He is not invisible when we come alive

“We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she’s known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home."

[Jamie Tworkowski]

afraid to be happy?

someone told me this summer that they think i'm afraid of being happy. talk about a major blow to a girl who considers herself to be an incredibly happy person. but then, i'm also a girl who weighs a person's words whether they meant what they said or not. i'm a thinker. i love heart-to-hearts and if someone is willing to challenge me, i'll take it.

so am i? afraid to be happy? yeah. sure, i'd classify myself as a very happy girl, and it is rare that a day goes by without someone asking me why i'm smiling or what i'm so happy about. i'm happy with my life - the past and the present, but for some reason i am still afraid of getting my hopes up.

like what if everything is so good because something terrible is about to happen? or what if i let my guard down too much and get hurt? are these irrational fears? i feel stupid confessing them, but at the same time i don't, because i know so many people live in this fear but never realize or admit it. what else, besides fear, would explain why we all stay on the surface so much? or why we have so few people we can truly be ourselves around? it sure seems like everyone is afraid to be vulnerable in one way or another.

i used to seriously hate the word 'vulnerable,' but thankfully i've grown into the word. when i did my ywam dts in maui, my friend ashley and i would cringe when scott, a guy on our team, used the word 'vulnerable' in every other sentence. he would even shamelessly single us out - "chelsea, i really think you need to be more vulnerable." (and i think you need to shut the hell up scott, but i guess i'm not feeling vulnerable enough to say that yet, lucky for you.) he really agitated me (just in case that wasn't already quite clear) and when he got kicked out of our dts for all kinds of misconduct and sent home a week later i was feeling all kinds of smug. his words were inside of my head though, and even though they pissed me off i took them seriously - and i started being more vulnerable.

my hope is that the "you're afraid to be happy" comment will be the springboard for me letting go of even more of my fears. and honestly it already has been. because i want to be fearlessly happy.

don't be afraid to be happy or to get your hopes up. and don't, please don't, be afraid to speak into someone's life. speak now! maybe your words will anger them and you'll never see the positive outcome. like scott telling me to be vulnerable. or maybe your words will be spoken and the outcome won't be what you were hoping for, but there will be another positive outcome nonetheless.

i think we can all relate to the line in "pretty woman" when julia roberts says, "people put you down enough, you start to believe it ... the bad stuff is easier to believe. you ever notice that?" so make sure you speak the positive more than you feel necessary. overcompensate for the bad stuff by saying the good stuff, and saying it again and again. say i love you even if you think they know. tell them they're beautiful, the life of the party, the kindest, the best to talk to, an inspiration, whatever it is that you're feeling. the simplest compliment might be the best part of someone's week. it could boost their confidence or sink into their spirit to the point of altering their destiny. you might never see or know how, but if you never speak up you'll never know at all.

rose and dorothy//susan and chelsea

rose and dorothy on the golden girls could easily be my mother and i in a few decades. that show cracks me up, but not as much as my own mom does. last week on the way home from shopping i don't know what i was going off about, but my mom was laughing and i said, "what are you laughing at?"
"just you."
"which thing?!"
"which thing?! chelsea! you expect me to pick one thing?! i don't have the time or the energy to narrow that down, that's like ..."

shopping with my mom is a delight. particularly the faces and comments when something i try on does not meet her approval. ("i'm just trying to decide if that's asian or pajamas chelsea.") i do not take nearly as much delight in shopping for her. ("well what would i wear this with?" "jeans." "ugh! no! it would look much better with grey!" "mom if you already knew what you wanted to wear it with, WHY are you asking me?" "well i just like to hear your opinion. so you would wear these with jeans? huh. i don't think i like it anyway.") i couldn't ask for a better shopping buddy, she taught me well and i'm so glad that shopping will always be our thing. love you susan!

mongolia

i was about to apply for this AMAZING internship yesterday. a month in MONGOLIA. with all sorts of crazy special permission forms to get signed and warnings from the government to read because apparently it's such a dangerous place to travel to. and desolate - the place you'd be doing research would have no electricity or running water! and they said people with special diets shouldn't bother applying because the food choices are so limited. but you'd get the all-expenses paid chance to do groundbreaking research in an area of the world where very few people have ventured.

i've wanted to go to mongolia ever since 1) i heard that so few people go and because of 2) the theory that mongolians are the people group we can all trace our ancestry to. i wanted to observe them and see what mongolian mannerisms i've inherited. so i was about to fill out the application for this amazing adventure BUT ... it's only offered to university of penn students. way to put that in very small print at the end of everything, sheesh. so i won't be in mongolia this summer after all. which is good because it's also cold there, what the heck was i thinking wanting to live there for a month of summer. and somehow i think the upenn students would be going for much more intellectual reasons than wanting to hang out with mongolians. oh and the research had to do with global climate change which i know nothing about. (and shhh, also care pretty much nothing about.)

as i explore all of the opportunities that i have as a writer i just get giddy with excitement! not only as a writer but a traveler. ohhh the places i'll go! mongolia someday. why not? ireland, scotland, brazil, argentina, california, colorado, oregon, maine, alaska, the grand canyon (yeah i haven't gotten around much of the usa yet, ok? haha), switzerland, italy, tahiti, south africa, france, israel, belize, egypt ... and greece! greece has been at the top of my wish list for awhile. i really should've moved the last item of my christmas list to the top. but i scribbled it at the bottom of the page (yup, i still write page-long birthday/christmas lists in my twenties, are you really surprised?) instead: "plane ticket to anywhere." :)

life is good and there are many more good things to come. i'm so very happy. granted, that happiness will probably be temporarily squelched in a bit as i head to my three-hour night class on 17th century post-restoration literature. barf. but at least it's the last night of that class before finals week ... h-a-l-l-e-l-u-j-a-h for being one semester closer to graduation!