted it would come always.  I had migraines all the time and found myself teary eyed often, living at a breaking point.  God eventually gave me a good paying job and allowed me a rest from worrying about finances.  Oh to be sure I found other things to worry about but that one was eliminated for a while.  

During that season of plenty, I decided to become debt free.  I also decided to live on much less than my income so I could give to charities and other Good News centered organizations.  I also put back some money into an emergency savings account.  In essence, I tried to insulate myself from ever having to go back to that place of worry, migraines and that awful "d" word called dependence.  

During that season, there always lurked in the back of my mind the knowledge that I had never truly learned the lesson of trusting God and I would face it again.  Phase two of God’s plan to teach me to trust came April of this year.  I lost my job and quite naturally I melted down and fell into my old habit of worrying.  But this time was different.  I only stayed in that place for a day.  I owe this quick recovery to a few things including finally delighting in Scripture memory, the challenging life of Brother Andrew, and the constant habit of giving thanks.   

Giving thanks helped me to realign my focus to the abundance that is mine as opposed to the few things I lack.  The faith of Brother Andrew encouraged me to acknowledge that we have the same God and dared me to trust that God.  God's word became a part of my DNA, something that could be retrieved at any moment especially moments of crisis.  Having this easy access of the Word made me believe it and apply it more and more.  In other words, I began to put the Word into action in my life, or to put it another way, I had faith.  As a result of putting faith into action, I am finding that he has provided in neat ways.  I am learning that as I doubted and sought out my own provision, I always came up short.  In other words, God rewarded my imposed self-sufficiency with lack to show me I cannot trust in my own strength.  During this season as I have stepped out in faith, he has rewarded my active faith with abundant provision.

This process is clearly seen in the failed conquest of Canaan in Numbers 13 and 14.  In my Old Testament class, my professor did a mini-sermon on these chapters.  

Point #1:  He said those who have faith and those who lack it typically have the same experiences.  There were 12 spies sent into the land as spies.  They all saw the same thing (had the same experience) but 2 had faith and 10 did not.  In our world, there are those who have difficult circumstances and are stressing, fretting and complaining about tough times.  Others also have difficult circumstances but they have faith in God and a positive outlook on life.  Faith is a heart issue not a circumstance issue.  

Point #2:  He said another difference between the 2 and the 10 was their approach to the word of God.  Joshua and Caleb remembered God had said he would give them the land (See Exodus 3:8, 3:17, 6:4, 13:11).  The other 10 and those who lack faith will read the Bible and think, “Yes, it sounds good but ultimately I don’t believe God is trustworthy, it can’t be done.”  

Point #3:  He ended by saying those who have faith and those who do not have different endings.  Joshua and Caleb went into the Canaan land and had an inheritance there.  The other 10 wished they could die in the wilderness and they did.

I am learning that if I plant seeds of doubt, I reap the harvest of doubt, a harvest of worry, stress, and lack.  If I plant seeds of faith then I reap an abundant harvest.  

I want to end with a few disclaimers.  

1.  I used my days of plenty to eliminate debt.  I did not use my increased income to gain more debt, more material things, and continue living from paycheck to paycheck.  I maintained a frugal lifestyle living on significantly less than what I made which makes this season of minimal income seem like normal life.  In addition, the emergency savings account gave me a cushion in what would have otherwise been a time of crisis.  

2.  I am in no way promoting a gospel of prosperity: "If you just believe enough, God will make you ridiculously wealthy so you can live comfortably."  There is very little about my current season that is comfortable.  There is very little in the Bible of comfort.  God is essentially providing for my needs and a few wants to show he is Provider.  

3.  I believe that God gives abundance so a person will take care of those less fortunate than themselves rather than the person accumulating more stuff.  In my days of plenty, I was able to be a source of God's abundant provision for others and now I am the recipient of someone else's abundant giving.  It is the beautiful way of our Father that giving is a greater joy than receiving.