“Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

“We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life — those are simply intended to be moments of inspiration. We are made for the valley and the ordinary things of life, and that is where we have to …prove our stamina and strength.”

Oswald Chambers

The other 3 girls kind of laughed–out of courtesy or awkwardness, I don’t know–and one of my friends hit me and said, “Oh-my-GOSH, Audrey” in a way that sounded like she really meant, “Yeah, that really IS insignificant, superficial, and materialistic.”

I wondered, though, why it was “wrong” for me to say I was thankful for such small things?  I personally find it rather difficult to be thankful for small things, and I actually don’t think most of us tend to be thankful enough for them.  So, I felt the need to defend myself (especially because I got hit for it!) and explain that I actually have a deep gratitude for many of the “insignificant” things in life.  That week I had been standing at my closet everyday marveling at how fortunate I was and how I didn’t really deserve a closet full of clothes, which led me to think about all the other aspects in my life that God has provided for that I really don’t deserve.  I also kept thinking, “How could I ever have felt like I needed more?” (Not just of clothes…of anything, really.)  And I marveled at the provision.

That week I also ate a bowl of ice cream and thanked God for letting it be invented, telling him that he really didn’t have to create chocolate ice cream but that I was SO GLAD he did.

So, yes, I said I was thankful for my closet of clothes and for chocolate ice cream, and my gratitude for them runs deep.

A while ago I worked through The Good and Beautiful God and one of the chapters had you create an ongoing list of blessings in your life.  I wrote so many seemingly small things on that list, and at first I was embarrassed because of what I said before–that it seemed superficial or even materialistic.  But the more I wrote down, the more it actually cultivated depth in my thanksgiving, in my sense of God’s love and care in my life, and in the joy and pleasure there is in this life God has given me.

In a world of consumerism and advertisements that tell you that you need more of x, y, and z, I love looking at my list of blessings…especially the “small” ones.  It makes me feel like the world went from being on a grey scale to being filled with vibrant colors.  The world seems more colorful, the air feels fresher, and I feel fuller.

I’d highly encourage you to start a list of blessings!

If you’re interested, here’s mine.  I was going to also add why I was thankful for some of these things, but almost all of them were because I kept thinking, “OMG, what would my life be like without this?  God didn’t have to make this, but I’m so glad he did!”

• chocolate ice cream with fruit
• a sibling who knows the Lord
• teal and orange
• white nectarines
• music that speaks in unexplainable ways
• oranges
• prime rib
• Contigo water bottles
• time spent with kids who see the world as wonderful
• Papermate pens (I LOVE these…)
• crisp NorCal air
• sunshine
• God’s presence with me
• contact lenses
• financial freedom
• the promise that God will guide me
• a voice to sing with, to worship with, to express myself
• my multi-colored scarf
• the sense of smell, taste, touch, sight, hearing
• friends to connect with musically
• provision for tasks he asks/calls us to do
• unexpected ways he takes care of me
• Chinese food
• an amazing husband and an incredible relationship
• giving us a community who loves and serves though they may barely know us
• God’s sovereignty
• freedom in my job to become who I was made to be
• a child’s laugh

I’d love to hear some of your list of blessings…especially the ones that seem little and often get overlooked or taken for granted!

“To have a resurrection you have to have a death.  You have to come in and die and have the Lord speak and change everything from that point on.  There has to be that encounter where your agendas die, everything about you that makes up your life, you lay it down and he speaks.  And the identity comes from his voice.  Man shall not live by bread alone, but from every word that proceeds.  Life shall come from his voice, and the most intimate connection is the fact that he talks, and he talks with us.”

- (I forget where I found this…)

“Our uncorrected thinking, influenced by the blindness of our natural hearts and the intrusive ubiquity of visible things, tends to draw a contrast between the spiritual and the real–but actually no such contrast exists.  The antithesis lies elsewhere–between the real and the imaginary, between the spiritual and the material, between the temporal and the eternal; but between the spiritual and the real, never.  The spiritual is real.”

A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, p. 54

“The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority.  Rather, he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and as strong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself.  He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life.  He knows he is as weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is, in the sight of God, more important than angels.  In himself, nothing; in God, everything.  That is his motto.  He knows well that the world will  never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring.  He rests perfectly content to allow God to place His own values.  He will be patient to wait for the day when everything will get its own price tag and real worth will come into its own…

“In the meantime, he will have attained a place of soul rest.  As he walks on in meekness he will be happy to let God defend him.  The old struggle to defend himself is over.  He has found the peace of which meekness brings.”

- A.W. Tozer

The Pursuit of God, p. 106-7

- A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, p. 17

me & my favorite brother

A couple of weeks ago at a nearby coffee shop we celebrated the release of Midnight Bloom.  Weeks prior to the project wrapping up as well as on the night of the release party people kept suggesting to me how they imagined I’d be feeling.  They speculated that I probably felt overjoyed, as something I’d dreamed of my whole life (or that they assumed I’d dreamed of my whole life) had finally become a reality.  Others raved about how cool it must have felt to have everyone there for me, supporting me, and having the spotlight and so much attention on me.  I wish I could draw you a facial expression to show how I reacted internally to those speculations.  No word captures it.  I was thrown off. 

I was thrown off because the way they talked about it was so much about me and having attention on me.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very appreciative for all the people that drove and spent time celebrating the CD with me, but I didn’t make this CD for myself.

I didn’t make it so that I could say I finally finished a CD and put it on my wall as a trophy of my accomplishments.  Anyone can make a CD, really.  It’s not a big deal.  And I didn’t make it so that I could feel good about myself and have people know me, love me, and fawn over me.  If that ever becomes my motivation, help me, Lord, and have mercy on me.  And someone, punch me…and help me get some real friends who will love me no matter what.  And then punch me again.

I say this all because having grown up performing music and also from leading worship, I’ve learned that your life and motives can dangerously become about yourself, your worth, and your identity.  We all want to be known and significant in some way.  Spend a week studying Genesis with me and we’ll see that one of our core, God-given needs is to have significance.  That need itself is not necessarily what’s bad.  It becomes bad when we try to fill that need through our own methods rather than letting God show us how he will fulfill it for us.

I think many artists, writers, musicians, and up-front people have a certain temperament and desire to be known by lots of people, and that’s probably a big reason why we’re comfortable in the spotlight.  But I find it ridiculously easy to twist the platform that we’re given into our medium for which people will know us and to use it to fulfill our self-focused nature.  When our motivation becomes about our selves, our significance, and our worth is when I feel our hearts are treading dangerous territory.  As people who are made to glorify another Being, the quality that makes us feel alive can be to our detriment because we can become utterly engrossed in how the attention makes us feel and in wanting to glorify ourselves rather than glorifying who we were actually created to glorify—Jesus.

This is true for anyone regarding anything we do and find value in.  Regardless of whether you’re leading worship, singing secular songs to a crowd in a coffee shop, serving a friend, or even scrubbing a floor, when the motivation of our hearts is to get people like us, it’s never a good thing, and I think the desire to make a name for ourselves—whether in big headlines or in small ways among friends—needs to be ruthlessly rooted out of us.  Otherwise, it will probably eat us alive.

On the way home from the release party, Benson asked me what my favorite part of the night was.  I responded by telling him about a couple of accounts where people told me that particular songs spoke hope into them or opened up parts of their souls that had long been closed.  That’s what I want from the music that comes out of me.  I want it to minister healing and wholeness to others.  I want it to release other people into the fullness of who they are supposed to be and how they are supposed to live.

Hold me to it.  And like I said, if my motivation ever becomes about glorifying myself, punch me.

When I was 5 years old I grew ridiculously proud of a piece of art I had painted of the Sanrio Family of Pochacco, Pekkle, and Kerroppi sitting on a grassy hill with the sun shining down. Anyone out there familiar with Sanrio? It was after that painting that I decided I wanted to be an artist. I took my 5-year-old self and ran to my mom.

“Mom, I know what I want to be when I grow up.”

“Oh, is that so? Great! What do you want to be?” she responded in anticipation. 

“I want to be an artist. Look what I made!” I handed her my painting.

Before she even saw my painting, she replied to me, “An artist? They don’t make any money.”  (Who says that to a 5 year old?)

I toyed with more sensible ideas for the next 15 years of my life, such as psychiatrist, orthodontist, or optometrist, and when college hit, I faced having to decide on what I wanted to be when I grew up and choose a major. Still having no idea, I chose a path anyway because it was ingrained in me from a young age that I had to be something when I grew up, and, according to my Asian parents, something sensible.

Today, as I talk to college students and young adult peers day in and day out I hear loud and clear that most young adults are hungry to find meaning in what they do. They are either looking for a job—something to BE—that is significant and will impact the world for better, or they are stuck in a job that makes the bucks but causes them to be miserable because the job doesn’t seem as significant as they want it to be.

Questions buzz around: Am I in the right major? What kind of job should I look for? What do I want to do with my life? Is this job right for me? Should I change jobs? People are longing for job satisfaction and significance in their work, and while those are legitimate desires and legitimate questions, I would like to ask…why is there so much emphasis on what we do?

I don’t want to squash the nobility of wanting to have a job that impacts the world for better or discount the agony of having to work for an unsympathetic boss, but if there is one thing I learned during my last 5 years as an InterVarsity staff it is that we need to ask a different question.

Why is it that we always get asked, “What do you want to be” and not really asked, “What kind of person do you want to be?”

In college I focused so much of my mental and emotional energy trying to figure out if I wanted to be an orthodontist, a psychiatrist, or an optometrist, and looking back on it, I wish I had spent more time trying to figure out how to become a person of good character….how to be the kind of person that put others first, that can find joy in any circumstance, that is overwhelmingly generous, or that has grace and compassion on the people around me.

No matter what line of work you are in, there is something to learn and some way the Lord can use it to shape your character…but you have to be open to it. It may not be lessons in technical job skills, rather it may be lessons of learning to be faithful in mundane tasks, to practice having grace for your ridiculous supervisor, to learn to love co-workers who aren’t your favorites and are rather difficult to love, or to grow in patience through dealing with difficult customers.

My husband Benson spent a year feeling like a robot working for a company that didn’t even notice if he took naps in the middle of the day under his desk. It wasn’t Benson’s dream job, and it was rather life-sucking to be there, but that year was a growth period for Benson during which he let the Lord grow him in being faithful with little so that one day he would also be faithful with much.

I spent years in a job role that I was probably the least suited for. It required much of the opposite of my natural tendencies and strengths, and while it didn’t always make me feel alive, the Lord shaped my character in ways that changed the very core of who I am. I’m happy to have a different job, but I am forever grateful for who that other job made me become.

But even now as I’m in a job that I feel better suited for, I am STILL asking whether or not I’m in the right job, and I realized last night that my focus has been on the wrong questions.

My friend Chris Wheatley and I used to talk about how this generation wants to go out and change the world, and we seek to do so with a meaningful job. But perhaps another way the world is changed is by becoming people of good character. It happens by growing as a person of integrity so that someday you will become a good and faithful husband and father and reverse the ridiculous divorce rate in America. It happens by growing as a person full of compassion so that you will in some small way love someone who is unloved that will impact them more than you could ever know. It happens by becoming a person who can extend grace and patience as a reflex rather than as a discipline and unexpectedly melt someone’s hardened heart without knowing it. It happens by learning to be faithful in the very stupidest things that you hate doing so that one day, when you need to be, you will be prepared to be very faithful with much.

I lost sight of that over the last year or so.  I spent more time figuring out if I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing–what I was created to do–and not enough time figuring out if I’m becoming who I’m supposed to become.  Have I been learning servanthood, humility, and obedience in the small things in life?  I’m not sure, because I’ve focused more on whether or not this job was working for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying to stop the search for a job that makes you feel alive. I am, however, asking us to start focusing a little less on WHAT we are doing and a little more on WHO Jesus is trying to help us become through what you do, whether you are happy with what you do or not. I honestly think Jesus is less concerned about what job we end up in and is more concerned with who we are becoming in the process.

So…who are you becoming?

In case you aren’t aware, this is a horrible way to live, as it is also a horrible way to let God be Lord of your life.  I’ve expected a lot of oranges and whatnot lately, but I’ve received many lemons instead.  Over time I’ve noticed myself having more anxiety, more often feeling discontent and frustrated, and inevitably trusting God less and less.  To put it frankly, I became a bratty child of God who felt entitled to non-lemons.

Lemons come in the form of closed doors, unexpected “no’s,” unexpected problems, God’s silence, periods of waiting, and all those other things that happen that just don’t go your way or how you expected them to go.

When I want an orange and someone gives me a sour lemon that I didn’t want, all I want to do with that lemon is throw it at something or to turn it into an orange via wishful thinking or pestering God.  The problem with that is that I only see the sour lemon as an obstacle to what I really want when I could look at it as an invitation…an invitation to have some nice, refreshing lemonade.

On the first night of Urbana I had a difficult time falling asleep.  When I don’t get enough sleep, all sorts of problems occur–weakness, crankiness, inability to think coherently, talking slower, etc.  I basically can’t function well within normal human behaviors, and I’m not a coffee drinker.  Call me high maintenance with my need for sleep, because it’s true.

The first night I tossed and turned until 2am thinking about how I couldn’t sleep and praying that God would help me sleep.  My “lemon” was my trouble falling asleep, and I wanted that sour lemon to turn into sweet, sweet, dreams full of oranges.  Not really, but you get the picture.  Finally after over 3 hours of asking God to turn my lemon into an orange by helping me fall asleep right away, I decided to change my prayer.  Instead, I prayed, “Lord, you know what I need.  I trust you to give me the rest that I need.”

That whole week, while I didn’t get the hours of sleep I would normally want, I’d wake up feeling refreshed, knowing that God was Lord of my sleep.  There were a few mornings when I even woke up before my alarm (which went off at 6am!) and felt as though I’d gotten the sleep I needed.

I originally saw my sleeplessness as sour lemons, and I wanted oranges very badly.  I finally surrendered to whatever God was inviting me into, which was to make lemonade by submitting to him giving me rest and ordaining my sleep.  The Lord’s invitation for me was to trust that he knows how to take care of me better than I do.  Normally I’d be frustrated, grumpy, complaining, and full of anxiety that I got so little sleep during such an important week like Urbana, but I was actually filled with joy knowing that God was caring for me, that I was moving to the rhythms of his grace for me, and that I was rooted and established in his love for me.  I smiled so much during worship that week because I couldn’t help but think of how I was wrapped up in God’s love and grace.

I now find myself asking several times a day when something doesn’t work out and I encounter those little lemons, “What, instead, is the Lord inviting me into?”

To think…If I’d wasted my energy on wishful thinking for an orange, I would have missed out on that delicious lemonade.