Renee - The Quoter, part 4

I've been reading through C. S. Lewis' "space trilogy" ('Out Of The Silent Planet', 'Perelandra', and 'That Hideous Strength') as of late and there was a particular part in the end of the second book, 'Perelandra' that hit me...

"The peoples of the ancient worlds who never sinned, for whom He never came down, are the peoples for whose sake the Low Worlds were made. For though the healing what was wounded and the straightening what was bent is a new dimension of glory, yet the straight was not made that it might be bent nor the whole that it might be wounded. The ancient peoples are at the centre. Blessed be He!" p215

To kind of sum up this book, it is about a planet mirroring our own planet's history and being at the point of The Fall. Ransom is sent from Earth to help prevent this newer/younger planet from making the same mistake we did. The topic of the above passage was discussed throughout the book but I feel like this paragraph especially really finally got to me and some things that I've been trying to figure out. Specifically, it's talking about the fact that because of The Fall and of sin, we needed and were able to experience the glory of God/Christ coming down and becoming flesh to redeem us. But we were not created perfect so that we would sin and be able to experience that.

Reading this has brought up in my mind the struggles I've had with differences between my own testimony and that of others. Especially when I joined InterVarsity I would hear so many remarkable testimonies of people that grew up not knowing Christ and who God transformed out of drugs and promiscuity and many other things. For a long time it was very hard to embrace my own testimony of growing up in the church because I didn't have that story. I felt invalid because my story wasn't as moving as these other people's stories, like I was too innocent and that I had to come from this hard background for God to *really* use me to draw in other people.

(sidenote: I am not in any way saying that I am innocent or that I have never sinned. I sin and miss the mark every day of my life.)

So, what I've come to realize, in a very simplified way, in reading this is that God's perfect glory shines through every testimony and that we were not born good so that we could sin and show God's glory and mercy, but because we do sin, He brings us out of one possible goodness into another that is also completely good and neither is invalid. So whatever story my life will be, the goodness that He derives from that is just as valid and good as the goodness that He derives from someone else's story.

An excerpt from my journal...

[One of my coworkers] said something in the kitchen today that I’m still reeling from. I don’t even know how to process it. I just want someone to come in and say he was wrong and use all the words I can’t find to make it all make sense. He said that we’re basically just a hotel. That the IV groups that come here could do the exact same thing at a hotel. But then, if that’s what my IV had done, I wouldn’t have gone to work for whatever random hotel we would’ve gone to. So why am I here now? What’s the point?

… because just like He can use any person, and has chosen me, He can use any place, and has chosen here. This place is holy ground, all of it. It’s a shelter from the storm for so many people, a safe haven. As much as I am His, this place is His, and He gives it back to us.

Renee - The Quoter

Lena knew she had spent too much of her life in a state of passive dread, just waiting for something bad to happen. In a life like that, relief was as close as you got to happiness.

p99, 'The Second Summer Of The Sisterhood'

Renee - The Scrapper

So, I don't know if I really had a choice in the matter, but I'm a scrapbooker. Nothing like my mother, aunt, or sister's mother, but a scrapbooker nonetheless. This being said, I haven't scrapbooked a thing in probably a year and a half, if not longer. So going into this three day weekend that they put aside every year to just scrapbook, I've been a little overwhelmed. Today is the last day of this mad marathon and maybe with the end in sight I can finally get some work done.

Of course, I'm now about four years behind and have a whole book of my island I want to put together, not to mention my whole InterVarsity life. And, no, I don't plan on doing the whole thing in one day. I'm not crazy. Well, not in that respect anyway.

So now that I'm resolved in this mission, there's only one more question I must ask myself...

Where the heck do I start???

Renee - The Fruit Junkie

So, at some point during my time on the island, a certain friend of mine asked me how I might gauge our topic of discussion on the scale of one to apple. It’s a little game we play sometimes always with a different form of scale, but this one got me thinking (always a bad thing). With the amount of time that I had on my hands, I created a form of measurement based on my love of any and all fruit that I could think of. Here is that list…

 

1. grapefruit

  .5. pear

2. orange

  .5. blueberry

3. banana

  .5. peach

4. mango

  .5. watermelon

5. plum

  .5. tangerine

6. cantaloupe

  .5. cherry

7. pomegranate

  .5. avocado

8. grape

  .5. kiwi

9. strawberry

  .5. pineapple

10. apple

Renee - The Klutz

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realize this specific area of my persona, but it has come into my understanding that I am quite the klutz. I always knew I wasn’t quite on the “graceful” side of things, but I think the dim light bulb started to flicker a bit brighter when I fell down my stairs a couple months ago leaving me with a wonderfully baseball sized bruise. Now, working in the kitchen has had its share of spills… quite literally. Usually I’m pretty good at being careful with only a few minor cuts and burns, but because I wasn’t careful enough with our industrial sized mixer during the summer I spilled about three gallons of boiling water on my feet. So now, here I am and I thought I’ve been doing better.. can’t even remember the last burn I got. I guess that means something big had to happen sooner or later. Enter my wonderful determination to wear my flip flops (sandals, slippers, thongs, whatever you want to call them) whenever possible.. translation: whenever I’m not working in the kitchen. I was helping some friends move all of their stuff from their storage unit into a U-haul van to drive up to Santa Cruz and of course, like the genius I am, had no problem or worries about wearing my flip flops on this occasion. I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone then when I say that their washing machine and I got into a little “skirmish” resulting in the loss of a very tiny, but very real portion of skin on one of my toes. :( And finally, the icing on the cake is that on my first day back to work when I got back to the island I was scooping ice from our ice machine and I cut my finger on a piece of ice. That’s right, a piece of ice. Of course it would be me to figure out how I could injure myself with ice. It was a pretty good slice, drawing out a nice amount of blood. Don’t worry though, everything stayed sanitary.

So that’s my little story.. don’t worry, there’s plenty more where that came from. Hopefully, I’ll make this an ongoing thing. Not the lack of coordination, but the blogs about some of the wonderful quirks that make me me. Hope ya’ll enjoy.

p.s. How has it taken me so long to realize the amazingness that is 21 Jumpstreet?