the cave...

It's Tuesday... and for nearly nine years of my life Tuesdays have been dedicated to FCA at Methodist. I was the nerd who e-mailed the Methodist FCA advisor when I was in high school to get more information on the group, but it was a group I felt comfortable with and thought might help my transition to college spiritually. My dad was already lining up phone numbers and addresses to southern baptist churches and I wasn't sure I wanted to do anything he suggested but FCA could be mine. I had led FCA at my high school and I felt like I fit there.

When I arrived at Methodist, I moved into my room in Weaver Hall and every time I went up or down the stairs, I passed the door to "the cave" where FCA met. At some point I convinced my roommate to go with me and the first Tuesday night we crept down to the basement not having a clue what to expect. It blew my expectations out of the water. I don't think we talked to anyone and as soon as it was over we scampered back up the stairs to our room, but we couldn't stop talking about it. The cave walls were painted black, there were couches and cushions everywhere and a band of students played worship music and yet nothing felt like church. During the last song, the lights went out and the walls and ceiling lit up with glow in the dark stars. Between the darkness... the stars... and the chorus of voices around me I couldn't stop grinning. As much as soccer drew me to Methodist, it was the cave where I fell in love.

The stars were a perfect way for me to get away from the distractions of the day... to clear my head and worship. I have such fond memories from the cave... and thankfully one video I will treasure forever.

When I came back to Methodist a few years later, FCA was in the process of out growing the cave and has since moved to a huge space ready to accommodate hundreds of students. Of course I still think we fit just as many students in the cozy cave, but evidently the fire marshal doesn't consider packing a hundred students into the basement a good idea. We're at the point now where none of the current students had the opportunity to experience the cave. I try to remember it's not about the building or the space, but I'm also determined to never forget my experiences in the cave. I grew so much there... as a Christian... as a person... and as a friend. I miss the cave.

giving...

There are a ton of charities and non-profit organizations... a ton of good ones. Sometimes it can be very overwhelming to hear all of the good things they are doing and not be able to help everyone.

I've written before about supporting Compassion through my sponsorship of Juliet in Ghana. For more than a year now, I've been sending money and letters to Juliet hoping to make a difference in her life.

On Thursday night, a non-profit group, Invisible Children, came to Methodist to share their story. "In the spring of 2003, three young filmmakers traveled to Africa in search of a story. What started out as a filmmaking adventure transformed into much more when these boys from Southern California discovered a tragedy that disgusted and inspired them, a tragedy where children are both the weapons and the victims." (from invisiblechildren.com) I went as a favor... and honestly a little bit of a skeptic not sure what I'd feel at the end of it.

Instead, I spent an hour engaged in their film... laughing and crying. There was a part of me that could have quit my job right then and there and signed up to become a roadie. Instead, I bought a bracelet and went home to watch tv. Is that enough? 

Check out an introduction to Tony...

Tony Bracelet: Trailer from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

Tony's story is hard to hear in and of itself. His mom died of HIV and we watched them dig her grave and cover it up. Yet, it was Nate's story that really broke me. His personality and energy seemed so contagious and he was really making a difference. I can only pray his story will be used to help more people.

Read more about Nate

There are so many more worthwhile charities I could share including World Vision (world poverty and hunger), the Home Foundation (human trafficking) and Houses of Hope (orphan homes in Africa). The question usually comes up about why we spend so much time and money helping people in other countries when there are so many Americans struggling right here "in our own backyard." I think there is plenty for us to do here, but I also believe in not neglecting our neighbors. Right here in Fayetteville, I have the opportunity to donate to my church, my alma mater, and Operation Inasmuch just to name a few. There are so many other organizations across America working to help people... we could be here all day listing them.

All of this to say, one of my favorite organizations ever is FCA... or Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I've been a part of FCA since high school and it's been well documented how much of an impact the group has had on my life. Recently I've had the pleasure of meeting one of our local FCA rep's Quinn Evans... I have been truly inspired by everything she is doing through FCA. The coolest thing about Quinn's story these days is her ability to serve not only in her "backyard" of the North Carolina Triangle... but is now taking FCA overseas to serve our neighbors.

The moral of my story... we can't give everything to everyone, but we should give what we can... whether it's time... money or some other resources... people need us. And as a Christian, I believe God has asked us to and while I don't want it to ever be my only reason, I want to be obedient. Let's give...

filling up...

I have such mixed feelings speaking at FCA. I love FCA, therefore anything I can do to help I want to do. I also have the perfectionist in me wanting to do everything just right, reaching the most amount of people in the biggest way. Somehow I stumbled through another night with an awesome group of students there to encourage me as much as I was trying to encourage them...

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I watched a movie last month called, “To Save a Life.” It’s a low budget movie similar to Facing the Giants or Fireproof with a great message. I asked if we could stretch my time to speak tonight to about two hours so I could just show the movie, but I got shut down. Without giving away the movie, it opens by sharing a high school kid Roger’s struggles. You eventually get to see his blog he posted on myspace… yes I said myspace... anyone still have a myspace?? Ok sidetracked, back to my point. Roger wrote…

Some of you heard that kid and immediately classified him as a weird loner kid with no friends. Some of you heard him and wondered how he knew exactly what you were thinking. I spend a lot of time talking to students and trying to sort through what’s being said and what they’re really thinking. I have an enormous passion for college students, especially Methodist students.

Not too long ago, I was a student at Methodist trying to navigate this transition from high school kid to independent adult. I vividly remember my own experience… the good days, the bad days, the friends I made, the heartbreak I went through. I pray every day something I’ve gone through can help someone else experiencing the same thing.

Lately I’ve noticed many of us are living in a ton of empty relationships with people. I don’t necessarily mean dating relationships, (I already aired out all of that dirty laundry last year!) but just the relationship in terms of how we relate to people. How many people do you really have here at Methodist that you can talk to? Not talk to as in do homework together or play baseball together or share the latest gossip… I mean really talk to… to share what’s really going on in your life. Most of us have at least 200 facebook friends, but how many could you really call a “friend”? There are a ton of people we take pictures with at Izzy’s or the latest house party but how many do you really know? We sit in here an hour a week and hopefully have a good time, but sometimes we leave not even knowing the names of the people sitting around us.

Sometimes I try so hard to act like I don’t care what people think that I’m faking that I don’t care.  I don’t know about all of you but I feel like there is such a natural inclination to put on masks and hide from reality or keep a protective barrier between us and reality.  We surround ourselves with people, but they really don’t know who we are.  Some of you are walking around this campus faking it.  We pass on the way to class and I ask you how you’re doing and you say fine when really you just bombed a test or just had a fight with your boyfriend.  Sometimes we spend our nights in alcohol because we feel safer, but alcohol can just become another mask that lets us be someone else or lets us forget who we are.  We have athlete masks, party masks, Christian masks, class clown masks, slutty masks, etc. depending on who we want to be that day around which people.  I think sometimes we subconsciously stop before we enter a building to check our mask.  How many of us threw on the FCA mask before walking in tonight?  Some of us walk around claiming to be Christians but we’re doing more acting than we are being.  We spend a lot of time doing the right things… we go to church, we do community service, we put Jesus fish on the backs of our cars, we might even read our Bibles or tell our friends about God… all things that are fine and good.  But God didn’t ask you to do things to make you look like Christ.  He has asked us to get to know Him and through our relationship with God we can be a Christian without having to worry about looking like one.  In theory, we wouldn’t need a churchy Jesus mask to be a Christian.  If that’s who we are, it is a part of who we are without a mask.

College is an opportunity to figure out who we are, but too often we pick and choose masks and just interchange them to fit our audience without ever getting to know ourselves let alone, let someone else get to know us. In my experience we can be our own worst enemy. Henri Nouwen said, “The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, ‘Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.’ ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’”

I believe God has called us to be completely satisfied in Him. I struggle with just giving you the churchy answer… go to church, read the bible and pray about it and you’ll feel good about yourself and have lots of healthy relationships. I believe all of those things are great things… but I also believe God knows our motivation and doing those things to cross them off of a to-do list or how to be a good person list are not his goals. 

Of course the opposite of having empty relationships is having relationships that take over who you are. I stole a quote from Beach last week that said, “People always think that the most painful thing in life is losing the one you value, but the truth is the most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of valuing someone too much and forgetting that you are special too.”

I have lost track of the number of people who have lost themselves in a relationship… myself included. We find our best friend or our adorable boyfriend and invest everything in it usually ditching everyone along the way including ourselves. Once upon a time I felt like I found the perfect best friend. We talked every day… we helped each through hard times… I was so relieved to have someone here I could talk to about some of the hard questions about being a Christian and really felt like I was a priority to them. I couldn’t even begin to list the number of times we dug each other out of sucky situations knowing we would have someone to stick by us no matter what. I really believed God had blessed our friendship… helping us at the perfect time. Unfortunately, the friendship didn’t last. But even more unfortunately, I was far too invested in the friendship as it absolutely broke me. I would do anything for my friends, but I have found I need to draw boundaries to remember where I stop and they begin. I cannot be defined by the people in my life. There’s a balance between being selfish and selfless.

I happen to love Romans 12 from the Message translation with Paul’s suggestions…

 9-10 Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

 11-13 Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

 14-16 Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down. Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody.

There is a ton of meat in there. Most of it we probably already know, but could use a reminder to put it into practice. There are some do’s and don’ts and I think by doing some things, the others become easier. Loving people who are easy to love is simple. Paul challenges us to get real, stop faking and make the choice to love, even when we don’t feel like it. A lot of the time, love really is a choice. We can’t always feel love for everyone, but we can choose to show love sincerely, in our actions and words.

Just some things that stick out to me… “practice playing second fiddle” or 12^th fiddle. Sometimes we have to lower ourselves from number one and sometimes other people put us there. I’m all about the underdog believing God will bless our humility. “Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame...” A tad obvious in order to not burn out we need to stay aflame, but I’ll let that one go and remind us to gas up. I am constantly reminding myself to not “quit in hard times” and I have a house full of empty beds and futons I hope is considered “inventive hospitality.” I promise I have the part down about “laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy” and “share tears when they’re down.” I am queen crier and am practicing becoming a pretty crier so it’s not so awkward. One of my favorites is, “don’t be the great somebody.” I feel like it is instinctive to want to be the best… especially as an athlete here at Methodist. Everyone wants to be somebody and our small campus size makes it feasible to be the great somebody here on campus, but it all circles back to the beginning of the passage to practice playing second fiddle.

One of the biggest difference makers in my life has been when I let go. I want to share a short news story with you… really a miracle.

Can you imagine? I’ve never been skydiving before so I couldn’t even begin to explain the rush a person feels through the free fall after jumping out of a plane. I have no idea what it feels like to be flying towards the ground with no parachute. I can’t at all imagine what Shirley and Dave went through pulling not one, but two parachute cords and just ending up with a tangled mess above them. I have a feeling I’d wet my pants for sure! The coolest part of this story is Dave maneuvering the control toggles in a way that allowed him to switch positions with Shirley. They were spiraling out of control, Dave took her place to break her fall and spared Shirley any permanent damage.

Did you catch the connection? How often do we feel like we’re spiraling out of control? Maybe so much so like Roger I mentioned in the beginning. So what do we do? We can scream and flail about asking why me God? Or we can lift up our feet and let Him switch positions so that when we hit bottom, He will take the brunt of the fall. God never promised we wouldn’t hit bottom, but will never leave us during the fall… He wants to cushion our landing.

I have a couple of challenges for you…

1. Seek out real relationships in your life. Sit and talk to someone about something that matters and facebook doesn’t count.

2. Know when to let go. If you’re feeling like your life is spiraling out of control, know when to let go and let God take the control toggles from you.  

"May we love like you love and may our hearts stay broken for what breaks your's..."