Treasures :: A Black Folder Full of Choral Music

Inspired by Leigh McLeroy's book Treasured: Knowing God by the Things He Keeps, I'm asking: What tangible pieces of my spiritual history would I place carefully in my own cigar box for safekeeping? What stories have shaped my journey with this ever-faithful, treasure-keeping God? Below is part eight of the "Treasures" series. 

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VIII. A black folder full of choral music
When I first auditioned for the Indiana Wesleyan University Chorale, I didn’t really care much about whether I got in. Being in a choir was a requirement for joining a ministry team, my real dream and priority. Choir? Been there, done that. Might be fun, have to sign up anyway, here we go...

Yet by the end of my college career, I would identify my time with the University Chorale as the  most meaningful part of my college experience, the absolute last thing I ever would have given up. How can I sum up what membership in that group grew to mean to me?

We sang “Now, Shout” the first week of rehearsal—a chaotic twentieth-century piece that changes time signatures approximately every other measure and involves actual shouting. It’s a staple of the chorale, so all the returning members dropped their folders and launched into the a cappella piece, clapping at the appropriate times and thundering on the risers as they stomped to the beat. I, like most of the freshmen, wanted to assume the fetal position. Toto, I have a feeling we're not in high school anymore...

I spent frantic hours in the practice rooms, plunking out the second soprano part and trying to memorize songs the upperclassmen could sing in their sleep. On our first major trip, to the Gaithers’ “Praise Gathering,” I got yelled at by upperclassmen for “cutting the risers.” I didn’t even know what that meant.

And yet, even with the intimidation---even as I floundered in loneliness and struggled to learn my lines, find my place---I fell in love with this group. At 4:30 PM, four days a week, our conductor would sit down at the piano and play “More than Enough” or “I Want to Be Like Jesus,” and all sixty-five of us would flood the cinderblock walls with praises.

During my second semester, word spread that the chorale’s former conductor would return the following fall. He had left the university just before I arrived, causing no small amount of drama among the upperclassmen. Some had quit, unwilling to continue without Dr. Todd Guy at the helm. They told terrifying stories about him, yet they adored him.

The women’s chaplain, a junior who was mentoring me, was thrilled at the prospect of Prof Guy’s return, but I was dismayed. I loved Todd Syswerda, the professor who had taken Prof Guy’s place and the only conductor I’d ever known. I wasn’t sure I wanted to experience this legendary man who had been known to bend music stands and rip the clock off the wall.

Again, I couldn’t have imagined how much I’d grow to love Prof myself, or the influence he’d have on me over the next three years. Yes, he was demanding. Yes, his temper occasionally exploded. But he was the most passionate man I had ever known, and his passion was for us to make excellent music, the caliber of praise that our glorious God deserved.

We didn’t talk during rehearsal. We held our folders at eye level (after four years of that, it took me a while to break the habit of wanting to hold my hymnal that awkwardly high during church). We stood on the balls of our feet and never, never took our eyes off our conductor. We ended words with mouths wide open, producing “high, forward, resonant” sound. And we took Prof’s exhortations to heart—phrases he repeated so often they were almost meaningless clichés, only they weren’t, because he meant them every time.

“Good is not good enough where excellence is expected!” 
“You can’t put a nickel’s worth in and expect a dime’s worth out!”
“I will not offer my God a sacrifice that doesn’t cost me something!”
“He deserves more than that!”

He’d point to the framed photos of former chorales lining the wall behind him, and tell us that they were watching us, expecting us to uphold the legacy they’d helped to build. He’d tell us that 4:30 was our sanctuary, our time to leave everything else at the door and come worship. And it was, and I did.

Prof worked so hard during rehearsals that the knees of his pants would grow dark with sweat. Never before or since have I seen a conductor move so much, communicate so much. I’m sure other choirs made fun of him behind our backs, just as we scorned their conductors for being so wishy-washy and unclear. Let them mock; Prof was dancing on that podium, and it was beautiful to behold. Every flick of his wrist gave you direction. If you watched him, he’d tell you *everything*---entrances, cutoffs, tempo, volume, feeling. And in a concert, we’d be singing “Give Me Jesus” and the tears would roll down his cheeks. My own voice would waver as I wept, a song practiced hundreds of times somehow fresh again and full of glory, its lyrics reflected on Prof’s face as he waved his arms and worshiped.

Chorale was worship, and it was also tradition. It was family. I’d never made such music; I’d also never known such community. All but one or two of my closest friendships during college arose from that group. We’d hold hands all throughout our last concert every year. During the benediction, Prof would point to each senior and mouth “I love you” as we all choked back sobs and tried to continue singing.

Once I rose to the rank of upperclassman and became an officer, I turned into one of those loud, bossy seniors who barked at the freshmen, wanting them to drop their high school arrogance and learn their place, wanting them to respect the traditions and uphold the standards, wanting to place my own bricks on that growing legacy. We were strict because we loved the group so much, because we couldn’t bear to think of it declining on our watch.

We sang Handel’s Messiah and pieces newly written by student composition majors. We performed  African spirituals and modern psalm settings, Russian alleluias and haunting medieval melodies and arrangements of traditional hymns. We spat out words, literally, overenunciating to the point of ridiculousness (someone once asked me why we sang “Cheesus”). And we produced truly otherworldly harmonies.

Our concerts took us all over Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, to Chicago and New York and Florida and Scotland. One spring break we sang a whirlwind eighteen concerts in eight days. And day after day, Prof demonstrated for me the truth of the hymn lines:

“Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all.”

He showed me, four afternoons a week and several weekends a year, what that looked like. And the IWU Chorale gave me countless unmatched opportunities to lift my voice in majestic praise to the Creator of life and breath and music, to the Savior who gives us reason to sing.


Treasures, previously:
A broken piece of cornerstone
A sharp pebble
A pastel index card
A Bible with a broken spine
A rainbow lanyard with a pewter cross pendant
Pages of prayers scrawled in a journal
Flip-flops with holes worn through the heels 
A sparkly aqua heart necklace

Treasures :: A Sparkly Silver Necklace with an Aqua Hearts Pendant

I've been sorting through my treasures in chronological order so far, telling the stories of God's work in my life as I remember them unfolding. But tonight I’m compelled to fast-forward from my college years to the present. Last week, I received a brand-new treasure.

 ***

“Treasure chests” have been a low hum of annoyance in my life ever since Elijah started preschool. Oh, I don't at all blame the teachers for trying anything that works for classroom management. I just don't love all the cheap junk littering my house.

Over the last two years, we’ve amassed quite a collection of plastic trinkets, thanks to our obedient (at school, anyway) boys. This year, Elijah’s first grade teacher invites the students who have good behavior all week to eat lunch with her in the classroom every Friday, so he always looks forward to “Lunch Bunch.” He also gets to select a treasure.

(As an aside, "treasure chest" has long been one of those adorable kid-language quirks in our house. It was only a few weeks ago that I finally explained to Elijah that the object itself was not called a “treasure chest.” For years he’s been saying, “I got a treasure chest today!” “Look, see my treasure chest?”)

I digress. So last Friday, on the way home from school, Elijah was excited to tell me what he had picked out from the treasure chest. “Mom, wait till you see it,” he said. “I got something for you. It’s beautiful.”

Instead of selecting some sort of racecar or superhero figure, Elijah chose a “pretty necklace,” and he presented it to me with pride.

Not since Steve placed a diamond on my left hand have I felt more proud to wear a piece of jewelry, or more undeserving of the love with which it was given.

I realize every mother gets a million of these cheap trinkets from her offspring. I can remember excitedly shopping at my elementary school’s Secret Santa Shop for Christmas gifts I was just sure my parents would LOVE (paid for with their own money). But this is my first one, and it feels like a milestone—not least because it actually cost Elijah something.

This wasn’t him taking money he’d gotten from Daddy and picking out a present for me. And it wasn’t prompted by an occasion like Mother’s Day or my birthday. This was Elijah simply loving me: looking through all the treasures, spotting a sparkly necklace, thinking of me and wanting me to have it more than he wanted a new toy.

These last few days, as I feel the weight of a cheap aqua heart pendant around my neck, it is heavy with a son’s love for his mama. And it has me pondering gospel implications.

Being a mother is indeed teaching me about unconditional love and the way God the Father relates to us. But it isn’t in the way everyone says, the way I expected. No, often *I* am the child in the relationship, learning from the love of my son. 

I’m finding that this little necklace—unexpected, undeserved gift—does more to motivate me to be a good mom than any amount of reading pep talks (or shaming screeds) about motherhood. It has more of an impact than “should”-ing myself, more than beating myself up about how I’ve failed and resolving to try harder and do better. I touch the bejeweled hearts, and when I realize how loved I am in spite of my mistakes, I *want* to be the mama Elijah needs. I want to walk worthy of a necklace.

How can I be irritated with him, when he chose something from the treasure chest for me? How can I yell at him, when he loved me enough to sacrifice taking something for himself? How can I be impatient with him, when he kept me on his mind and heart and picked out a beautiful trinket just because he thought it would make me smile?

“Stop yelling! You’re crushing him! Good moms don’t yell at their kids! You’ve GOT to get your anger under control!”—funny how that doesn’t actually seem to help.

“He loves you, in spite of yourself. He is glad you are his mama, even after all the times you’ve yelled at him.”—amazing how that inspires me to take a deep breath, look at him through different eyes, and love him.

And finally God begins to get it through my thick head: We love because He first loved us. It’s His kindness that leads us to repentance. Growth and change come not by beating ourselves over the head with should and ought-tos, but by resting securely in His grace—through being rooted and grounded in His deep, deep love for us.

How can I be indifferent toward Him, when He chose me as His treasure?
How can I betray Him, when He loved me enough to sacrifice His only Son for me?
How can I distrust Him, when His thoughts toward me are without number? 

What the law could not do, God did—by sending His own Son. By lavishing His love. By adopting us as His children. We love, because He first loved us. And then we change, because we love.

Elijah gave me a trinket that spoke volumes about his love for his mama. More than that, he gave me the gift of seeing the gospel a little bit more clearly. He gave me a glimpse of Jesus’ love for me.


Treasures, previously:
A broken piece of cornerstone
A sharp pebble
A pastel index card
A Bible with a broken spine
A rainbow lanyard with a pewter cross pendant
Pages of prayers scrawled in a journal
Flip-flops with holes worn through the heels 

Treasures :: Flip-Flops with Holes Worn Through the Heels

Inspired by Leigh McLeroy's book Treasured: Knowing God by the Things He Keeps, I'm asking: What tangible pieces of my spiritual history would I place carefully in my own cigar box for safekeeping? What stories have shaped my journey with this ever-faithful, treasure-keeping God? Below is part seven of the "Treasures" series. 

*** 

VII. Flip-flops with holes worn through the heels

One of the main reasons I chose to attend Indiana Wesleyan University was because I hoped to join a ministry team. The teams who sang and traveled to camps each summer had been so instrumental in my own salvation, and I dreamed of having that kind of profound impact on other kids’ lives. So when I arrived on campus as a freshman, one of my first priorities was auditioning and interviewing for a team, praying fervently that God would grant my heart’s desire.

I wasn’t selected for the more prestigious/well-known team I’d been hoping for, but I did get to join a team. And while initially I wasn’t thrilled about singing all a cappella music instead of the cool Avalon and FFH tracks the other teams got to sing, I learned to love what we did (and I grew exponentially more as a musician).

Brother's Keeper 2000-2001

Singing with our team, Brother's Keeper, was a more intense time commitment than I could have imagined. During the school year, we were on the road every single weekend except for school breaks (fall, spring, Thanksgiving and Christmas). We’d sing at a church Sunday morning, sometimes having to drive several hours on Saturday afternoon and stay overnight in a host home. (I slept in more strangers' homes than I can begin to count--some experiences were phenomenal, others...strange.) Other times we had to wake up at the buttcrack of dawn on Sunday morning to drive to a church. Then we’d get back in our van and travel to a different church for a Sunday evening service. Each concert involved unloading and reloading the van, setting up and tearing down an entire sound system.

Brother's Keeper 2001-2002

In June, the university would send us on a ten-week tour of youth and family camps. I packed a summer’s worth of belongings in a giant Rubbermaid bin on wheels, and my team drove from Iowa to northern Michigan to New Brunswick and various places in between, serving as counselors, leading worship, singing our own music, whatever the camp directors wanted us to do.

A navy blue pair of $3 flip-flops hardly left my feet those summers, except at bedtime. They took me in and out of community showers, through recreation and fast-food runs and worship services and small group meetings. Those flimsy rubber sandals were, in a sense, shoes of the gospel of peace, and I wore them out. By the time I got back to campus in August, the heels had worn so thin that stepping on a sharp rock would cause me to yelp with pain. Soon an actual hole appeared, and they had to be thrown out.

The miles those flip-flops carried me were unforgettable. Along the way I learned to play the guitar and to beatbox; I cultivated some of my most significant relationships. I poured into junior high girls and soaked up teaching from phenomenal speakers. I leaned on my teammates when I was weak and at my worst; I laughed with them at 2AM Canadian border crossings. And again and again, I marveled at the faithfulness of God, at His profoundly generous answers to prayer, at His patient condescension to accomplish His work through flawed and messy me.

The highlight was when those flip-flops took me back to Lakeside, the beloved camp where God had first drawn me to himself four years earlier. On a humid July evening, as our team gave the traditional concert featured every year, I shared my testimony with kids who had been my fellow campers the summer before. I explained that I was living proof that a commitment made at camp could be real. It didn’t have to be a “camp fling” with God, experiencing a little taste of Him for a few days and resolving to "do better" at the Christian life, only to slide back into old ways after just a couple of weeks at home. God had transformed me permanently, I told them—and He wanted to capture their hearts, too.

I don’t know how many of those kids are walking with God today and how many have long since abandoned the façade of faith that they pretended to carry through their teen years. But I do know there have been few experiences in my life as powerful as watching two of my teammates perform the skit (“The Pretender”) that pierced my own heart at age fifteen, then proclaiming my own story of God’s glorious grace and singing Third Day’s “Love Song” with my team. I stood in those flip-flops proudly, humbly, overwhelmed at His goodness to me and grateful to have beautiful feet bringing good news.


Treasures, previously:
A broken piece of cornerstone
A sharp pebble
A pastel index card
A Bible with a broken spine
A rainbow lanyard with a pewter cross pendant
Pages of prayers scrawled in a journal

Treasures :: Pages of Prayers Scrawled in a Journal

Inspired by Leigh McLeroy's book Treasured: Knowing God by the Things He Keeps, I'm asking: What tangible pieces of my spiritual history would I place carefully in my own cigar box for safekeeping? What stories have shaped my journey with this ever-faithful, treasure-keeping God? Below is part six of the "Treasures" series. 

*** 

VI. Pages of prayers scrawled in a journal

I spent my entire senior year of high school (and most of junior year) proclaiming loudly how I couldn’t wait to get the heck out of Dodge. I had dreams too big for my small town; I had places to go. I sneered at the state university an hour away where ten percent of my graduating class would attend together, like some sort of Grade 13. No way, I said. Not me.

Instead, I agonized for months, trying to choose between New York University and Indiana Wesleyan University--two schools that could not have been more opposite. I started assuming the fetal position every time someone asked, "Where are you going to college?" I delayed the decision until the last possible day, when I signed the housing contract for IWU and prepared to move to Marion, Indiana.

Manhattan it was not. While I was excited about IWU, I also mourned a little bit, wishing I’d been offered more scholarship money for NYU, wondering what it would be like if I were transplanting from rural northwest Ohio to the coolest, craziest city on earth.

Fourteen years later, I still wonder sometimes. In retrospect, I can see that IWU was best; I marvel at what God poured into me and over me there. I shake my head when I remember how hard my first semester was, wondering how I would have survived at NYU. I imagine I might have flown home at Christmas a sobbing, shaking wreck of a freshman, unmoored and floundering, alone and ashamed of my weakness.

Yet that mental picture doesn’t wholly satisfy; I think I'll always wish I’d had an opportunity to live in New York for a summer, a semester, a season. It’s one of life’s great “what if” questions, where you *know* that what God had was best and yet you still can’t help feeling a little wistful. As Sue Monk Kidd puts it in The Invention of Wings:

"I longed for it in that excruciating way one has of romanticizing the life she didn't choose. But sitting here now, I knew...I would have regretted that, too. I'd chosen the regret I could live with best, that's all. I'd chosen the life I belonged to."

Anyway, I digress. I packed up at the end of the summer, said a fearful goodbye to the boy I was secretly in love with, and spent the weekend of freshman orientation blinking back hot tears, willing myself to swallow hard, embarrassment suppressing my fear. It seemed like everyone else had attended a seminar on “how to make friends instantly,” and I watched in self-pitying despair as they all paired up and formed groups and didn’t need me.

I chewed up all my proud words about my friends who'd gone off to college together, realizing now that my slice of humble pie would taste much better with one of those familiar faces sitting across the table. I was only two hours from home, and I had my own car on campus, but I didn’t let myself go home until fall break, afraid that if I drove those 110 miles too soon, I might not be able to drive back.

My dorm had a prayer chapel, a little room on the third floor with a couple of chairs, a few cushions, maybe a cross. I don’t remember much about the room, only the sinking feeling I’d get when I found its door already closed and I had no place else to go. I spent hours in that chapel my first semester, taking my anxiety to the feet of Jesus and begging Him to bring me just one friend.

I’d known Him before that; three years earlier I’d clung to Him decisively, taken hold of a real and living faith of my own. I loved His Word; I trusted Him. But I had never before had to rely on Him so exclusively. So again and again, because I had no one else to turn to, I climbed the steps to the third floor, journal and Bible in hand.

Somewhere along the way I learned to write out my prayers, discovering how much better I was able to concentrate and express my desires and praises with pen in hand. And somewhere along the way, someone had given me the idea to pray Scripture. So I paged through the Psalms and pored over Paul’s letters, scanning the heavily underlined text, copying out passages paraphrased into my own prayers.

I’d never choose to relive those lonely months, but, as we often say when we look at trials in hindsight, I’d never trade them, either. My roots went deep into streams of life that first year of college, and my prayer life in particular would never be the same. It was that semester that I learned to saturate my prayers with Scripture, learned the power of praying God’s Word back to Him.

In the end, God was faithful to answer my tearful pleas, lavishing on me not just the one friend I hoped for, but more incredible women than I could hope for in a lifetime--amazing women who would love me and sharpen me and add beauty to my life. And even more amazingly, He gave me Himself, more intimately than I had ever known before--a Friend faithful beyond all others. And so my written-out prayers continued.

I’m up to volume 105 in my personal journals now; they have evolved quite a bit over the years. Through middle school and high school, my diary was mostly a chronicle of what I did, who said what, how I was feeling, who I was madly in love with, etc. In college, the written-out prayers started, so it was a balance of processing my feelings, recording significant events, and prayers. After I got married, the daily entries all but disappeared, leaving only the prayers and some occasional reflections on Scripture. These days, sadly, I've gotten out of the prayer-writing habit; my journal-filling pace has slowed significantly. 

Still, being able to go back through decades of recorded prayers is an immeasurable gift. To see my own growth; to see clear answers to desperate prayers; to be able to pray through them again as I read…just priceless.


Treasures, previously:
A broken piece of cornerstone
A sharp pebble
A pastel index card
A Bible with a broken spine
A rainbow lanyard with a pewter cross pendant

Treasures :: A Rainbow Lanyard with a Pewter Cross Pendant

Inspired by Leigh McLeroy's book Treasured: Knowing God by the Things He Keeps, I'm asking: What tangible pieces of my spiritual history would I place carefully in my own cigar box for safekeeping? What stories have shaped my journey with this ever-faithful, treasure-keeping God? After a several months-long hiatus, I'm picking back up below with part five of the "Treasures" series. 

*** 
 
V. A rainbow lanyard with a heavy pewter cross pendant

A woman placed the colorful necklace over my head on a Sunday afternoon, at the close of one of the best weekends of my life. I was emerging from a three-day chrysalis.

We high school girls gathered on a Friday morning, some nervous, some excited, some reluctant. They told us, “Don’t anticipate, participate,” and they called us caterpillars. We divided into small groups, sat around tables and named our groups—names with which we’d have to introduce ourselves for life, but we didn’t know that at the time.

We listened to earnest, thoughtful talks, and we discussed and prayed and cried. We laughed and snacked and created posters, skits and songs. On Saturday night we got a little taste of Heaven: I have never experienced the love and welcome of God before or since quite so powerfully as I did in that candlelit sanctuary.

On Sunday afternoon, they announced, we were butterflies. We had grown, we had seen God, and we were ready to take our “Next Steps” back into a world that hadn’t changed while we were cocooned inside that church. We read piles of letters from loved ones, collected by our sponsors, and the tears rolled down my cheeks, my heart fit to burst.

At the closing service for Greater Findlay Area Girls’ Chrysalis Flight #13, we each received a necklace—a heavy pewter cross with a butterfly engraved on one side and "CHRIST IS COUNTING ON YOU" on the other, hanging from a lanyard someone had knitted with variegated yarn dyed in bright Roy G. Biv hues. As the Lay Director hung the necklace around each girl's neck, she said, "Christ is counting on you," and the girl was to respond, "I am counting on Christ."

I would go on to serve as a Teen Table Leader on one of these weekends two years later--another priceless, incredible experience on the other side. In the meantime, I’d shower others with “agape” (our name for the notes and gifts as tangible expressions of love poured out on the participants all weekend long). I’d set alarms for three a.m. prayer vigil slots and write letters and hold candles while singing “Love, love, love, love / The gospel in one word is love…” I’d even sponsor both my parents to go on an Emmaus Walk (the adult version of Chrysalis). And at monthly gatherings, I’d sing “modern” (1980s) worship songs with reckless joy and introduce myself as “Amy Kaylor, Greater Findlay Area Girls’ Chrysalis Flight #13, Table of God’s ‘G’ Girls.” I always felt silly saying that name, but I dearly loved the woman and the girls who had sat around it with me.

This community nurtured me and fed my soul while I was enduring the growing pains of no longer fitting in the church where I’d grown up. And then eventually, I no longer fit here, either.

I wore the rainbow lanyard one last time in the fall of 2004, after I’d graduated from college and was engaged to be married. I was invited to serve as an Adult Table Leader this time, to nurture a group of young caterpillars and watch them take flight. It was an opportunity I dearly cherished, but I was quickly sinking into a season I'd later refer to as a "dark night of the soul"; dry and empty, I had little to give to my girls. The low point was a huge and heartbreaking moment when one of the speakers basically said something heretical in the Q&A following her talk.

I realized that the rainbow lanyard had served its purpose, that its colors and heft no longer felt right against my chest. Yet while the time had come to nestle it in a drawer, I did so with fondness. I had been deeply moved and changed by the opportunities I'd had in this community to be loved and to love others.

The Emmaus/Chrysalis community loves and serves Jesus by loving and serving each other so practically and faithfully. They fill 72-hour prayer vigils; they serve meals and drive shuttles to shower facilities at six a.m. They serve on administrative boards, clean bathrooms, sacrifice weekends. They give hugs and make bookmarks and overwhelm people with a thousand little ways of saying, "God loves you. You are precious to Him, and you matter to us. We will go out of our way to help you encounter Him and know Him."

While I needed to move on from Chrysalis, there was no mistaking what the movement had done for my sense of identity, my understanding of the personal love of God, and my concept of the power and beauty of a body of believers.


Treasures, previously:
A broken piece of cornerstone
A sharp pebble
A pastel index card 
A Bible with a broken spine

Treasures :: A Bible with a Broken Spine

Inspired by Leigh McLeroy's book Treasured: Knowing God by the Things He Keeps, I'm asking: What tangible pieces of my spiritual history would I place carefully in my own cigar box for safekeeping? What stories have shaped my journey with this ever-faithful, treasure-keeping God? Below is part four of the "Treasures" series. 

*** 

IV. An NIV Study Bible with the spine broken somewhere in Romans, blue ink bleeding through the page margins

The Bible had been given to me on the Sunday I was welcomed as a full-fledged member of my church, a gift to each preteen who completed the confirmation class and recited vows affirming her baptism. Those vows meant nothing to me at the time; the class was just something all the sixth graders did, and the Bible merely took up space on a shelf. When I took it to camp, one of the aforementioned hot college guys remarked that it was the same Bible he had. Only his looked well-used, the cover edges worn. Mine was pristine.

But then I began digging into the Word for myself after camp—no longer relegating my Bible to a church accessory, but keeping it beside my bed, a necessary part of my life. I went crazy underlining. It had never occurred to me that you could make *marks* in such a sacred book (gasp!), but I began to see margin notes as the sign of a committed, healthy Christian. In fact, inwardly I took obnoxious pride in getting my Bible all marked up and then comparing it to others’ whose pages were still crisp, unmarred by teenage scrawls. Sigh. (At some point, thankfully, I came across a quote from Julie Ackerman Link: "What matters to God, I realized, is not how many thoughts of my own are written in my Bible, but how many of the Bible's thoughts are written in me." I copied that down on one of the front pages to remind myself.)

I was amazed to discover that this old, intimidating book was actually relevant to my life, that it could comfort and challenge me, speak exactly into my heart and circumstances. I drew blue lines under verse after verse, starring especial favorites. Later I read through the New Testament in The Message version, and when a verse particularly stood out to me, I copied the fresh paraphrase right into the study Bible margins.

Eventually you could tell which books I spent the most time in, which passages were favorites; the Bible would fall open to 1 Kings 18-19, Isaiah 40, Habbakuk 3, Galatians 5-6, 1 John 3-4. Four years later, the hardcover spine had broken completely; you could actually remove Romans through the concordance. But I couldn’t bear to replace my beloved Bible. I could see in my mind where a verse was on the page. I cherished my notes and marks. And so, as one of the best gifts I’d ever received, my best friend Julie had my Bible rebound for my high school graduation.

I had to go without it the entire summer after I graduated. But when I got it back, it was perfect: My familiar pages, their tissue-thin paper creased and crinkled, tightly bound in a stiff blue faux-leather cover. It was brand-new, and yet it was old; it was mine.

During my first awful, lonely semester of college, I filled margins in the Psalms with “Was David reading my mind or what? But God was faithful to him, and He'll be faithful to me, too!” and “God hears me, encourages and listens to my helpless sobs...I'm not alone here..." I drew music notes next to verses I couldn't read without hearing songs in my head; I jotted down quotes, sermon notes, Greek word definitions.

Somewhere along the way I learned to pray Scripture, and I taped a list of carefully chosen Scripture prayers for close friends and family members inside the front cover. Also still tucked in the front cover is a scrap of pink paper on which my mentor, Diane, scribbled in black Sharpie a few suggestions for battling pride. A crocheted cross bookmark from my grandmother has a permanent spot in Job 19:25-27.

Later on, I discovered highlighter crayons, and my Bible got color-coded a bit. A quick flip through could tell you a lot about major themes and struggles in my life: orange for forgetting and remembering, green for pride and humility, yellow for fearing God. The faux-leather cover began to wear through at the edges of the spine, so it got repaired with clear packing tape, and a couple more pride verses got taped to the front, needed reminders of how to open this precious book:

"God opposes the PROUD, but gives GRACE to the HUMBLE" (James 4:6)

"This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word" (Isaiah 66:2)

A few years ago I switched to the English Standard Version, and my once-again-in-need-of-rebinding NIV Study Bible was once again relegated to a shelf. I pull it out every now and then to marvel at the times God spoke to me over all those years. It is an heirloom, something I hope my kids will one day cherish as a testament to His grace at work in their mama's life.


Treasures, previously:
A broken piece of cornerstone
A sharp pebble
A pastel index card

Treasures :: A Pastel Index Card

Inspired by Leigh McLeroy's book Treasured: Knowing God by the Things He Keeps, I'm asking: What tangible pieces of my spiritual history would I place carefully in my own cigar box for safekeeping? What stories have shaped my journey with this ever-faithful, treasure-keeping God? Below is part three of the "Treasures" series. 

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III. A pastel index card
That best friend of mine who’d invited me to church camp? She surrendered to Jesus that night of the “walk to the water,” too. And I’m certain that it was her friendship, her encouragement and support, that made the difference once we got home and settled back into “real life.” It would have been so easy for us both to slip into old habits and patterns, to let that joy fade into an album of camp snapshots, closed and shelved. But in His generous mercy He had claimed us both simultaneously, and so Julie and I tuned our radios to YES FM and dug into the Bible together.

We were eager to grow and learn, adorably naïve (and arrogant) in our new passion for God. As we began to read Scripture for ourselves, we exchanged index cards every day. I’d write a verse reference for her at the top of a candy-colored 3x5 card, and she’d give me a white lined card with a blue ballpoint verse written across the top in her neat cursive hand.

Every day Julie and I would exchange cards, and each night before bed as I settled in with my journal and Bible, I’d eagerly look up the Scripture that Julie had chosen for me, copying it onto the card. Then I'd flip through my Bible, searching for a really great verse to share with her the next day.

Were we ignorantly ripping random verses waaaaay out of context? Did our methods leave much to be desired? Oh yes. But I feel quite sure God smiled on our immature zeal for His Word. I had owned a Bible for as long as I could remember, but this process of actually reading it, eating it up, and finding the words powerful, meaningful, personal--this was totally new. And I couldn’t get enough.


Treasures, previously:
A broken piece of cornerstone
A sharp pebble

Treasures :: A Sharp Pebble

Inspired by Leigh McLeroy's book Treasured: Knowing God by the Things He Keeps, I'm asking: What tangible pieces of my spiritual history would I place carefully in my own cigar box for safekeeping? What stories have shaped my journey with this ever-faithful, treasure-keeping God? Below is part two of the "Treasures" series. 

*** 

II. A sharp pebble 

I’d been to church camp before. Four straight summers, as a matter of fact. Each year was pretty much the same: fun activities, some teaching about God, a vague uneasiness that I was not living a “good Christian life,” and a resolve to "do better" once I got home. That awareness typically lasted all of two weeks (at the outside most) before I was back to living my normal life: a good-girl Christian facade covering a rebellious, prideful, self-righteous heart.

By the time I was a freshman in high school, the rebellious part was growing. I wanted to have fun; I was tired of being labeled goody-two-shoes, teacher's-pet. In the grand scheme of things, it could have been a lot worse, but I'm sure my parents lost a fair amount of sleep the year I turned 15. I lied to them and cursed about them; we fought endlessly over my curfew. The only thing that stopped me from partying on the weekends was the reality that in a town of 4,000 people, news of the school superintendent's daughter getting drunk would get back to my parents faster than I'd recover from the hangover.

So my desire to go to a new church camp that summer after my freshman year--our church's district senior high youth camp at Lakeside--really had little to do with growing close to God and everything to do with having fun with my friends. Two of them had gone before and talked about how great it was. Plus, they said, the college guys in the music group who came every year were hot!

 

My best friend almost backed out on me at the last minute. She had some problem with money or her registration form or something; I don’t remember the specifics, but I can picture myself on the phone with her the night before we were supposed to leave, flipping out that she was talking of abandoning me. There was no way I wanted to go alone. And so Satan came close to wrecking what would change the trajectory of both our lives. But God’s purposes will not be thwarted.

Julie and I showed up at Lakeside on a Sunday evening and reserved beds in the coolest part of the dorm. On "Section Porch," we stayed up late giggling and perpetuated silly traditions.

 

But there was also something really different going on here. Those college kids, the good-looking guys and the girls on their team, they loved God and His Word. I mean, really loved Him. They *knew* Him, in a way that this “Christian” good-girl didn’t.

On Wednesday evening, we listened to a concert from the college group, and they performed a skit called "The Pretender." I squirmed as I saw myself portrayed, and the punchline pierced me: "You may talk like a Christian, and look like a Christian, and you may go to church—but I don't think you really are a Christian."

Afterward we were instructed to go outside and pick up a pebble. Put it in your shoe, the leaders said, while we walk six blocks or so down to the lake. That pebble represents whatever is standing between you and God, whatever it is in the way of your relationship with Him.

I was wearing sandals, so I squeezed the sharp, tiny rock in the palm of my hand, forcing my fingers to push its edges into my skin until it hurt. I needed to feel that pressure, needed to see the indentations, needed to make the self-righteous good girl squirm.

We spread out along the shore of Lake Erie, several dozen campers and counselors. That stretch of shoreline doesn’t have a beach, just big gray boulders separating the water and the land.

 

I climbed out onto a rock and watched the sun sink into the lake, waves pulsing against the rocks below me, and that little pebble pushed its way into my proud heart.

The lyrics of one of the songs the college kids had sung rolled through my mind:

Lead me, Lord
I will follow
Lead me, Lord
I will go
You have called me
I will answer
Lead me, Lord
I will go

Really profound, right? But it was part of what God used to draw me. I realized with sudden clarity that I wasn’t actually a Christian at all. I’d played the part of the holier-than-thou church girl; I thought I had it all together and secretly looked down on my friends who slept in on Sundays and took God’s name in vain. But God wasn’t going to let me play games any longer. He was calling me to follow--*really* follow.

The performance I had taken such pride in wasn't nearly enough to earn me His favor. His requirement was a perfection beyond even what my perfectionist self was always striving to attain. He didn't want outward forms of religious duty; He wanted my heart, surrendered to Him and humbly admitting that I needed Him. He wanted me to know that my very best was not enough--but that He had freely given His very best to me, for me, in spite of me. I was ready to toss my pebble, my self-righteousness, into the water. I threw it as hard as I could.

I returned from the rocks that night a new creation. I felt a joy unlike anything I had felt before. I was free. I wasn’t pretending anymore. I *knew* this God, and I was hungry to know Him more.


More treasures:
A broken piece of cornerstone

Treasures :: A Broken Piece of Cornerstone

This is the first post in a series that has been brewing in my heart for over a year. I thought the 31 Days challenge would delay publishing it, but I realized it fits with this month's theme of seeing Jesus--these are stories, after all, of how God has been at work in my life over the course of three decades, breaking and healing and shaping my heart, drawing me to Himself. As I look back and remember, I see Jesus' active love so clearly.

A while back, I read Leigh McLeroy's book Treasured: Knowing God by the Things He Keeps. In it, she tells the story of receiving a cigar box after her grandfather's death, full of tangible objects he had chosen for some reason to keep. She then explores the way we hang onto precious tokens of our memories, and suggests that God has his own collection of treasures:

"I've known God longer than I ever knew my grandfather, although I have never seen Him. I've not once touched His face or heard His voice or felt the weight of His hand on my own. Still, I suspect that He has left more than a few scattered bits of His rich and mysterious identity for me to examine, tucked away deep in the pages of His Word. An olive branch here. A golden bell there. A faded strip of fabric, spotted brown with blood. A length of scarlet thread. A few grains of barley. These keepsakes tell His story, and they help me to understand my own. He treasured them, and He treasures me too."

By the time I finished reading, I was inspired to start writing. I wanted to build my own treasure chest, to ask: What tangible pieces of my spiritual history would I place carefully in my own cigar box for safekeeping? What stories have shaped my journey with this ever-faithful, treasure-keeping God? Below is the first.

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I. A broken piece of cornerstone

We gathered that sunny afternoon, gray-haired men and women, families with young children, to remember and celebrate. Our church, with its polished wood beams, vast expanses of stained glass,  curved balconies and blue-cushioned pews, was 150 years old.

We probably potlucked that day, and oh, the potlucks we used to have. My current church hosts a potluck lunch every single Sunday, so the concept has lost its glamour. When you have to bring food to share week after week, you bring the same simple dish, you bring what’s quick and easy, you buy a package of chips on sale. But when you potluck only on special occasions, a few times a year, that potluck is a FEAST. The ladies bring their specialties: tables are laden with the casserole she’s famous for, the award-winning beans, pie after mouthwatering pie. We’d all file down to the low-ceilinged fellowship hall, load up plates at tables stretched the length of the basement, and gather to eat until we were stuffed.

After lunch, we headed outside. The gray cornerstone of that beautiful brick church was a time capsule, and today was the day to break it open. Men carefully chipped at the mortar that cemented it in place alongside the front steps, and we waited eagerly to see what our grandparents in the faith had sealed inside.

I don’t remember a single thing that was raised to life out of that cement tomb, but I remember even as a child sensing the anticipation and the gravity of the event. I picked up a jagged piece of stone and tucked it away, a tangible memory. I was inclined even then to save treasures, to gather stones of remembrance.

St. Paul’s United Methodist Church was potlucks and singing “Arky, Arky” and finally growing old enough to wear a red robe and be an acolyte. It was Sunday school flannelboards and youth group games and sitting with my friend whose grandmother passed a plastic bag of butterscotch candies and brought fun activities to occupy us during worship. It was Mother-Daughter banquets and Christmas pageants. It was the place where I sang my first solo and preached my first (and only) sermon (at the tender age of 12!). It was home.

My parents chose this church when they were new in town; I was just two and a half. I don’t know how they selected St. Paul's over the five other churches within two blocks, but they visited, and they stayed. They remained for 28 years, even when other families fled to hipper, newer churches, even when the pulpit seemed like a revolving door.

I spent too many Sundays passing notes with my youth-group friends in the balcony, but I can still recite one pastor’s pre-sermon prayer with the exact inflection he used every week, words rising and falling to the same cadence. I hear his voice in my head whenever I read Psalm 19: “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be holy and acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer…Amen.”

I left that church during college, when it was no longer the right fit for the woman of faith I was becoming. Yet I left with a wistful heart, for as much as I needed to go, these were my people. Finding a new church meant saying goodbye to my Sunday school teachers, my cherub choir directors, my confirmation mentor and my Chrysalis sponsor. This was my faith heritage, and though I would find that the theology needed revising and replacing, I could never replace these saints who had loved and nurtured me.

However much I may have grown to differ from the Methodists, I can’t deny the fact that in that old brick church, a cornerstone was laid. While I was there, I came to know Jesus, and the foundation endures.


[This post is part of the series "31 Days of Seeing Jesus"--click here for a list of all posts.]

Other Treasures in the series:
II. A sharp pebble
III. A pastel index card