Medicine of Immortality "It's a cold, and it's a broken, 'Hallelujah!'"

User Levels, Private Posts, and Password ProtectionPosted by Rick on March 29th, 2010

We’ve gotten to the point where we have some things we’d like to share, but not to the whole world. So we’re saying goodbye to stalkers, and reinstating privacy settings for our blog.

For those of you who previously had an account…well, most of them have been deleted since it’s been so long since we made a private post, and we have no idea who is reading our blog these days. We only kept the accounts of those we know are reading our blog. So if you try to log into your old account, it probably won’t work.

If we deleted your account, that doesn’t mean we don’t love you. We just want to know you’re there, so by all means, start a new account. You can do that by going to the META at the bottom of the sidebar, or by clicking here. We will not add anybody who does not give their name.

Let me explain a bit about the divisions. We will mostly be using “Private Posts,” which means the post is open to all registered users. We may, at times, use “user levels.” We choose a user level for all registered members, and user levels determines what level post you can see. Our closer friends will be at higher user levels, and if we post something above your user level, you won’t see it. But we probably won’t use that feature much. The final protection is password protection, and you’ll have to email us for the password to be able to read the post. I can’t imagine we’ll ever use it, but who knows?

So that’s my spiel. If you register, and I don’t approve you, just message me. I sometimes forget people are registering, and I apparently don’t have it set to tell me when people are registering. So I may forget you…feel free to message me.

Late Night ThoughtsPosted by Rachel on March 25th, 2010

My mind tends to start spinning when the house is quiet and the minutes are creeping closer to midnight. Not sure how I got on this awful schedule, but there you have it!

Life has been interesting lately. So much has been up in the air, and yet I’m somehow feeling okay about things and learning to treasure what I’ve got and wait in hopeful expectation of whatever’s in store for us in the future.

I’ve been really encouraged lately to realize that I’ve been growing and changing and figuring out how to deal with some of my issues and insecurities. I’ve never really wanted to admit that I’m an insecure person, and have even resented if someone has implied as much to me, but looking back on the past several years, I can see how much my lack of confidence and confusion about my identity hindered me in the way of relationships. Ironically, a lot of people whom I’ve rubbed the wrong way have sensed arrogance from me, or an overly confident personality. Well, maybe I’ve struggled with arrogance, but a lot of my weaknesses are rooted in uncertainty, not being too certain or confident in myself or anything else.

I’m not sure how, but life somehow feels more simple now than it ever did, in a time when lots of things really are, if I look at them, quite confusing and unclear. But I’m finally sure of what’s important, and that’s simple. God is with us, and we are to be with Him. We are to love Him, and walk in the light. If my life on earth ends tomorrow, I feel peace about living it for God today. And if my life lasts many more years (which is my hope), I will continue to grow as God fills me to be an instrument for His glory.

Being a stay-at-home-mom has not always felt fulfilling to me, but it’s not really about me feeling fulfilled — it’s about me fulfilling my duty as a child of God, to show the example of Christ and love my children as beautiful, priceless gifts. The realization that it’s not about what I get out of it is what can turn it around to make it suddenly feel fulfilling. I don’t always feel so thankful, and I will likely get frustrated again tomorrow over something. But wiping snotty noses and counting to ten after seeing an entire box of Cheerios on the floor and listening to my 4-year-old chatterbox who just. never. stops. is part of the life God’s given me. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

We Live, We Love, We LearnPosted by Rick on March 20th, 2010

So, if anyone has known anything about our lives in the past few months, you’ll know that we had a couple of bad experiences with long-time friendships, and those experiences have brought us a lot of hurt.

The two families in question were two childhood friends of Rachel and their spouses. When Rachel and I were first getting to know each other, both couples did not support our courtship. But after things progressed, they changed their minds. Couple #1 repented. Couple #2 pretended that they had always supported us, and said that they really thought what couple #1 did was wrong. Of course, couple #2 had also shunned us, but we didn’t really care that they were trying to cover up our past since they liked us at that point.

After we got married, we moved away, and we became really close with couple #1, with them even visiting us a couple of times. After about a year, we tried really hard to get back to Spokane because we missed both Rachel’s parents and both couples. It took us three years. When we finally got back up, couples #1 and #2 had become really close. Things got tense with couple #1 soon after we moved up, in large part due to how much time we spent with them. We relaxed our relationship, things got better, but damage was done.

Over time, couple #1 made some comments that indicated that there were jealous of how much time we spent with couple #2. Of course, we were jealous of how much time couple #1 spent with couple #2. Couple #2 made comments about how they were jealous of how close we were to couple #1. A triangle of jealousy ensued. In the end, we lost out.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood dimm’d tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”

Things fell apart. Both relationships were damaged. And for four months, we tried repairing them. Couple #2 told us they had to pray about being our friends and would get back to us. They never did. We drove couple #1 nuts by trying to get back to a close relationship with them – something they were not able to give. We’re still trying to work on reconciliation with them, but our expectations have been drastically lowered.

Losing those two friendships hurt, but what we hadn’t realized is that we had two other sets of great friends with whom we hadn’t really worked to develop our relationships. Both were also Rachel’s childhood friends and their spouses; both remained friends and supported our relationship in its early stages. And in redeveloping those friendships, I realized that I had put up a wall with both couples #1 and #2. Because of our past history, I didn’t truly put my trust in them. In fact, I always had a deep distrust of couple #2. I used humor to deflect my true feelings a lot. I had never shared my heart in the way that I was now able to share my heart with couple #3, and to a lesser extent, couple #4. And since then, we’ve also developed friendships with 2 other couples. Couple #5 is more a fun-couple – a couple with whom we can have fun, but there is still a wall preventing anything deeper. And we’re okay with that. We’re not trying to turn it into more than it is.

Couple #6 is a set of new friends. We’ve hung out with couple #6 three weeks in a row, and I sense a great compatibility with this couple. Not only is there much commonality in interests, but I feel the same sense of brokenness. They too are in a healing process. They too are in an uncertain time. They have faced judgment. And with this brokenness and uncertainty comes an openness that goes both ways. I don’t mean a relationship that’s based on gossip about our hurts either. It’s not. It’s based on our common faith. It’s based on a willingness to say that we’re broken, hurting, fragile, vulnerable, and a little bit lost – something that’s hard for me to admit. But something that was so easy to release the first time we spent time with them.

Despite losing closeness with two sets of friends, God has used our pain to draw us closer as a couple and closer to Him. He’s provided us with friends who are, by no means, a replacement for our old friends, but who are sets of new beginnings or rejuvenations of seeds long untended.

Music to my HeartPosted by Rachel on March 15th, 2010

Recently I was able to play music with a friend, and it was wonderful. I’ve neglected my poor violin for a while now, stacking up excuses as to why I don’t pick it up often enough — for one, the kids beg me to let them play whenever I pick it up to play music — but I’m noticing that as I play more, the novelty is beginning to wear off for them and they’re giving me more space. And the more that I pick it up to play it, the more I look forward to playing it again the next day.

Music has always been an extremely important part of my life, and in many ways, I feel like it’s my second language (sometimes it feels more like my first). Music will be an integral part of my children’s education, and our home will always be filled with songs. It’s something that’s just in my heart and has been since before I can remember. In my most despairing moments, music has been a source of comfort for me. It’s always been self-revealing in a healing way, even if it’s simultaneously painful.

Sometimes I will just melt into the music, or dance without reserve, or belt out the melody, or play along on my violin…but no matter what, as long as I breathe, I want to have music.

DirtPosted by Rick on March 11th, 2010

I thought that if I just threw a post out, it might get my blogging flowing again. I’ve been trying to figure out if I really have anything to say. I thought maybe I could write something about Lent, but I feel like I’ve already talked about Lent a lot on here. Rather than blankness, the word “dirt” keeps coming to mind. So, why not? Dirt is kinda Lenten. I mean, after all, Lent is when we remember that we are dust and to dust we will return. So, we’ll start with dirt.

One doesn’t have to go very far before seeing dirt in the Scriptures. In the first chapter of Genesis, God separates the waters by an expanse, or firmament, and then gathers the waters under the firmament, so that dry land appears. What we’re left with is dirt and water (where the Spirit hovers): “And God saw that it was good.”

By the second chapter of Genesis, “the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” So human beings are basically piles of dirt infused with “the breath of life” (i.e. the Spirit of God). “Adam” literally means “of the dirt.”

God sets Adam, a pile of dirt, in a garden (a place where life springs up from dirt). This garden is on another huge pile of dirt—a mountain. We can discern that the garden is on a mountain because of our other prominent element—water (Spirit), which flows down in four rivers.Since four rivers went out from Eden, it is safe to say that Eden was elevated, and that the garden, though not at the top of the mountain, was on the mountain.

Furthermore, mountains play a significant role in the Scriptures, for they are where God meets His people. As James B. Jordan points out, “Abraham offered Isaac on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22:2); Moses received the law on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19-24); Elijah defeated Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18) and received his commission renewed on Mount Sinai (1 Kings 19); Jesus preached His definitive sermon on a mount (Matthew 5), was transfigured on a mount (2 Peter 1:16-18), and gave his final great commission on a mountain (Matthew 28:18-20).”

In addition, Jerusalem is set in the Judean Mountains, Mt. Zion is God’s holy hill, the Church is a city on a hill, and St. John views the New Jerusalem coming from above while “carried… away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high.” In contrast to the Judeo-Christian faith, false religions offer “high places” to replace God’s true meeting places. In short, mountains are ladders to heaven—points where heaven and earth intersect, and God meets us.

Moreover, altars are little mountains and ladders to heaven: “Abraham’s altars were probably just pillars made up of stone and earth, but what they symbolize is set out for us in an important vision in Ezekiel 33.” Ezekiel describes a pyramid with the top part literally called, “the Mountain of God.” Throughout the Old Testament, these altars grow until they fill the whole earth. As such, the whole sacrificial system is about meeting God and communing with Him—a movement from earth to heaven—and heaven eventually overtaking earth.

In the same vein, Moses builds an altar at the foot of a mountain. This altar serves as a gateway to God. The sacrificial order set out in Leviticus 1-3. An adam brings the bloody sacrifices near, and in union with the animal goes up to God, offering the Tribute through his accepted soul (nefesh).

The Mosaic Tabernacle structure also serves as a type of heavens and earth. The Holy Place would symbolically be the midpoint of the mountain where the elders (lampstand/Aaronic priesthood) would commune with God in a meal (facebread). Only the high priest would be allowed to enter the Most Holy Place, the top of the mountain. The Temple at Mt. Moriah would have similar connotations. Mountains are about worship. Dirt is used for worshipping.

We are homo adorans – worshipping man – precisely because we are dirt. We are ladders to God. We are altars—living sacrifices. We are tabernacles, where God dwells. We are temples, and the Holy Spirit is in us. We are part of the Holy Mountain, the Sacrifice, and the one true Temple. So we are dust, and to dust we shall return…but only for a little bit.

That’s all the dirt I got for the moment.

We’re BackPosted by Rachel on March 9th, 2010

We’ve been away for a while due to blog problems but we’re hoping to wake up things a little around here. Life has been crazy for the past several months. There’s been good crazy and bad crazy. I don’t even know where to begin and I know that at least for now, I can’t get into all of it. But God is always there, and I’m always trying my best to listen.

In September, I went through some trials that left me feeling very down and very self-absorbed with my problems. As the months have passed, I’ve found that in moments, I am able to rise above the pain, and in others, I’ve succumbed to my own weakness. God continues to be gracious and I continue to wrestle with my own sin and pray for the healing of relationships.

My family has been, as always, amazing. Rick is a constant source of comfort and encouragement, and Kyrie and Antonio fill my life with joy and moments of being as carefree as I remember being as a child. Sometimes there is no better description for my children than little angels. And goodness knows they’re not really angels — their behaviour can be exhausting and infuriating — but the love and the innocence that they display from their sweet spirits really help to lift mine. It’s such a joy to be a mom, even though I have those moments when I wonder if I really am called to be a mom. Sometimes I’m just really truly not good at it. At all.

God has been kind enough to open my eyes to friendships that have always been there, waiting for me — and introduce new friends into my life. He has never abandoned me, even when I think that He has.

It’s been difficult for me to enter into the season of Lent this year. Antonio was sick on Ash Wednesday, so I wasn’t able to attend a service. Being able to hear the words “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” while the cross is drawn in ashes on my forehead by the thumb of the priest is something that is so profound to me that I can hardly articulate my feelings about it. It helps to set the tone for the entire season. I have not chosen to give up anything specifically, nor have I conscientiously added any particular disciplines. However, I do find myself returning to the Lord, and drawing closer to Him, and seeing the sickness of my own soul and the desperation with which my whole body aches for salvation.