Find You Here

By Michelle Prillaman

Well, here again I meet this blog. Where I’m supposed to write thoughts and what’s happening in my life and what I’m learning. To be honest, this past year has been a train wreck. Multiple deaths in my family has left me struggling. Struggling with numbness. Struggling with connecting with others and with God. Struggling to focus. Life is hard. Death is hard. Pain is deep. Grieving is long. 20-year-old younger brothers aren’t supposed to get in a fatal car crash. Yet here we are. I really feel the groaning Paul talks about in Romans 8:22-23:

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirt, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.”

We truly are not citizens of this painful world we live in. And all of creation is groaning, waiting for Jesus to make everything new like he promises in Revelation 21:5. And right now, I’m just stuck in that waiting. Praying that in the meantime, God would restore to me the joy of my salvation (Psalm 51:12).

            I’ve been listening to Ellie Holcomb’s new album, Red Sea Road, a lot this week. Just trying to remind myself of some truth since I don’t find myself in a great place right now. The song “Find You Here” is a reminder that God is

“Here when the healing hasn’t happened yet

Here in the middle of the desert place

Here in the middle when I cannot see your face”

Thankfully, God is still present when we don’t feel him and when things don’t make sense. Our pain and doubt aren’t too much for him. And just because things don’t make sense to me doesn’t mean God isn’t still working. I just need to work on really trusting that. God is still good. And we can grieve with hope. Anyways, that’s about all I’ve got since I’m not much of a writer. Feel free to listen to the song I mentioned in the video below!

Value of Community

By Tressa Czysz

Sometimes I try to do things all on my own. And by sometimes I mean most of the time. Thankfully, that's not the way that life is meant to be lived, and we are surrounded by people who pick us up when we're down, cheer us on when we succeed, and hand us a magnifying glass when we are squinting to read the fine print.

[Side note: I started writing this back in the fall, but never finished it, and am returning to it now. Hopefully, having just finished our 6th month of the program, I have insights and reflections that are even richer now that I have a little more experience as a Fellow.]

And the beauty of it all is that we're each very different, which makes it even more incredible the way that we work together and cover each other's weaknesses with our strengths. During our first full week we were at the Center for Creative Leadership for a three day orientation full of personality tests and team building. I am in awe of how intricately God has designed our class of fellows to complement each other and ultimately to bring glory to His Name through all that we do and accomplish together.

One interesting way that we got to see our personalities and strengths play out was by returning to Breakout Greensboro for another escape room challenge. Even more importantly than personality and strengths, in my opinion, was that we got to see how much we had grown together as a group and trusted each other. When someone found a clue, we gave them our attention and worked through it; this time around was much more of a team effort. We have certainly grown together through stories and hard times in our lives, but we have also had opportunities to celebrate together, and what a sweet gift that is!

As the end of the Fellows year is drawing closer and closer each day, I am saddened that our little family will never be exactly how it is in this season, but I am grateful for this experience and for the wonderful people that I have gotten to live in community with. And I'm grateful even more for the people that I have gotten to meet through or even outside of the program who I can already tell will also be dear friends for the years to come. 

May we never forget the value of community and friendship and sharing our lives with others!

Blawg 3: Return of the Blawg

By Tom Barker

            Have I mentioned my intense dislike of blawging before?  I can’t help but feel pretentious, even if it isn’t pretentious.  Why should you, my dear reader, care about my thoughts and feelings?  I have no right to demand this, yet, that is what this platform feels like to me, even though it isn’t.  I guess I’ll tell myself it’s my job, and then this isn’t my fault.  I will assume that if you are reading this, then you care and if you care, then I appreciate your kindness.  Thus I will reward your kindness with vulnerability.  (Because I love you.)

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with mild, but chronic depression.  It was unsettling, but pretty obvious once I thought about it.  My experience has been a consistently negative thought pattern about myself and life.  I constantly beat myself down and try to convince myself to believe the worst of others, with frequent success.  A month ago, after a particularly frustrating day, it finally dawned on me: depression is an addiction.  Self-hatred is self-pity, self-pity is self-hatred.  It’s comforting to feel like a victim.  It takes responsibility away from you.  Feeling like other people don’t care because I don’t give them a chance make me feel powerful because through this I can lie to myself that I’m better than them.  Self-pity is pride.  

And yet, God didn’t create us this way.  God isn’t looking down on us, as we wallow is self-pity, saying “why don’t you just get better?”  Instead, I think He says, “I didn’t create you to be this way, I’m sorry that you experience this.”  As an important aside, I would never say that people’s hurts and pains are entirely manufactured, your problems do matter and deserve to be heard and listened to.  I’m asking: how do we encourage and validate people, while helping them see that their self-pity is the sin that is keeping them depressed?

This last week I began to feel angry, detached and somewhat discouraged again.  I was too prideful/afraid to talk about it.  As we have established, I don’t like imposing my problems on other people, even if they want to hear them.  But, it is dawning on me that dilemma represents both the problem and solution.  If I can say this without throwing up, Love is what binds and frees us.  A self-centered “what can I get” love is what makes us crinkle inward like wrapping paper.  (It isn’t even love at that point, its greed).  A surrendering, sacrificial love enables us to reach out.  As Dodd “takes the cake” Drake, Jack Cody and Jean Vainer (that’s three reputable sources, so you better listen) often say, we have to sit down and let God love us.  Without that example as our source we can never be free.  We can never open like a flower and receive the genuine love of others.  But to do that you have to beat pride, to beat pride, you have to beat apathy, and to beat apathy; you must unlock purpose and all you have to do to unlock purpose is to exist.

Take Luck.