We used to be fooled by beauty.  A touch here, a brush there, and we would be amazed at the delicacy of a sunrise or a raindrop that hadn’t really looked that way at all, but existed online in the mind of a person with talent in a virtual world that was only a too-pristine echo of reality.  “Seeing is believing,” they say.  Not any more.  We know better than that.  We watch our movies with their unbelievable horizons that look so real – but we know they’re false, a doctored image to suit the needs of the film.  Snow?  Oh, it’s paper.  Red sunrise setting all of Big Bear Lake on fire?  Gorgeous – until we notice the tiny blip in the corner that tells us it’s Photoshopped.  “Oh, I knew that right away,” we tell ourselves, not wanting to admit we were taken in, if only for an instant.  And somewhere along the way, we’ve lost something.  We know that the one who believes everything he sees is gullible, so we’ve stopped believing what we see.  And with it, we’ve stopped believing in beauty.  Is it too take-your-breath-away beautiful to be true?  Then it must be a fake.  Never mind that day you stood among the Grand Teton mountains and cried because it was so pure, so sparklingly, achingly gorgeous – you don’t want the embarrassment of believing yet another doctored picture only to discover it was all a trap to make you believe the real world could be as beautiful as the photographer’s imagination.  But sooner or later, disbelief becomes a habit, and you stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon refusing to be fooled, trying to convince yourself it’s not as beautiful as it looks; if there’s a trap in this, you’ll catch the illusion; all the while hushing the whisper in your heart that wants more than anything for it to be true.  Beauty is hard to believe anymore.  But something inside us craves it.  Why else would it be so easy to fool us in the first place?  This world is beautiful.  People are beautiful. God is beautiful.  Can’t we just, for one instant, push our skepticism aside, quit our fear of being taken in by setting free our desire for beauty to be true, and enjoy it?  So what if it is a fake?  It’s a beautiful one, and life is more enjoyable trusting beauty rather than fearing it.  After all, what’s to say that this time, it couldn’t be real?

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I'm leaving to meet my up with my team tomorrow!!! And our flight out is at 8:30am Tuesday!!!  I'm so excited!!! Please pray for me... I doubt I'll be able to post while in South Africa, but if you would like prayer updates, just comment (yay for comments being readable in email :D) and if I do get the chance to check my email, depending on who you are, I might possibly give you the url for the team blog we'll update somewhat regularly.  Otherwise, please just pray that God would make our team be the love of Christ to the children we will be ministering to, that through teaching English and playing with the kids, we will bring the compassion and kindness of God to those we meet, and that we will be a witness of what a life of following Christ looks like as different from "religion," that we may clearly present the Gospel in our lives and words.  I'll catch up with y'all in six weeks!!!

The girls on my wing tried to kill me a couple weeks ago.  They don’t know it.  And they probably never will.  But nail polish and asthma are a bad combination.  And when you add to that mix most of the girl refusing to open windows because it’s cold and only one girl doing it such that instead of airing out the dorm, it merely swirls air that carries the smell of death in the form of an asthma trigger… It was not a good situation.  I’ve written before about what physically happens during an asthma attack and how to help someone having one.  What follows is a look at a feeble attempt to face what it does mentally head-on – it’s from my journal that night, and it’s unedited.

I’m so scared.  I don’t know why… of what.  Am I afraid of dying?  No.  All things considered at the moment, I’d much rather be dead than alive.  Is it the process I’m scared of?  No.  I don’t think it’s dying I’m scared of.  I think I’m just… chemically… scared.  Whatever it is that is making my hands and legs shaky, is probably also contributing to the fear.  There – I got a full breath.  I’m so tense.  Relaxing would help.  Then maybe I could go to sleep.  But I’m scared to sleep.  Why?  I think… because it’s drowning.  No one held underwater is going to not get an adrenaline rush with the fear they need to save themselves.  I think the fear is probably a physical reaction to that moment I know will come and I will have to let go, sink beneath the surface of sleep and let my body automatically take that first gasp of water – air – uncontrolled oxygen.  Maybe I’ll survive it.  Maybe I won’t.  But it would be a lot easier to face if I knew for sure.  I’m scared, God.  I don’t know how much of it is a chemical reaction to this and I don’t know how much I’m just failing to trust You.  All I know is, there’s a piercing pain in my throat with every breath, and an ache in my lungs, and I think I might throw up… and I’m scared to try to sleep, God.  I want to curl up and hide, but my brain is screaming that my hiding place could be a trap.  You, O God, are the only true Hiding Place, the only safety that will actively hold me.  You alone, O God, will keep me alive or kill me as you see fit, and no fumes anyone can throw at me have any power over me.  You are my Strong Tower.  In You I am safe, even when I don’t feel like it.  So I think I am going to go read Psalm 91 and 46 and go to sleep.

Thank God I wasn’t able to sleep.  Because the meds I thought were working weren’t able to do enough by an hour after I took them.  By the grace of God, my fear of sleep kept me awake to notice and go spend the night on another floor (a solution I had resisted before because it’s against dorm rules.  I changed my mind when it was clear my life depended on it. )  God was my Hiding Place that night, a Strong Tower who kept me safe… and He still is.  Even when He uses my own silly fear to do it. 

“The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous runs into it and is safe.” – Proverbs 18:10

I like running at 6am, before anybody but the raccoons and coyotes are moving about.  Even before the sun.  There's something about the still air of this time when the world is waiting, watching, almost holding its breath in anticipation of the new day, that makes me eager to join the morning's excitement as it comes alive.  I'm so thankful to God for those moments of still expectancy, the delight of a good Creator who delights in wakening His creatures with the mercies that are new every morning.

Breath of night
Liquid life
Spurred to run
Race the light
Sparkling gaze
Icy blaze
Drawn above
Join the praise

Chasing glory
God of light
Exulting praise
Join hope of night

Silent pause
Dawning draws
Wait with hope
Love life’s Cause
Glim of grey
Eastern shade
Wake to joy
Sun’s bright rays

Chasing glory
God of light
Exulting praise
Join hope of night

My school's major concert for spring is on Friday.  The music is not ready.  And my wrists keep going numb every time I practice, so I can't GET it ready.  Please pray I keep my focus on God and not my problems, and that the concert goes well and blesses people.  Now, I'm off to my New Testament class... let's see if I can actually stay awake!  (I love the class, and I'm learning a lot, but the prof just has one of those sleepy voices, you know?  )  Have a great week, friends.