Q: Ideas that Create a Better World

I'm typing from the corner of my friend Amy's apartment in downtown Chicago. It's a beautiful Spring night, and I'm winding down from a beautiful, exhilarating, amazing, memorable day.

The Q Event is everything I hoped it would be and so, so much more and better. I've met some truly amazing, God-loving, sphere-influencing people. I've had meals the last 2 days with folks that caused 2 hour meal breaks to disappear like mere seconds. There are so many things to talk about... So many questions to throw out there... So many laughs to have, faces to remember, names to recall, stories to hear, redemption to rejoice in, and life situations to praise God for.

Tonight I went to dinner with 5 men - each married, some with kids, all actively involved in ministry with the church - and I was so blessed by their conversations and their hearts... Along with some hallelujah-chorus-inspiring food at a gourmet French restaurant (frog legs, anyone? Melt-in-your-mouth pulled pork? Portugese wine?). We were late getting back to the conference, but that was OK. The impromptu discussion on masculinity and fatherhood and community building and life stories was so worth it.

I'm sincerely disappointed that at noon tomorrow this year's event will be done. Of course, it's super convenient that next year Q will take place in Oregon and I'll get to reconnect with all my new friends... but still, I wish this could last longer! I know I've mentioned this again, but events like this make me just LONG for heaven and the community and communion of eternity!

Oh how precious the fellowship of the body of Christ is!

Anticipation

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but as a delayed gratification kind of girl, I love anticipating something.

This week I'm in full anticipation mode. I had 2 trips planned back to back: a weekend sprint to Colorado to witness a friend's wedding and reconnect with old chums, and a 5 day jaunt to Chicago.

The work week last week was long prepping for these trips -between Wednesday and Thursday I put in 25 hours either in my office or in the classroom - but it was worth it because not only does it decrease the amount of work I have to worry about for this week, but it also increases my anticipation. As I labored over student papers and lesson plans and internet fiascos for my online grading system, pretending I didn't feel like someone had injected sedative into my bloodstream and ignoring my regular evening fever, I was aware of the fact that all the work I was doing NOW meant I wouldn't have to do it LATER. That's such a great feeling!

As always, Colorado served itself up in style. All three of my trips there since January have been a blast. My friend Hillary's wedding provided an excellent Morocco-gang reunion, complete with late night chats (around Lisa's table), morning runs (gasping for air in the high altitude with Lindsey), "fancy dances" (Hunter swooped me with style and grace), the chicken dance (Anthony left a legacy on my visitor's wall to never, ever sit out the chicken dance), and warm hugs and a real, 5 minute one-on-one conversation with the bride herself (truly a treasure on her wedding day!). I knew the weekend would deliver up memories I'd treasure, and my anticipation was only eclipsed by a superior reality.

I got home late last night, fell into bed, and crawled out again 6 hours later to head to work. I was exhausted. Although my energy level felt OK, my brain function was clearly not in place. My poor students! My mind can be scattered under normal conditions, and today was even worse. After stopping in to see my friend Kindra (and being puked on by her 3 month old baby - gotta love kids!), I came home, ate half of the burrito I'd shakily put together, and then realized I was more tired than hungry. I crawled into my PJs and under my down comforter and slept for 3 hours. Now that I'm awake, I'm feeling the anticipation of this week kick into gear!

Tomorrow night I'd head off to Chicago on a red eye flight, and spend the next several days in downtown absorbing as much info from great Christian minds and people of action. I'm excited. Actually, I'm beyond excited! I feel kind of jittery just thinking about it! I'll be hanging out with more Morocco friends and catching up on lots of girl talks, I'm sure. I have a couple extra days to take in the sights and pizza flavors of Chicago, check some "ah-MAZE-ing!" (according to the other instructors in my office) museums off my list, see the lions from Ghosts and the Darkness (yes!!), and experience a renown American city.

I love anticipation. Like my friend, Ed Conzatti, says: "When I anticipate something, it's like I get to live through the event several times BEFORE I actually do - which makes the actual event that much better."

Thank you, Father, for how You give blessings so abundantly, so creatively, and so uniquely. I love You for how personal You are. I love that You know my heart - You know my anticipations and desires - and You delight in satisfying them. Lord, I want my satisfaction in them to be honoring and glorifying to You.

From a Student

An anonymous quote a student handed me in her perfect handwriting last quarter:

"When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country.

But it, too, seemed immovable.

As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.

And now as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: if I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family.

From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed my world."

- Unknown.

I want to learn this before I lie on my deathbed, Lord. You said that if we'd remove the log from our own eyes first, we could see clearly to remove the splinter from our neighbors. Let that be true in my life - let me always seek to remove the logs that cloud my vision before any other actions.

Ring!

I remember when I was small I would jump up to answer the phone when it rang. My Mom always made us answer the phone saying, "Shulke-residence, this is Danielle speaking, how can I help you?" (alright, I know, that's a little weird, but hey, she was just preparing us for if we ever needed to be a receptionist!).

The exhilaration of picking up that phone and saying those words was great - because you never knew who was going to be speaking back to you on the other end of the phone. Sometimes it would be one of my favorite's of my parents' friends who would have a little chat with me before I passed the phone over to Mom or Dad... or sometimes it would be someone calling on farm business and I'd get to answer their questions and be helpful. Come to think of it, Caller ID has kind of stolen some of that fun, hasn't it?!

Now that I have a cell phone, the phone calls are always for me, which most of the time I like, but sometimes I dread it too. I guess that's the nature of growing up and accepting responsibility, so even when you work calls, you HAVE to either pick up or deal with returning a call later.

I like phone calls. I've had some great conversations over phone and it's definite improvement to the archaic method of letters (well, my friend Laura would argue against that, but I'm just saying from my perspective...).

I especially like anticipating phone calls. When I set up a phone date with someone, it's always fun to wait for that call... or wait for the appointed time to call them...

Tomorrow I have a phone call expected at 3PM. I think that, because phone calling seems so common, I tend to overlook the life-changing potential of a simple call. I suppose that's OK, but I also know as I anticipate this phone call that things could be a little different in my life after I hang up.

Everything...

by Lifehouse

"Find Me Here
Speak To Me
I want to feel you
I need to hear you
You are the light
That's leading me
To the place where I find peace again.

You are the strength, that keeps me walking.
You are the hope, that keeps me trusting.
You are the light to my soul.
You are my purpose...you're everything.

How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

You calm the storms, and you give me rest.
You hold me in your hands, you won't let me fall.
You steal my heart, and you take my breath away.
Would you take me in? Take me deeper now?
How can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?
And how can I stand here with you and not be moved by you?
Would you tell me how could it be any better than this?

Cause you're all I want, You're all I need
You're everything,everything..."

I love this song. It makes me go a little faster when it plays on my iPod while I'm running. Sometimes it makes me cry. It has a way of soothing my heart. It has a way of expressing perfectly my heart's desire.

I wish I could write music like this...

Fears and what they reveal

In my College Success class yesterday we had one of the best discussions I've had with a class yet. We were talking about this article that might be my favorite article of all time: "It's OK to fail - everyone else has." It focuses on how success is almost always just a result of failures that we don't allow to stop us from getting up and trying again. The idea that failure is an intrinsic part of success really resonated with my students.

We rabbit trailed onto fears, though, and how we fear failure. That got my brain hopping, and I decided I'd ask some people in my life what their fears are. I'm not sure why, but people tend to be pretty honest with me about that kind of stuff. My friend Zeph was willing to share, but then followed it up with, "I've never told anyone that, Danielle." My friend Adam, of course, threw my question right back at me and wanted to know what my fears are.

I had to think about it for a couple moments, but I think they fall basically under the categorization of fearing regrets when I get to the end of my life. I don't want to reach the end of my journey here on earth and have regrets. To clarify, that isn't to say that I aspire to always do everything perfect! But when I do fail, I want them to be stepping stones toward success. I never want to have a failure and then just walk away from it unresolved and unable or unwilling to learn something from the process that can be applied forward in my life.

A much smaller, more insignificant fear that I articulated to Adam, though, is the fear of never knowing someone and being known in the way that I think humans are designed to and desire to be known. This longing is for more than just companionship, it's for soul-baring, all out, no-holds, committed and purposeful fellowship and intimacy. I think this is often what people aspire to when they marry - and what make's many marriages so tragic is that they never attain that.

It's complicated, really, to fully know someone. I mean, I don't even feel like I know myself all that well. Or, if I know myself, I don't GET myself... This morning I delivered a dead calf in the middle of the hay field. Thursday I almost walked into a wall on a run to the copy room because I was reading a science textbook while I was en route. Wednesday I took two of the kids I tutor to Fusion, one of my favorite coffee shop haunts, and we sat at the window bar sipping fancy drinks in a sunlight flooded former bank building, working on math homework. I've worn high heels and dresses this week to work, sweats and flip flops to the DMV. I've straightened my hair one day, and put off washing it for several days in a row. Where, on the spectrum, do I fit? Am I hick or a whit-collar educator? Am I a hippie or a professional? Am I an absentminded ditz or a logically inclined mathematician? I have no idea. I'm all of them. But none of them ALL the time. This seems complicated...

But one thing I do know about myself is similar to something my friend Amber has realized about herself lately. We are both "spouse-pleaser" types of people. Amber will arrange her (very busy!) schedule of two full time ministries, an online master's degree education, office hours at her church, familial obligations, mentoring appointments, learning about her pregnancy and doctor's appointments, and meetings with friends around her husband's work schedule. She'll cancel her plans with friends or ministry opportunities in order to spend a day with Austin on his day off. While we were discussing this over lunch yesterday, I looked at her and laughed. I may be a people pleaser, but I definitely think I'll have that tendency. Part of my struggle with figuring out a career is that I really don't care that much about it - I would cheerfully sacrifice a career in order to have a good marriage. And I've determined that I don't want to ever put ministry opportunities over the needs of my husband and children. Raising a family IS a ministry - my most important ministry, when the time for that comes. But then, of course, if I never marry, I don't want to regret not having a fulfilling career... Ahh, and we're right back around to regrets and my fear of them...

As I was articulating to Adam, however, I don't think that a life lived loving people and loving Jesus fully, whole-heartedly is one that I would, end the end, regret. It seems more likely that I would regret selfishness than service.

All in all, however, this little project of understanding peoples' fears is eye opening to what people are all about. Because I think our fears are part of what shapes us - or more specifically, what we do with those fears shape us.

I want my fears to shape me to be more like Jesus.

Remember.

I just finished watching Mel Gibson's The Passion. Regardless of the various opinions on the movie's portrayal of the crucifixion, I am so thankful that my parents own a copy that I can watch. I've been saving it for this weekend, because I wanted to be able to view it on my own, in private, during the traditional commemoration of Jesus's death and resurrection.

The first time I watched The Passion I went to the theatres with my youth group to view it. I remember walking out feeling very sobered.

My response is different this time. The movie is heartwrenching, of course, and I realized at the end that my fingernails had been leaving little marks in the palm of my hand, and my lips are swollen from biting them - but this time I was watching with the "filter" (so-to-speak) of looking at it less as a tragedy, and more as a triumph of God's love.

I've been meditating on that idea recently - thanks to various books and movies and conversations that have percolated into my life - and I am overwhelmed by it. God's love is SO vast. It's incomprehensible. Fearsome in it's extremity, and enthralling in it's passion and boundlessness. I don't get it.

One of my favorite scenes in The Passion is the moment that Jesus dies. The camera is looking down at Jesus on the cross, and it zooms out and out and out. Then the screen blurs for a second, before a raindrop falls down, down, down, to break at Jesus's feet. Except I don't think it's a raindrop. I think it's a teardrop.

And that reminds me that Revelation promises that there will be no more teardops in heaven. I wonder if God cries now? Because He chooses to love us SO passionately, does He cry when we are hurt? And when we hurt Him?

What a great plan, Lord! What a wonderful, detailed, heartbreaking and heart-healing redemption You orchestrated! I am awed that You want - desire - me. I am confounded that You count me worth the cost of the horrible, agonizing death You chose. Thank You.