London Offish!

It's been exactly one month since I was approved to join the Serge family and move to London next fall to partner with a mission team for a year! This has seemed like such a long process.
It took exactly one year from the time I started talking with Serge to finally being accepted and one month to order missionary prayer cards. It will be 9 more months until I can get my visa. And another 3 months until I actually can leave for the field.

This process has been all about patience. Even in this month between acceptance and meeting with my support adviser, I have had to practice a LOT of patience. I just wanna go, go, go! But God has met me here and said "Stop. Breathe. Wait." And so, reluctantly, I have.

I am excited for you all to join me here. Know that this blog will likely be converted into my missionary manifesto in the next year. I look forward to keeping you guys updated as I move into sending out support packets, meeting with friends, seeing God provide funds, and in just 11 months, moving to England! ......Just can't wrap my head around that one quite yet.

Here's a preview of my prayer cards! 

If you'd like to receive info about what I will be doing in London, please comment here or message me on Facebook!

CHEERS!

Take My Hand

It seems to me that God likes to live in the difficulties. The times that I've struggled the most, I can't turn one way or another without seeing His presence. 

This week I went on a mission trip with the youth group I'm working with to Tuba City, Arizona--to a Navajo reservation. Now the week was incredible-getting to see a very different side of America, observing our teens in action as the hands and feet of Christ, serving alongside them as they poured their hearts into those around us. But one part of the week has circled in my mind over and over. 

Our last day in Arizona, we took a big part of the group on a hike down Jackass Canyon-part of the Grand Canyon. There was a choice to either get up at 6am for the hike or stay in Tuba, sleep in a little more and go to the Navajo market nearby. Now, for any who may not know me, I'm not the most athletically built person around. I'm pretty short, and decently round; and while I enjoy nature and doing outdoorsy stuff, I spend more time inside than going on crazy nature adventures. So I was pretty nervous when I volunteered to join the hike group, but determined not to miss out on what I was sure would be a great adventure.

Jackass Canyon

So at 6am, I donned my Nike running shoes, braided my hair back, grabbed my very stuffed Kavu filled with 6 water bottles, NutriGrain bars, and my lunch, and boarded our bus. We drove about an hour to where our trail head was, climbed through a barbed-wire fence, and began the day's journey. As we descended the canyon, the course became more challenging. The first twenty minutes were a gradual slope of a ravine-the most challenging part being trying to avoid slipping in the mud (which I nearly failed on a few different occasions). 

We hiked most of the morning in the shade, reaching our first major challenge after only an hour or so. At one point on the trail, we had to scale down a 20-30 foot rock face, using a rope anchored to the top. So while our guide got everything ready, we sat down at the top and nervously waited our turn to repel down the wall. When it was my turn, my legs quaked like crazy, scared I would slip to my death on the rocks and pool of water below. Looking back, it honestly wasn't too bad with all of the anchors' help (Thanks guys!). After everyone finished repelling down, we turned to continue on and found ourselves facing a very large water pool, leaving us only two options-both included shuffling along the sides of the canyon and hoping we didn't fall into the murky waters below. 

Repelling wall

Now that those challenges were over, surely we had to have been almost there! After all, he said it was only 2-3 miles down to the Colorado River-our final point before turning back to head home. Now either that was a gross understatement, or I'm very bad at judging distance, but the rest of the hike seemed to last years. Part of that was probably because I'm a very calculated hiker-making sure each step is secure before moving forward. The upside to that is that I can't think of any times that I've actually fallen while hiking-I guess unless you count slipping in mud. But I digress. 

As we pushed forward toward the rushing river, we came across several more challenges where some of the more skilled hikers had to assist the rest of us non-skilled hikers across at different points. Many of these points, I gave up trying to jump from rock to rock, and did the shame slide down on my butt, bypassing any assistance from those who stayed back to help us safely cross. At one point, as we were climbing-and I was butt sliding-through some tricky areas, one of the guys who was trying to help us commented and said "You really don't like help, do you?" I quickly apologized and rationalized why I didn't trust anyone else to help me across most points. 

Finally, we reached the river, roaring loudly past us. We had 30 minutes to sit down, eat lunch, and play in the frigid waters of the Colorado. So after enjoying our sack lunches, testing how long we could stand the snow-fed water that was the river, we turned back to hike toward the top. By now, it was around high noon, and the sun was directly overhead. I was still not completely recovered from the hike down, and now I had to do all the hard work again, but going uphill. It was pretty miserable for me. And my embarrassment at my slowness and heavy breathing was at an all-time high. But I knew I had to keep going, and I knew that those around me wouldn't let me quit. 

So I climbed and climbed, and panted, and stopped to focus my dizzy head, drank a bit of water and climbed some more. And when I reached those hard points where most people were taking help, I butt scooted my way across, or if I had no other option but to accept help, I apologized profusely as I grudgingly took the hand of whoever was helping me. Toward the end, I became more willing to accept the hand of whoever was around me, so we could just get back to the bus. We made it back through the little crevice we'd had to climb through, over the tricky rocks, up the small wall where people had to lift us, across the canyon wall that hung over the murky pool, up the wall we'd repelled down, and finally-after 7 hours-out of the canyon. My head spun, my face burned, I'd drank all of my water and then some, and I could already feel the soreness of my muscles setting in. BUT I DID IT! And I realized that through it all, if I had just been willing to accept help the whole time, the hike might have been just a little easier.

It seems to me that God likes to live in the difficulties. It seems that I see God most when I am in situations like hiking this canyon. Physical strength is a challenge for me, but some of the most beautiful moments of clarity I have are when that is pushed to it's limit. Two years ago, I faced the challenge of HUG mountain while studying abroad in Greece. Looking back, the hike wasn't too difficult, but at the time, it seemed impossible. There, I saw God in the group I hiked with, seeing them willingly take a role as a different contributor to our hike. Last February, I night-hiked a "mountain" about an hour away from our school with a group of my best friends. I saw God as each of us worked as a unit, pushing and pulling each other up through the cracks in the rock to finally make it up to the top safely. Now this. And each time, I realize that I can't do it. And I want with everything in me to quit. But God says "Stop. I've got this." Maybe it's not that He actually carries me out, but it's in those moments that I see Him through whoever I am with, reaching out to me and saying "Take My hand." And I know that I cannot do it, but He can.

Maybe if I would be more willing to accept help, my journey would be a little less difficult. Not easy, because no growth comes from that; but sometimes we need others around us to show us a little bit of God, carrying our burdens. The people who went on the trip with me will understand this perfectly, but if we willingly will open up and share our burdens with others, allow them to help carry them, instead of holding them all inside and trying to do it all on our own, things can be less difficult for us. Again, not easy. God never promises us an easy life. But He is there to share our burdens, and He puts others there to help carry them too. 

All you have to do is listen to Him when He says "Take My hand." 

 

 

Watching the sun come over the canyon

Through the middle of the canyon-lightness and darkness

Down at the Colorado River

Life is Like a Box of Fireworks

Happy 4th of July to ya! Hope everyone had a fun-, family-, food-, firework-filled day. 

Mine was a little different than usual. Typically, I wake up, give my dad a birthday card, load up the car and head to east Texas for some family time-complete with fun, food and fireworks of course. Today, I was heading the opposite direction on the map-through west Texas into New Mexico, without family, without cards, without typical 4th of July food. But it was incredible! A road trip to be remembered as our mission trip team drove through the very flat, field-painted plains, stopping at some unexpectedly memorable landmarkers. 

When we got to our destination for the night, we got some info on the town's 4th of July festivities, dropped our bags in our rooms and headed out to the lake to watch the local firework show. 

As I sat between my teens as we stepped into this town's picture of tradition and watched the spectacular display, I found myself thinking about how one firework is cool, but I really like it when 3 or 4 or 10 go off all at once. I love the crashing boom and the overwhelming flash of lights as multiple fireworks shoot up at once. And I almost wished that they would just bundle all of the fireworks together and just throw a match and let the chaos ensue.

And as I imagined this, I started thinking about how as cool as that would be, the spectacle would be over in seconds instead of a 30 minute show of spurts of amazement as one or two go up in the night sky at a time. So as my mind continued on this path, I began to think that there's something to that steady awe that comes with watching a fireworks show-one, two, maybe three bursts at a time, all building to the incredible explosion of a finale when boxes of fireworks are set off at a time providing a continuous display of shimmering flashes and satisfying booms.

How often in life, do I want everything to explode all at once? To know all of the answers right that seconds? To experience everything I can in a race to the end?

And God moves just like the fireworks show-the professionals. He sends up a few at a time, let's me experience a couple great things or even a couple difficult things at a time, pacing me out for the grand finale. When I want to bundle everything up all together and throw the match in the middle, God tells me to wait and enjoy the show. My impatience says set all of it off at once so I can see all the pretty flashes and hear the roaring boom. And God shoots off a few at a time, leading me more and more toward the grand finale when I will be able to experience everything to the fullest. I am glad, then, that He is the professional and holds me off patiently so that I don't experience all of the things life has to offer all at once, and the show is over in a matter of seconds. I am glad for fireworks, and that no matter how many times I experience them, they are just as beautiful as if I had never seen them before. 

Understanding the Potter

This past fall semester, I was in a ceramics class at school. I learned how to mix clay, different techniques for how to sculpt it, and proper procedure for glazing and firing it in the kiln. Little did I know that I would use what I learned in my ceramics class in post-grad life. 

My first week of my youth internship this summer, I-along with the other intern-was assigned to sculpt 40 cups and plates for a camp we are attending this summer. So for a week and a half, I spent all day in the office preparing clay and crafting it into 40 cups and 40 plates. I worked each lump of clay as best I could to become the piece I envisioned, pushing clay in certain ways, pulling in others; smoothing out the cracks and imperfections as the clay molded into the cup or plate I wanted it to be. If you haven't worked with clay before, that sounds a lot easier than it is. In theory, you take a lump of clay, you push some of it this way, pull some of it that way, smooth some areas and you've got a right perfect piece that everyone will "oooh" and "awww" over. As I'd learned in my ceramics class, and as I relearned my first two weeks of this internship, clay has a mind of its own. Often times, you start trying to craft it into this majestic piece that you see in your mind, and it begins to stray and break, forming an unsatisfying creation that you had no intention of making. And sometimes clay is either too wet or too dry, making it hard to work with. If it's too dry, you end up with lots of little cracks that no amount of smoothing can fix. But if it's too wet, it makes it difficult to keep the right thickness and be able to keep it smooth because it pulls away with your hands. These conditions often make working with clay a very frustrating undertaking.

And I begin to really understand the scriptures throughout the Bible that refer to God as a potter and us as his clay. The Potter sits down and crafts each one of us individually perfect, exactly how he sees fit. But we are stubborn, just as clay is stubborn, and we move when He wants us to be still, and we crack when He wants us to stay smooth. We so often decide that we know what is best, that we ruin the perfect vision He has for us because we don't listen to the Potter's voice.
There is an Ellie Goulding song that I have been, frankly, obsessed with the past few months. If you ever hear me humming something, chances are, it's this song. It's called "The Writer", and it's about her wanting a boy to notice her. But the chorus of the song just really speaks to me (insert coffee-shop snaps here). It says 

"Why don't you be the artist 

and make me out of clay.

Why don't you be the writer

and decide the words I say.

Cause I'd rather pretend I'll 

still be there in the end,

only it's too hard to ask. 

Won't you try to help me?"

I can't say for sure, I'm not really friends with Ellie (though I wish I could be), but I would 

imagine this has no spiritual implication for her. But for me, every time I hear the song, I picture ballroom dancing with God. It may seem like a silly image, but if you heard the song, you'd understand why. I imagine dancing around an elegant ballroom with God, speaking these words to Him as we spin around on the shiny wooden floor, asking him to mold me like an artist, and tell my story like a writer. I picture Him looking at me, as I warn Him that I'm imperfect and may not always be there like I should, but that if He helps me, maybe I can be as perfect as He is trying to create me. And so, like me with 40 clay cups and 40 clay plates, I am starting to understand God's frustration, pride, anguish, joy with His creations. I am beginning to let Him mold me as a potter sculpts his lumps of clay. And just maybe, through that very human parallel, I will become the perfect piece He envisioned when He set out to create me.

"Yet you, Lord, are our Father.

We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand."

Isaiah 64:8

Dead to Self

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."

Galatians 2:20

As I enter my post-grad life, I feel more myself than ever. I have begun to take ownership of the God-given qualities I have and ownership of my ability to change certain things about myself that aren't leading me to the person I want to be. I am Bailee. I am no longer who I think everyone else wants me to be-thought I am still working to get rid of the traces of that life. 

But something still unsettles me. As much as I feel that I am becoming more of who God wants me to be, I still feel like I am off track. Cue Galatians 2:20. As I've worked toward being who I think God wants me to be, I have forgotten the choice I made 8 years ago. 

"In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus." Romans 6:11

I decided to die to myself and take on Christ in baptism. And I think we don't put enough emphasis on this choice and the seriousness of it. I'm afraid to say in churches, we seem to be more concerned with getting juice and crackers or how worship sounds or if we are praying correctly to remember that our old selves are dead. Bailee is gone, and replaced with Christ. What would my life look like if I actually lived that way? 

At the camp I've gone to the past 7 years at my, now, Alma Mater, when someone gets baptized in the fountain, we all yell "Bye Y/N!" As they're going in the water. And then follow it with "Oh he/she gone!!" It's a fun, silly camp tradition, but what if we took that truth to heart. It may be a split second, but that time between hitting that water and returning to the surface is our funeral. It's probably the shortest, happiest funeral but still a funeral nonetheless. 

So maybe you can join me in prayer and ask for a reminder that "I am dead to self but alive in Christ. It is Him living within me that sustains me day to day." 

Quintessence [The Secret Life of Being a Wallflower]

I've been thinking.

    I recently sat down and read Perks of Being a Wallflower. I had seen the movie but needed to really experience the story in book form, so one day between classes I went to the library and checked it out. Aside from a busy first couple days where I read a "chapter" or two at a time, I finished the book in a matter of a day. There are some books, movies, moments that just hang in your head even when its over. For me, Perks is one of those.
    The story focuses on Charlie, who is entering his first year of high school, writing letters to an unknown "friend". He confides in this anonymous person with the details of his life including the thoughts he doesn't know how to share with anyone else. In his letters, he discloses the relationships he builds and experiences he has as he finds a place in high school. Charlie forms a relationship with his English teacher, Bill, who sees his potential and begins to challenge him with reading more advanced books and writing essays. One day, Bill and Charlie are talking and Bill asks Charlie if he always thinks so much, to which Charlie replies "Is that a bad thing?" Bill goes on to say "Sometimes people use thought not to participate in life."

Soaking in these words, Charlie sets out to participate in the world around him. He meets Sam and Patrick, brother and sister upperclassmen, who quickly become his closest friends. The two take him into their friend group and invite him to live outside of his thoughts but appreciate his qualities of being a wallflower. Sam and Patrick teach Charlie how to be a friend to others, the ups and downs of dating, how to take risks in life and step outside of his comfort zone, and show him love that he has missed most of his life as a wallflower. At one point in the story, Charlie begins dating one of Sam and Patrick's friend, but doesn't actually like her. In his attempt to be nice, he keeps dating her even though he loves Sam. One night at a party, Charlie is dared to kiss the prettiest girl in the room and he chooses Sam. This causes a rift in the friend group, and Patrick advises Charlie to stay away for a while. So in a matter of minutes, he is back to being alone. He begins to spiral back into his anxiety, going through the motions of life and not really living. His thoughts become his friends, and he doesn't hear from Patrick or Sam for several weeks.

    Another story that has danced through my mind since I first saw it is the Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I've already written a blog or two about my love for the film, but with it coming out on DVD and its parallel to Perks, I can't help but talk about it yet again. Walter is a daydreamer, through and through. Part of the draw of the movie is the ability to connect with his character's ability to daydream outrageous visions for his life. My daydreams may not include having "Benjamin Button" syndrome, but I certainly find myself daydreaming about different situations in my life. I daydream about having conversations with people, life after college, marriage, travel...you name it, I've probably daydreamed about it. In the movie, Walter is trying to "wink" at a girl on this online dating site, but he has to fill in his profile of "been there", "done that", so he keeps getting phone calls from a guy who works for the site. Walter tells the guy he hasn't really been anywhere noteworthy. His adventures have all been in his head, he hasn't really been participating in life.
    At the beginning of his journey, Walter is in Greenland and is forced to make the choice of giving up on his mission or getting in a helicopter with an inebriated Greenlandic man. He is sitting in the bar, letting his opportunity slip away, when he daydreams that Sheryl-the girl of his dreams-showed up and started singing "Space Oddity" to him. In a moment, he makes the quick decision to jump onto the helicopter as it's lifting off the ground. This is the point Walter's life changed. He went from daydreaming his adventure to living it. And just like Charlie faced difficulties after deciding to participate, so does Walter. Only a few minutes after taking this leap into a life of adventure, he jumps into the freezing waters of the Atlantic and is circled by a shark (or so I've gathered, as I've had my eyes closed through this scene all 3 times I've watched).
    Fortunately, in both stories, the protagonist continues forward. Charlie's friends work everything out, he gets help for his anxiety, and life returns to normal. Walter pushes on in his mission, adventures through Iceland and Afghanistan, finds what he's looking for and wins the girl in true happily ever after fashion.

So, as I said, I've been thinking.
    And there's the problem. I have been thinking and not living. Not participating. My life has been a series of daydreams and "what-ifs", thoughts and wishes instead of opportunities and adventures. Don't get me wrong, I love my life! And I don't think I'm as extreme as either of these characters-that's why they are characters. But I have been sitting back and thinking about how I want things to be, how I want to be, what I want to do, what I want to see. And I haven't been planning and working on how to get there. I haven't sought out opportunities to pour into other people. I use movie nights as a less-than-fulfilling substitute for really, truly spending time with the people I'm surrounded with.
    In Walter Mitty, Walter is searching for a film negative that is "the quintessence of life". Though, I'm not sure if that's life with a capital L or not, that is the purpose for the whole movie. On the surface, it's the search for the "quintessence of Life" (as in the magazine). But for Walter, it is the search for the "quintessence of life" (as in general-living, breathing, seeing, feeling life).
    Now, with all of this thinking I've been doing, I would have to say the quintessence of life is this: to participate. To think, yes, but to live outside of those thoughts and make life happen, instead of just letting life happening to you.

Leap

I went cliff diving for the first time this year. There's a lake about an hour away from school that students frequent to spend sunny days on the shore, and more importantly, jump from the infamous cliffs. As a senior, we felt it our duty to finally check this adventure off our bucket list. So last semester, my 4 best friends and I packed up may car, drove to a camp site near the lake that we'd found online, arrived after dark to set up camp and make s'mores. It was fantastic! Quite the bonding experience figuring out, as 5 only slightly outdoorsy girls, how to set up our rented tent and start a fire. But we did it, and The Lord said "It is good." We slept only slightly off the sharp rocks for the night, doing the continual skootch back to the middle of the tent after sliding in our sleeping bags down the incline we'd pitched the tent on. And in the morning, as the sun peeked through the trees above us,

 we got up (for once, not only was I not the last one asleep but I actually got up before everyone else! Quite a victory if you know me well) and made pancakes using a skillet we had ingeniously thought ahead to pack, and some cardboard for the spatula we so ingeniously forgot to pack. After a healthy breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes, we packed up, figured out how to pay for our camp site, and headed to the lake!

As none of us had been before, we drove around slightly confused for a few minutes before finally seeing what we could only assume were THE cliffs! As we dropped our belongings onto a nearby picnic table, we excitedly took a picture with the lake as our backdrop and then headed to the edge. 

Crossing the threshold from gravel-y ground to rock-form made the impending feat amazingly realistic. Finally, after 4 years of hearing about cliff jumping, I was about to take on the task! We approached the edge, and suddenly every imaginable worst-case-scenario rushed through my mind.

"What if I trip and fall and go tumbling to my doom?" "What if I don't make it far enough out and crack my skull open, leaving my best friends staring down at my limp corpse?!" "What if I hit the water at the wrong angle and the water goes inside my body and makes my insides explode like the guy on 1000 Ways to Die?" And suddenly cliff jumping was not so appealing. I always used to think I had a fear of heights, like any respectable human, but I've come to realize the past couple years that I have a fear of falling. That moment when suddenly nothing is beneath you and you don't know if you'll ever know what it's like to have something beneath your feet again; no thank you. But here I was, and there was no way I could chicken out. I had to do this. Thousands of other students before me had jumped and survived. And so, after watching my more brave counterparts jump ahead of me, I focused on them in the water, stood at the edge of the cliff and pushed myself into the temporary nothingness. I felt like I was in the air for many minutes before I finally felt the cold water swallow me up, but as I kicked my way to the surface, I heard the cheers from my friends and I knew I did it! I leaped into uncertainty, trusting that my feet could propel me far enough away from the sharp cliff edge, fell through the nothingness for what felt like an eternity, and finally landed in the water near my friends, thus allowing me to become a true Harding student!

In 18 days, I will join with a few hundred other students in the Benson Auditorium. I will "close my Harding chapter", "complete my education", and "step into the real word". Yes, I'm nervous. Yes, I'm excited. But I am trusting that God will prepare my feet to move far enough from the sharp edge and that after falling a short time, He will swallow me up in a new chapter of life. I am facing one of the scariest, most thrilling cliffs of my life.

And here.

I.

Go.....