hands and feet

God has been dealing with me a lot lately about the practicality of faith and about what role our works have in faith. It's a tough subject to wrap your mind around and I think I still have more questions than answers, to be honest. Like I said in my last post, I have been reading Shane Claiborne's book Irresistable Revolution (it's a great book but don't read it unless you are ready for it to ruin your life...in a good way...ha). There are so many aspects of the book I could talk about but one of the things that has hit me the hardest about it is a particular passage:

"I remember hearing about an old comic strip...Two guys are talking to each other, and one of them says he has a question for God. He wants to ask why God allows all of this poverty and war and suffering to exist in the world And his friend says, 'Well, why don't you ask?' The fellow shakes his head and says he is scared. When his friend asks why, he mutters, 'I'm scared God will ask me the same question.' Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, 'You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.'"

Wow...That really shifts the responsibility doesn't it? So I have been contemplating what it looks like for me to be the hands and feet of Jesus in my particular situation and place in life. This is a huge struggle for me because I constantly want to be DOING something big for God. I want to be doing whatever it is He has for me, making a tangible and visible difference, living out a dream that God has given me and that I am passionate about, especially when I see other people in my life living the fulfillment of that (like my friend Janine....check out more at www.nuruinternational.org). And yet I can't help but wonder whether God is looking back at my frustration and saying "But what are you doing NOW? You want to do something tangible, so do it!" I think this is a trap so many of us fall into...We are pursuing and loving Christ and yet it doesn't seem to translate into our actions and thus our impact because we are waiting for THE thing God has for us instead of looking for what we can do now and realizing that THE thing that we are looking for may look different in every stage of our life. Again, I am still trying to flush this all out and I don't have all the answers, but what I do now is that I don't want to be a stagnant Christian. I don't want to get so caught up in my own life that I don't see the injustice, the poverty, the problems around me. And I want to do more than just profess Christ...I want to live Him.

brief update

So I am apparently a huge blogging slacker these days. Just wanted to give a brief update with more to follow soon hopefully :)

• My life has been pretty much swallowed up by school recently so if you haven't seen or heard from me that's why. On the upside, God is faithful and I have passed all of my tests thus far :)
• I am currently reading Irresistable Revolution by Shaine Claiborne and highly recommend it...more on that later.
• I got to go to Huntington to visit my youngest sister, Ashley, and her husband, Adam, this past weekend. It was great to see them and their house which is super cute!
• I am now officially 27 as of two weeks ago...eek...jk...feels just like 26 but I am including a pic of the hilarious cake my sister got for me. Look to the previous post if you don't understand why there is a trophy on it.
• I have been married for 2 months on Thursday and married life is great! Just wish sometimes that I had more time to spend with my husband instead of studying. And I think Jamie is still adjusting to my multi-tasking, hectic lifestyle...ha.
• God has been challenging me and teaching me some really cool things lately that I hope to blog about soon. Lately I have been struggling to see what, if any, impact my life is having for Christ and God is teaching me slowly what it looks like to be His hands of feet even in the midst of my crazy life.

That's all for now....More coming soon, I promise. Grace and peace!

maybe if i wasn't going commando ;)

Some of you might recognize this Friends reference from the episode where Joey decides to put on all of Chandlers clothes: "Look at me--I'm Chandler! Could I BE wearing any more clothes? Maybe if I wasn't going commando! " Well last night, our community group did something similar. We decided to put on as many clothes as we could and then donate those clothes to various people in need (some locally, some across the country, and some in Uganda). I am continually amazed at the awesome things that can happen when people with the same heart for God work in unity toward a common purpose. And on top of that, we had FUN. We even had a contest to see who had the most clothes on and of the 8 people who participated in the judging, we had over 200 items of clothing on! Overall, we collected a mountain of trash bags full of clothes, shoes, etc (see below)



...and the prize for the clothes-wearing contest was pretty sweet as well ;)

Me, all dressed up and looking like a sumo wrestler

Everyone dressed up

Maybe the funnest part was watching everyone attempt to get all the clothes OFF (most of them needed help and luckily Brittani didn't mind helping a bit ;)...which earned her the quote "Why is Brittani the designated stripper?")

Little did we know what surprise Derek had waiting for us ;)

All in all it was a great evening, with great people, for a great cause....what more could you ask for?

Tag...I'm it

My friend, Lauren tagged me and I am supposed to write 6 random things about myself. Luckily, this works out well for me because randomness is my favorite (as you can see from the pic of Janine and I above) :)

Here are the tagging rules:
1. Post the rules on your blog
2. Write 6 random things about yourself
3. Tag 6 people at the end of your post
4. If you're tagged, DO IT and pass on the tag


My random-ness:
1. One of my biggest fears is popping balloons....maybe because my grandma used to tell me the pieces would hit me in the eye and blind me??

2. I hate tomatoes but love ketchup, tomato sauce, salsa and even tomato basil soup...weird, I know.

3. The first career aspirations I had were to be a chocolate engineer....and I wanted my sister to be a snow engineer. I didn't know what an engineer was but I knew my dad was one...and I really liked chocolate (that part hasn't changed)

4. I hate ironing so much that when I was single and made a list of characteristics I would like in a future husband "can/will iron" was one of them :)

5. When I was young and used to spend the night with my grandparents (who read the Bible together every night....cute!), they would let me pick a passage from the Bible for them to read to me and I always picked the story of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke 16....it was my favorite....I have no idea why.

6. I have the hardest time spelling Philippians. I always want it to have two L's and one P for some reason: Phillipians....I know it doesn't look right and yet every time I try to write it I try to put the two L's in.



I am tagging:
1. Andrea Salamonca -- love your randomness anyway!
2. Katy Whitehair -- because she may be one of the only people that reads this blog...ha
3. Billy Williams -- gettin' the guys involved :)
4. Meghan Baird -- because she's a cool chick whose blog I just discovered and we're almost birthday twins
5. Angela Harding -- because she just rocks
6. Janine Dzuba -- great way to start your blog!

thriller

First look at the Thriller dance from the wedding! Thanks to the Hatfields for posting it :)

these are apparently my celeb lookalikes....what i do when i am avoiding studying

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities - Collage - Morph

a woman's worth

I think as women the most common way that Satan attacks us is by attacking our self worth. Maybe this is the same for men but I'm not one so I don't know. It breaks my heart to see this happening to so many of the amazing women I know. Satan loves to plant doubts and questions into our minds (and too often they get incorporated into our hearts and into the view we have of ourselves): Am I a good enough friend? daughter? sister? coworker? student? girlfriend? wife? mom? Christian? AM I GOOD ENOUGH? As I was meditating on this issue, it brought to mind a passage from Sex God by Rob Bell that speaks so much truth about our worth and value -- which comes completely from Christ and not from ourselves:

"Do you realize?

You don’t need a man by your side to validate you as a woman. You already are loved and valued. You’re good enough exactly as you are. Do you believe this? Because it’s true. You have limitless worth and value. If you embrace this truth, it will affect every area of life... YOU ARE WORTH DYING FOR. Your worth does not come from your body, your mind, your work, what you produce, what you put out, how much money you make...You have inestimable worth that comes from your creator. You will continue to be tempted in a thousand different ways to not believe this. The temptation will be to go searching for your worth and validity from places other than your creator. Especially from men.[Tara's note: or I would argue from other people in general] ...You are already loved. Your strength is a beautiful thing. And when you carry yourself with honor and dignity that are yours, it forces the men around you to relate to you on more than just a flesh level. YOU ARE WORTH DYING FOR."

This passage speaks more specifically about male-female relationships but it's truths apply universally. Yes, as women we often look for validation from men, but we also look for validation from other women and unfortunately women can be some of the harshest critics of other women. What hurts my heart most is that we as Christians are often responsible for bringing down others instead of building them up. Maybe it's our own internalized self-worth questions and strive for perfection that we impart on others, but it is Christ's heart that we would see each other (and ourselves!) through Him -- as invaluable and worth dying for -- and act accordingly, by living in a way that reflects and honors that value in both ourselves and others.