Farewell...

So, blogspot is rediculous. I do not like it one bit. Time to move up in the world and get serious about this blogging business. I have moved to wordpress, after reading good things about it.

If you would like to keep reading with more fascinating surroundings check me out at:

smfare@wordpress.com

Look forward to it, Stephanie.

Haphazard admissions

Well, I am getting ready to go to Chicago for a mini-break. My flight leaves at around nine this evening, so I will arrive at the peak of Friday night. My hope is that the city will be crowded and rockin’ like San Francisco is when the weekend infiltrates the night.

In other news, I have been suffering from odd neck pains and fatigue so I headed to the doctor earlier in the week. She is testing me for mono and strep. The irony of me getting mono living alone in Missouri after overcoming 13 roommates in the last five years along with four years of college will be unbelievable.

This week I have continued to get three or four phone calls a day from people thinking I am K104 radio station. I finally called the station today, letting them know of my little issue. He apologized and the guy said he would make sure the staff is giving out the right number. I think people just get their 7’s and 1’s confused and end up talking to me instead of begging some cocky radio announcer to play their favorite song.

Now I am going to make a confession and tell you a story about how lying is wrong and you should never do it. I was telling some co-workers about this stream of excited radio fans calling me and they said I should pretend to be the station. Tell the caller they were lucky caller number 104 or something. I laughed it off.

Then I got a call one boring Tuesday morning at work…
“Is this k104?” A man with a southern accent asks me.
I pause.
“Yeah,” I answer. (Ok, so I had to make a split second decision and thought, this will be fun.)
“Ok, well I would like to request a song,” he says.
“Ok?” I say unclear about what they heck I am doing. (I am a terrible liar)
So he goes on to name a few songs he wants to hear and I tell him no problem. Then he goes on to tell me what a hard day it’s been because he really misses his wife. He tells me how much he appreciates this because these were his wife’s favorite songs and well, she is gone now and it would make his day to hear them.
(Crap. Crap. Crap.)
“Sir, this isn’t the radio station,” I confess in an apologetic manner.
“Oh, I am sorry,” he says and then hangs up.

A few minuets went by and then I called him back. I told him how I have been getting all these calls and thought it would be funny to pretend. I said how sorry I was for making it up and that he should try and call the real radio station so he can get his songs played. He was really nice, like too nice, and thanked me for calling him back. I felt terrible.

Moral of the story and my random blog entry: Do not lie, you never know when mono might attack you, and travel alone to a destination at least once in your lifetime.

Now back to writing newspaper articles, that people actually read(that’s me asking you to leave a comment without really asking).

I need a paradigm shift

I know in my heart that God desires to heal and set people free. So many of the stories we read about Jesus’ life surrounded healing. There is something we are not tapping into, a level of faith or power that only comes from the Father.

I prayed for a girl at IHOP yesterday who was blind in one eye. I did everything I have been taught to do, laid hands on her eyes, spoke directly to the problem with her retina and had her test out her eye. Nothing happened. She is still blind in one eye. Something that hit me while praying was that a few people seemed to be praying at her, real loud and in tongues. It threw me off and made it hard to tap into what God wanted to do.

We are so far from understanding how to go for healing. I am so clueless on what it looks like to see people consistently healed through my prayers. I am hungry to dive in and will not just settle for “oh well”. There is something key to persistence and commitment. Jesus honors us when we communicate our level of sacrifice to see people walk in freedom.

I think I am going to join the healing room teams. I am stirred to see people healed and what better way to go for it then to pray for lots of sick people. Whenever I get the chance I am going to pray for the sick. I want God to break in and move. As I run after Him, I want to start to look like Him. Healing was who Jesus was and I have to tap into that. I can not just pursue intimacy with Him and not desire to be like Him in life.

A few weeks ago my heart ached as I watched a mother and father pray for a man in a wheel chair, as their son was the center of a healing service because he had brain cancer. They moved out of their situation to pray for someone else who needed freedom. That is sacrifice and selflessness. If my heart was moved by that, how much more was Gods’? There has to be more then just accepting the death of a 27-year-old who loved Jesus and believed that he was to be healed.

Jesus teach us Your ways...for we grow weary without Your touch.

The first blessing

What does it mean to be poor in spirit? This is a quest I am on, trying to understand what the Lord was talking about in Matthew by saying; “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

I looked up what poor means in this context and was surprised to read that the Greek word is referring to public poverty. To be a beggar is someone who asks strangers for money or food. That is such a lowly place to be as a human because it is a place of relying on others to supply your needs. It also means to be homeless, which I relate to, in the sense of never feeling like this earth is my home. Like this age is just somewhere I am for the present but at any moment I will escape home for good.

So in order to have the kingdom of heaven, which means to have power and access to the abode of God, I must be in a place of lack, not just in private but in public. Ouch. Those around me should be able to recognize that my lack is deep in the human soul.

Learning about this scripture keeps taking me back to the pull I feel inside for the need to abandon everything to follow Christ. There is no room for me to take things or people with me and the place I see before me is a desert like stretch of land that has no end. In the desert there is nothing to lean on or rest upon. No big trees to sit under for a moment of shade or streams to dip in for refreshing. When you are only relying on Christ in the desert there are intense times of dryness and emptiness. I am starting to get this and my heart battles the flesh, but I will trek on with my friend.

The journey of seeking Christ is a lonely place. I finally really comprehend that I am the only one who can choose this path on the inside. No one else will be responsible for my travels to be like Jesus. The walk is a race and I am fighting against my flesh and the places of temptation, not against others. They cannot make my legs pump or my arms ride back and forth. I have to run and the pace I set will be determined by the amount of Christ I allow to infiltrate my heart.

I'm an apple

I'm stealing this little paragraph from a friend's blog. I read it and it confirmed something I have been mulling over lately. So read it and then my annotations subsequently.

"Women are like apples on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree. Most men don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples from the ground that aren't as good, but easy....... So the apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality, they're amazing. They just have to wait for the right man to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree."

Because I feel like an apple that has never been reached for, this simile is wonderful to me. Living in American culture, I am often convinced that love is not special or suppose to be something you wait for, rather you should go out there and find and take hold of it, like Daniel Boon in search of Kentucky (did you know he blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky, which he settled). When people find out I am single and not making efforts to change my status, they immediately want to try and helped me solve my “problem”. Like a unschooled outsider, they wish to teach me the ways of this world called dating and romance. I try not to be annoyed and then not to feel like a loser, who must be so pathetic as not to have a love life.

But this whole apple idea is really great. I am coming to the place of believing it, in spite of what people subconsciously imply about me not having a grid for relationships. I resent it at times, but now I am getting it. The apple that sits at the top of the tree and is picked later then the one down at the bottom of the tree just gets more time to ripen. They are all apples and being picked first does not make them better. Usually it means you are either picked by the wrong farmer or are picked too early.

I also have certain single friends who have been hurt and are convinced that love and marriage are not for them. I am certain that one of the main reasons is because they did not wait for the man, but instead settled for the guy, who did not know how to care for an apple so they were bruised. (I know I am taking it a little far with this one, but go with me.) Now they are messed up and have come to allow their experiences to dictate a belief about all men.

Complicated are the ways of love and painful are the lies we as women believe about ourselves and men, if Jesus does not teach us. He is the best at loving and true romance. I must learn all that I need from Him and not assume that men can teach me the ways of love; for they are as fallen and broken as I….

Tension

Usually I don’t blog on the weekends because I avoid typing on the computer while not at work, but not tonight.

I went to church last night and by the time worship began, it occurred to me that I did not want to be there. I stayed for a few reasons, but was antsy during most of the sermon. Mike was talking about the life of David and how he really chose to live for “one thing”. Then he challenged us to examine our hearts and confirm that we are living the way we say we live.

I have been thinking on it ever since. It is easier to act and talk like we are living a fasted life in the place of prayer then to do it. “I just got done at the prayer room”, “I can’t eat that I’m fasting”, “I don’t watch television”. All of those statements are fine, but they are just words.

No one can really PROVE we are living to behold the beauty of God. Mike said this is not something to just be tacked on to our already busy spiritual goals, like “oh yeah, that’s a good point, lets run after the beauty of God while we are going for salvations, signs and wonders, and revival.”

My heart should ache and hurt because I am not in the place of beholding God the way He should be sought.

It doesn’t.

Today has been hard and full of people asking me what’s wrong. “Nothing, I just can’t seem to figure out how to make God important on the inside”. That’s what is going on, but I just tell them a list of other reasons. I like to lie to myself about my lack, it makes me feel better, I guess. But when it comes to the end of the day I understand that feeling far from knowing God bothers my soul.

I should be happy with the agitation, but being a person dedicated to becoming the perfection of Christ, it just once again settles my need to trust Jesus completely.

My hope is that soon I will day dream about this process and be so consumed that He takes up my thoughts at the unconscious level. Right now it’s still conscious…

Early morning woes

Today is chili day at work. The entire office reeks of an aroma reminiscent of hamburgers and ketchup. It’s only 10am.

I walked into our conference room to see tables of about ten crock pots bubbling with different shades of chili and realized how much I am still a singleton. I do not own a crock pot, or even a good pot for that matter. I can not remember the last time a meal did not include the freezer and the cheap microwave I bought at Wal-Mart.

There is a competition for who has the best chili, I am not sure why, or what the prize is, but it’s a pretty serious event. People keep rising from their desks to mosey into the conference room to check on their pot and give it a stir. The lady heading up the contest even yelled to everyone that the contest is off, hoping to lessen the competition. And you can not tell ANYONE which pot is yours, or off with your head!

I on the other hand am having a hard time concentrating. I have several stories to write and my lame headphones broke, so I have no angry girl music to blare while writing about librarians and internet safety for kids.

I am stir crazy cause I got over ten hours of sleep. See, I went to bed early in hopes of rising this morning at 6am to go for a run. My thought process is that I have no problem getting up to go pray at that time, but I am not so motivated to head out into the cold morning to run around my neighborhood. Apparently electric guitars and drums are more alluring for this music snob in the early morning hours.

This is a problem because I will be consuming unusual amount of chili today to help decide which one is the best…I really needed that exercise. And I got my results from that test; I have high cholesterol at age 23. How is this possible?? At least I am not alone, almost everyone else in the office did too, even my thin friend Amy. I blame our sedative jobs, birthday cakes, and chili contests….