When there is no safe place to begin...

...You just have to start.

So, I got married. I had a wonderful time with family and friends celebrating under one roof with Christopher and me. We dropped off of the face of the state for a week and went to Tahoe while it was burning, where we had a lot of fun.

[[Just so you know, I love being married, and think that it is one of the most incredible things God has given us while we are here on this earth. Marriage is such an instructor in how our relationship to God should really look, and I fall so grievously short. The best part of the whole thing is that I am married to Christopher, who is my best friend. I am so graciously blessed. But I digress...]]

Then, we came back to Colorado, moved into our apartment, went back to work, and have been working ever since - though things have recently gotten more interesting.

The Rock is changing. Not a bad thing at all. It causes us all to lean more fully on Christ and to apply the buzzphrase in our circles these days - "fresh faith".

But the Rock split into two parts: the on-campus teams and the off-campus, working singles. Teams got reorganized. Teams merged before multiplying. Some teams split between on- and off-campus. Complete confusion ensued until things got sorted out.

In the clearing fog, however, Chris and I have taken over our beloved team of brothers and sisters, who are now few but still strong (if not stronger) after the summer paths that God took them each down. We returned sober-minded but ready to go.

We hit the dorms hard the first few weeks and tried to be encouraged with the small batch of fruit that emerged (which we truly have been encouraged by recently). Unfortunately, this is the hardest year I've ever experienced in the dorms, merely looking at people's willingness to go out and do something fun - much less something 'religious' or 'spiritual'.

Each week, we feel like we're just learning as we go, looking to coaches and our team members for encouragement. There seem to be so many things that I have learned in the last week alone, yet I feel as though I have failed to have time to process them. God is so good. God is so faithful.

And in every little thing.

I have been working on an amazingly long post about things that I learned this summer, but I am not sure when (if ever) it will be finished, so I figured I should just write something else in the meantime.

Last night, we listened to Pat Sokoll's message entitled, "Discipleship" at our leadership training time. Having never heard it before but having heard a lot about it, I was eager to listen. There are so many things that stood out, but here are the main two:

1) I have no rights. I own nothing. I am not entitled to any thing.

2) We multiply after our own kind, both the good and the bad.

The second has been such an eye-opener over the past week anyway. We cannot reproduce that which we are not. If I want the women I disciple to read their Bibles daily and seek out God and dive deep into the richness of His Word, than I must do (and exhibit) the same. If I want them to serve others or share the Gospel boldly, then I must do the same.

And, honestly, I've been taking some serious stock of the traits that I do not want to multiply into these women. I don't want them to catch my laziness or my desire to go home and take a nap. I don't want them to learn how to be apathetic from me. I don't want them to learn how to withdraw from a group and decide they don't 'need' the fellowship.

Obviously, not everything can be changed overnight. I am still a work in progress.

But unless I show these women that I am changing, that I am being molded into Christ's likeness, then how am I to expect that they will go forth and do so? I must be working on the board in my own eye (Luke 6) so that I can assist my sisters with the specks in their own. I cannot expect them to grow if I am not putting forth the effort to do so myself.

Please understand that I am not saying that my salvation rests upon my efforts to make myself more Christ-like. I have no more ability to do that than I do of counting the stars in the skies that remind us of the promises God made to Abraham.

We are still called to action, however. We are still called to obedience. I am not called to be stagnant. I am not called to be lazy. I am not called to live outside of fellowship. I am not called to be apathetic.

I am called to serve. I am not my own.

Mood: Scattered Listening to: People yelling in the street outside
Reading: Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art