I am utterly wrapped up in a season of refining fire right now.

I’ve faced it at every corner and in every direction. All this crap and garbage and nonsense has somehow sifted its way to the top, into the obvious, into the open.

And He has been burning it out of my life, one painful moment at a time.

The past few months have just been odd. One kind of drama after another, roadblock after dilemma after frustration. 

It’s exhausting.

And refining.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt such a strong sense of refining in my life. At every corner, I have felt a strong sense of the Lord’s calling to complete and timely obedience.  It’s like my eyes have been opened to all the depravity and nastiness of my own heart because of the hundreds of times a day that I totally blow it. And removing the garbage has felt both sacrificial and painful at times.

But in the midst of the refining fire, I have been overwhelmed at the evidence of God’s sweet favor. For every instance of drama, there has been a word of encouragement from an unexpected acquaintance. For every frustration, there has been an alternative solution that only God could orchestrate. And for every dilemma, I’ve found something sweet in the Word to confirm the exact step I should take.

Intense refinement. Sweet favor.

My mind has been stuck tonight on the passage in John 12 that talks about Mary pouring the expensive perfume on the feet of Jesus, cleaning his feet with her hair. It seems like kind of an odd thing to do, and the humility required to do something so lavish and awkward is something that I feel like I can identify with more and more in seasons like this one. She was broken enough to pour herself out at his feet, submitting to the refining fires.

And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (verse 3)

Her brokenness was marked by a sweet fragrance of surrender, His refining process marked by sweet evidence of His favor. I’ll be glad when this season of intense refining is complete, but until then, the fragrance of brokenness in my life is overwhelmed by the sweet, sustaining favor of the Lord in each of my days right now.

Well, I *think* I’m about done with this blogging hiatus. My mind has started to work in blog posts again, and as soon as I get a few real minutes to think, I definitely have at least one post coming.

In the mean time, there are a few updates worth noting.

1. I’m ONE PAPER away from graduating! It’s due next weekend, so I’m counting down the pages until I can add the M.A. after my name.

2. My best friend Tiffanie is moving to Colorado Springs and moving in with me. I posted about her here, and the idea that we’re going to be friends that live in the same place makes me smile just about every time I think about it.

3. I’ve made a goal to do one new outdoor adventure every week this summer. So far, so good. I’ve been…

To Mt. Kill-Me the Incline. One mile 41-68% grade. Stairmaster from hell. But totally worth it.

To the overlook…

And to the Crags (my favorite so far)…

4. And by popular request…Aspen is almost full-grown and is becoming quite the little diva. I’m still obsessed. She’s just too cute!

So I’ve been THISCLOSE to deleting my blog in recent weeks. Haven’t felt like writing. Feel slightly obligated to write at least weekly to keep some sort of significance and readership.

I am getting tired of social media.

So I joined Twitter.

No, really. I can’t believe I did it either.

I’ve sworn it off at least a hundred times. It’s totally lame. And ego-centric. And no one cares about the meaningless things I do to fill my days.  But then I watched a friend get text after text updating her on our friends’ lives…and I felt left out. So I joined. Because who wants to be left out of something that helps people stay connected?

Two days later…and I think I’m actually going to like it. I’m the only person I know around here with Twitter…so I’m either going to be the laughing stock of the church staff, or (as I’d prefer to think) I’m expanding our ministry network one tweet at a time.

Found this diagram today. Thought it was completely appropriate. I’m the victim of ego-centric, stalker-ish narcissism. The first two days have been fun. The long term outlook is yet to be determined.

Love you, Dad!

How much longer till football season? Because we’re ready.

…then I would be a total liar. That’s why I haven’t posted anything all week long.

In random order….new lessons learned at this week’s Liberty intensive:

1. It is just as we have always suspected. God-Jesus-HolySpirit-JerryFalwell (followed closely by Mother Teresa and Billy Graham). No, they didn’t say that in exact words. But the evidence is everywhere. Ha.

2. It’s a small world after all. One of the girls assigned to my apartment this week actually went to Lee U for undergrad and we have at least twenty-five mutual friends from our years there. And over lunch yesterday, I figured out that one of my classmates actually lives about a half mile from Woodmen in Colorado Springs. Craziness, right?

3. I don’t think I’ve ever truly appreciated just how humid the southeast part of the U.S. really is. My hair hates this place, and I’m not sure I remembered how sticky summer months can be in this part of the country until I tried to take a run in the sauna outside.

4. I am ridiculously good (emphasis on ridiculous) at role-playing various mental disorders. It’s frightening. I mean, we spend our whole lives trying to hold it all together so the world can’t even see our idiosyncrasies, and I come to graduate school to play a girl with a delusional disorder…? What’s that about? And why am I so good at it? Should I be concerned about this?

5. I cannot believe that I have officially become that girl. THAT GIRL. The one who misses her prissy, three pound, sleeps-in-my-bed-and-has-more-expensive-haircuts-than-I-do puppy like crazy even though it’s only been like four days since I last saw her. Eesh. I’m so ashamed. And so relieved that there are only two more days until I see her again.

6. The more people I meet, the more fascinated I am by their stories. I love-love-love hearing about the path God has different people on, and it absolutely blows my mind to hear some of the journeys in their lives and the things they face and overcome. It’s unreal. And unbelievable. And it makes me increasingly aware of the faithfulness of God in guiding the steps of His people. There is simply no other explanation.

Home for dinner tomorrow. Back to the Promised Land on Saturday. And then my favorites (Alice and Allan) are coming to hang out on my turf for awhile!!! Great adventures to come!

…for shameless bragging about how cute I think my nephew is.

I don’t get to experience any most of his “firsts,” but I did manage to make it home just in time for his first swim. Yes, we know he’s huge. And yes, these pictures were taken before he figured out how fun it is to press down the inflated sides to get rid of all the water in the pool.

I have a love-hate relationship with layovers. Love them in this part of the country because it helps ensure that my travel plans stay on track (since, you know, it could be eighty degrees outside at 8am and blizzarding at 10am…even in June). Hate them because I’m sitting in Denver bored out of my skull, wishing this flight to Knoxville would hurry up and arrive.

I’ve worked on this post in bits and pieces all week long, but I haven’t had time to officially post it because of the chaos that comes when I try to get out of town for a week at Liberty. I’m heading back to Virginia for my last week-long intensive. It’s my last regular academic course.

All I lack to graduate after next week is 800 hours of a counseling internship. I don’t know where I’m going to do that internship yet, but I have a couple of interviews set up in the next few weeks, and hopefully, I will have my own set of clients by the end of July.

It’s crazy to me that I’m almost done with my Master’s degree. I’m almost a well-trained, capable counselor. And not one ounce of me feels like that statement is at all true.

As I’ve been looking for internship opportunities and trying to figure out how to squeeze 800 hours into my regular work weeks for the next 8 months, different supervisors have continually asked the question “What exactly is your heart for counseling? What do you see as your role?”

And I’ve been stuck thinking about it.

It seems to me that there is a lot of misconception surrounding brokenness and woundedness within Christian circles. It’s not whole. It’s not right. It doesn’t represent a completely restored mind. It’s a flaw.

And brokenness is all of those things.

But I think for the longest time, I really believed that woundedness and hurt and some of the more difficult emotional battles people face needed correction a lot like sin in my own life.

It just seems easier (and common) to equate healing with repentance.

And sometimes those things are the same.

But a lot of times, it’s not that neat.

The goal of both repentance and healing is restoration – to change the direction a person is currently walking in. But repentance is an about-face, a point in which a person stops and changes directions abruptly. And healing ends in a different direction…but it gets there one degree of change at a time. It’s not abrupt. It’s a process. And that is okay.

I don’t really know what kind of counselor I’ll be at this point. But I know that I want to walk people through that process. I want to be a voice that helps them understand that change may not be abrupt and may not look like overwhelming victory…but one small degree of change at a time can result in an entirely new direction for their lives, and I want to be a part of walking them through those changes, regardless of how small or tedious they may be.

My flight is getting ready to leave. I’ll likely have time to blog some this week because being at Liberty affords me some quiet evenings alone in the dorm. And, of course, I’m going to see my nephew for a few hours today. So I’m probably going to need to post some bragging pictures.

Those cops? I called ‘em. That car? Filled with a bunch of pot-smoking underage thugs that were formerly standing in my parking lot (and trying to gain easy access to the inside of my car). And the photo? Definitely taken when my roommate and I followed them out of the complex to see them get busted. Ah, yes. A little adventure, a little justice. All in all…a fun way to end the day.

On the agenda for tomorrow: making sure said thugs don’t show up to our complex pool ever again.

There are some bonus features of living within plain sight of the police station. Unfortunately, weed and alcohol apparently inhibited their ability to see the full parking lot of cop cars less than a hundred yards away.

Bahahahaha.