my salvation lies in your love.

it's nearly 1 am on...thursday morning, i suppose. corrine left just a bit ago; a bunch of us girls spent the night watching "juno" and painting bottles. it's funny--aubri and i met corrine our very first week in birmingham. i saw a poster in the soak for an open mic night, so we went, just the two of us, and early enough to grab a tall table. some girls were standing nearby with drinks, listening, and i said, "hey, do you guys want to set your drinks on our table?" and we talked all evening. funny how friendships happen.

(oh, but they don't actually just happen. i felt really nervous right before i intruded on their conversation, and again when i said, "well, maybe we could hang out sometime?" and got phone numbers. hmm. what a really cool person i almost missed out on knowing.)

the boys were in the other room playing poker, being loud, being boys. they're still downstairs, actually, and it's a pretty nice sound. comforting. family.

matt and tom were here all day, recording (as we have been, in the cafe with socks over the microphones and various other creative recording techniques). i'll direct you again to the myspace :) ... myspace.com/transatlanticmusic
you'll find an incredible version of "halleluia" (jeff buckley's arrangement, which is one i heard tom play on the night i met him back in january) and "one more hour" (a fantastic new song of matt's, with tom on mandolin!), and i think tomorrow "i can't swim" should be up (tom's song; they've got to finish production on it).

this picture is from a week or so ago, when i came back from a good chat with natalie for a band practice and found the matt teaching tom his new song while they waited for me outside the door. you'll see that the royal orchid has a nice new facelift (i'm pretty sure it hasn't improved the quality of their indian-thai-chinese cuisine).

tomorrow night (or tonight, rather) is transatlantic's last gig. at least...for awhile. i make no guarantees that i'll hold it together, since every night i do something like write this blog instead of sleep. i figure i'll sleep in a week, right? there are people i love to be with. family.

well...i turned twenty-one on may 15th. that's pretty odd. i've never felt so special or honored as i did that birthday week.

it began with an overnight trip to manchester--helen's hometown. very cool city, and i got to meet her best friends and parents. AND, we saw my favourite band in the world in a perfect, intimate venue that night; best concert i've ever been to, easy. iron and wine. completely stunning. he has a song called "passing afternoon" that i passed along to helen awhile ago....earlier that day, she was telling me about how her mom used to sing hymns to her when she was little. we both noticed, for the first time, a line in that song that says: "and she's chosen to believe in the hymns her mother sings." i think it appeared for helen. i painted it on a bottle and brought it to her house on monday.

thursday, the day of my actual birthday, i went on a walk by myself. on the way, i encountered a cat, blind in one eye. not long following, i saw a dog, lame in one foot, almost get hit by a car running across the street. i thought: ok. this is weird. more on that later.
that night a group of us went to the jam house and had a great time.


saturday, the day of the party, i turned into john lennon and had an amazing night. a ton of people turned up in impressive costume: morrissey, brunel, mary poppins, sherlock holmes, devvo the chav (youtube it if you're actually curious), beckham and victoria/posh, the beatles, of course, ect. ash and the gang put the whole party together. made/bought a ton of food. we set up instruments in the front hang room and spent the entire night trading off playing music, laughing, eating, just being us. and at some point around 2am, i think, the lights were low, and people were all sitting around talking about how they've just never experienced community like this before. i know i haven't. but this is exactly what we dreamed of 5 months ago (years ago, for natalie and the rest of the big team). this is what life is supposed to be like. family.

chris took a turn on the guitar and played us a song he'd written for me, aubri, josh, and patrick, and gave me permission to share it with you guys on here. i think it goes without saying just how much it meant. here it is:

"knowing that it had to end made it all slip by so fast/ appreciate these seasons that are never meant to last/ For movie nights and always giving me someplace to go/ from Easter to the time we climbed the mountain in the snow/ From jamming in my living room singing to me about Cain/ to running round like idiots on the courts in pouring rain

"i only hope you know that i'm sincere/ you'll always have a home here/ even when you go, oceans between us don't mean a thing

"for every open door and a seat on frederick's floor (*that's what we named the front room to differentiate from the cafe)/ nights in the cafe room, i'm sure they made sense somehow/ For every time that i just couldn't say goodbye/ and stayed 'til 4 am, you can go to sleep now/ Rest your weary head...what more could be said?/ a simple 'thank you' wouldn't be enough/ things won't be the same once you've gone away

"i only hope you know that i'm sincere/ you'll always have a home here/ even when you go, oceans between us don't mean a thing"

the reason i came to england was to help build a place where community could happen because i believe it's how God intended for us to live: in love. the funny part is, i usually forget that i need community even when i'm working to build it. i fall, along with every other human being, for the lie that i am self-sufficient...and really, i'm mostly fine that way. i'm pretty alright alone. i'm kind of like the one-eyed, three-legged animals i saw on my birthday, creepy as that sounds; almost complete...but not quite.

perfect love lays down his life for his friends.

how can i know anything about that love when i'm not even willing to give up an evening to get to know somebody?

when i choose to obey God, i realize that, all along, the reason He was saying, "Forget about your own needs for awhile. Forget about your precious agenda. Hang out on somebody else's terms and open up yourself to them" --was really because He was giving me the chance to be more fully human. i'm remembering this south african word i learned exactly a year ago: ubuntu. "without each other, we are only half."

england, i love you so fully and sincerely. english friends, you are a part of me forever and i, you. american friends...likewise.

God...thank you for loving me first, so seemingly irrationally, and patiently teaching me to do the same. i love you with everything that is in me.

and with that, i say goodnight.

my mom is fantastic.

that's a book she used to read us.

want to know why our mum is so fantastic? regardless, we're gonna tell you.

*she makes things special. birthdays, achievements, important days, she pulls out the special plate (that she made once upon a time) and finds a way to celebrate us. she leaves us without doubt about the fact that she is proud of us.

*she is honest. which demonstrates a level of respect and courtesy she didn't have to extend to us, especially as younger kids, but she tried to give us an understand of what was going on and didn't cover up or cop out of a difficult answer.

*she came and sat on the edge of the bed and said, "i'm sorry. will you forgive me?" arguments didn't go unresolved. she lived out Jesus' teachings and apologized when she felt she had lost her temper. she was our first and best example of Christ's love.

*she gets up in the morning and spends time with God. she fights for her family in prayer.

*she makes (sometimes goofy) family traditions a priority. we make memories together.

*she always says "i love you." always. always.

*she follows God when it is hard. she stepped into a "temporary" position as worship leader years and years ago when she hadn't trained for it or planned on it, and God used her in awesome ways to lead a church family to a deeper level of connecting with Him and a worship team to a higher level of excellence...always insisting that God deserves absolutely no less. (she endured midi drums and slide shows and singing in the back room with me for a special music to this dramatic series of scenes for which my babysitter had acted in our living room...ha, remember?)

*she respects her husband praises him to us, instilling in us a respect for our dad. she respects and loves her parents from far away, hence i am across the atlantic now doing the same thing.

*she loves God with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength.

*she loves rachel, lauren, and becca unconditionally...and they love her so much right back.

rubbish. (me, currently.)

patrick and josh got on a plane at 3:30 this morning, at which point the last of the friends that had come over to spend one final night with them went home themselves. i have really grown to love those boys...and consequently i am feeling pretty out-of-sorts today, to put it mildly. how blessed am i to have them and aubri and nathan and natalie and robert and kevin and leah for family now. i wouldn't wish this semester to go on forever; that wouldn't be right, obviously. but when you pour your heart into something together...when others see you at your weakest, your most stressed moments, your ecstatic ones, your thankful ones...well, this is what community is supposed to look like. this is what God had in mind for us. and it's really scary, because i've opened myself up to people and now i am hurting. but it'll be okay. and i never really have to say goodbye for good.

kevin, leah, and nathan are all back from an international globalscope conference in georgia, so things don't feel too empty and we'll get back into a rhythm for these last three weeks.

in a few days, i'll go stay with helen's family in manchester and see iron and wine. following thursday is my birthday...i think plans for a jazz club are in the works...and ash and company have taken it upon themselves to host a party (at canvas) the following saturday. england-themed. i think i've decided to go as john lennon.

in other words...three weeks will be gone long before i'm ready.

i have some specific things i'm really praying for these last few weeks if you would join me without me writing about them. God knows. just like i have grown to love my team, i have grown to love more than i can put into words the friends i've made here. they are absolutely amazing people.

i can tell you that in everything i say and do, i want God to get the attention, the glory, the thanks, because more than all of the blessings He's poured into my life, God Himself is the goal of my life, and His favor and perfect love i desire more than any person's approval or affection.

sometimes i forget that this is true and i don't live like it. will you please pray for a strength and boldness and compassion that is not my own for these final weeks in birmingham?

(thank you, wonderful family. i am overwhelmed by you and love you so much. and i am coming home to you soon!)

fools

out of all the corners in the world,

i really love england with both my necessarily rational heart

and my silly childlike heart.

these pictures are from carlisle. mid-march, i think....this is laura neal. aubri and i stayed with her family up in north england and saw a bit of the lake district.

this is the carlisle cathedral on the left, where laura sang in a choir as a little girl. in the pic, aubri is lighting a candle and my camera happened to catch the moment of fire transition right in front of laura. (i think the Holy Spirit is in this picture too.)

hello paris. i am on top of the eiffel tower with the arc de triomphe still glowing in the background. (just thinking...the eiffel tower really isn't a whole lot more beautiful than the fragments of jumbled foreign conversations that went on around me and jessie while we laughed in line to get to the top...or the fact that jessie--my nash housemate from last fall--and i were together in france...or the fact that in one month, i will eat steak in the backyard with my family...just saying.)

left: jessie and i went to a performance of the mozart requiem in saint germaine, the oldest church in paris. this is why i think people can be so close to God without even knowing it--because every voice in that choir, every chair in the chamber orchestra, in fact, was. (below: some parisian graffiti.)

leg two of the france adventure: angers. here, in front of IT'S cathedral, the evening of my arrival when devon and i went traipsing about beneath the sunset. (i may be wrong, but i think a town only is one if it has a cathedral of some sort. marked a center for life activity once upon a time.)

below: transatlantic gigs in london! bottom right is a pic of us recording "out of eden" in a guest room at tom's parent's house.

and THIS, my friends, is ireland.

i remember that i had to stand someplace so beautiful in order to take the picture, so it can't just be a daydream.

patrick and josh are leaving on wednesday. i do not know how to put half of a lid on this semester...beginning the goodbyes, but not actually preparing to leave myself for another 20 days following. i will cry. the house will feel a little empty and i'll look at my english friends a little more closely because i am vicariously experiencing the boys' plane flight home. and i'll have to figure out where to store the emotions that belong to my england life, because i may be back here someday, but it'll be a different adventure than the one i'm on now.

praise God with me that He doesn't change. if nothing else in my life is ever consistent, His love is. and if it were easy, why, i'm pretty sure the tools wouldn't be sharp enough to fashion me into the holy person He wants me to be.

my time here isn't up. please pray hard with me for God to have His way this final month through me. and here are some brilliant words from frederick buechner:

"Inspection stickers used to have printed on the back, 'Drive carefully--the life you save may be your own.' That is worldly wisdom in a nutshell.

What God says, on the other hand, is 'The life you save may be the life you lose.' In other words, the life you clutch, hoard, guard, and play safe with is in the end a life worth little to anybody, including yourself, and only a life given away for love's sake is a life worth living, To bring his point home, God shows us a man who gave his life away to the extent of dying a national disgrace without a penny in the bank or a friend to his name. In terms of human wisdom, he was a Perfect Fool. And if you think you can follow him without making something like the same kind of a fool of yourself, you are laboring under not a cross but a delusion,

There are two kinds of fools in the world: damned fools, and what Saint Paul calls 'fools for Christ's sake' (1 Cor. 4:10)."

may i be counted such a fool for You.

a picture's worth a thousand words. so...here's mine.

[the bottom of the compass points to the number 139.]

oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me. you know when i sit and when i rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. you discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, oh Lord.

you hem me in--behind and before. you have laid your hand upon me. such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

where can i go from your Spirit? where can i flee from your presence?
if i go up to the heavens, you are there. if i make my bed in the depths, you are there. if i rise on the wings of the dawn, even if i settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

if i say, "surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me," even the darkness will not be dark to you. the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

for you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. i praise you because i am fearfully and wonderfully made. your works are wonderful--i know that full well. my frame was not hidden from you when i was made in the secret place; when i was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.

how precious concerning me are your thoughts, oh God! how vast is the sum of them! were i to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. when i awake, i am still with you.

*if only you would slay the wicked, oh God! away from me, you bloodthirsty men! they speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. do i not hate those who hate you, oh Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? i have nothing but hatred for them; i count them my enemies.

search me, oh God, and know my heart. test me and know my anxious thoughts. see if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

psalm 139.

[*i used to always forget the existence of this harsh paragraph, and every time i'd happen upon it i was really bothered and confused by it. there are plenty of other historical, circumstantial, ect. factors to take into account when considering a person's poetry, which this is (in addition to being part of God's divinely inspired word for us)....however, recently God used this particular section to ask me whether i'm as protective of him as he is of me, as the entire rest of the psalm indicates? i'd speak as quickly if someone dared threaten a sister. just a thought.]