Tag: Christianity

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Messiness made beautiful

messybed

I like a healthy amount of mess in my life.

In fact, I think it’s beautiful. Mess shows that we are human. Mess leaves room for improvement.

Let’s take a practical look into my life, shall we?

If you somehow looked through your computer screen and into the room that I’m currently staying in for the summer, you would see a few milk crates of carefully stacked books, two bins of relatively straightened clothes, and an open suitcase full of random items that I’ve found to be necessary for my nomadic life.

I like my stuff to be put away and in its proper home. It makes me feel organized and at peace.

After you noticed the tidy boxes and crates, your eyes would likely drift over to my bed. Disheveled and rarely made in the morning– a small tornado of sheets, pillows, and my CSU blanket. (Go Rams!)

I’m not a bed maker (I never have been, sorry mom!) and I like it that way. To me, my bed shouts comfort– a place that I can crash and relax at any moment. Having an unmade bed at all times makes me like a real person and less like some weird OCD robot living in a Better Homes and Gardens ad.

Sure, my strict grandmother would say that my unmade bed shows the lack of structure in my life and is an area in which I could drastically improve, but who cares? A messy bed is beautiful and real and inviting to me.

This little area of mess makes my heart happy. It reminds me that it’s okay that I’m imperfect– that I’m not a bed maker or a do-laundry-every-week-er. I don’t mind having people over to my house when it’s in this imperfect “state” because they are getting the “organic” Kacy.

But for some reason, my brain doesn’t quite operate the same way when it comes down to the other messy areas in my life.

I’ve heard gobs of people who were raised in the church say that they struggle with letting people into the depths of their lives because they want to put up a front of perfection to the general public. As Christians, they don’t want their mess exposed because they are afraid that it will scare people off, either from themselves or from Christ. This has always made sense to me on some level, even though it wasn’t something that I quite experienced until recently.

You see, because of the way that I was raised, I never really was able to put up the “pretty Christian” facade… or any pretty facade for that matter…

Everyone who I’ve known since, well ever, has known my family as “that crazy family”.

That crazy family that lives in the pink house with the white picket fence.

That crazy family that lives in the home for Alzheimer’s patients.

That crazy family with the “unconventional” mother.

That crazy family with all those wild kids.

That crazy family who takes in stray children and animals like they were loading Noah’s freaking ark.

That crazy family… You know, the one where the cops know the names of everyone in the house for one reason or another.

Growing up, and even until I moved out of Aurora, I couldn’t have hidden behind a curtain, even if I had wanted to because the reputation of the Leyba/Hexamer/Spaulding house far preceded me.

But life is different now. Now, I’ve moved far away from the parts of the city where people knew me because of my wild antics, or because of my mother, siblings, or living situation; now I have the absolute pleasure of meeting people and showing them who I am.

Or at least showing them who I want them to see me as…

By surrounding myself with a completely new community, I have realized that I have the opportunity to hide my mess if I want to.

If I wanted to, I could easily avoid talking about the brokenness that I hail from.

I could sweep the fact that several of my close family members struggle with drug addictions under the rug.

I could choose to never talk about the fact that the neighborhood cops know my full name because of how many police reports I either helped to fill out or had filled out because of me.

I could skip the insane stories about growing up in a nursing home. Like that one time when Adolf, one of our Alzheimer’s patients, broke my arm and chased me out of my own house with a knife. Yeah, I could skip over those and simply pretend that I grew up in a normal home with no one but my siblings and parents.

I could pretend that I never took care of my two beautiful godchildren for years on end, dropping out of school on two occasions to do so.

I could pretend all of these things.

But if I pretended that I wasn’t messy and broken– if I put up a “pretty Christian front” so that I wouldn’t scare off the people in my life, I would be robbing God of the glory and goodness that has come out of each of these situations.

Yes, all of the aforementioned bizarre things have happened to me. (I don’t think I could make these things up if I tried.) And yes, part of me wishes that they hadn’t– that I had grown up like a “normal” person, in a family that wasn’t riddled with abuse, addiction, and weird, elderly people, but I did.

As much as I want to simply sweep my mess under the rug and pretend that none of it ever happened, I can’t. Because it did. It happened and God has used all of those circumstances to make me into the woman I am today.

As of late, I feel like God is slowly teaching me not to be ashamed of my mess, but to embrace it and proclaim all of the beautiful things that He has done & promises to do with it all in the future.

Mess shows that we are human and leaves room for God to be God.

My mess shows that He’s not done with me yet, while simultaneously showing off all of the things that he has already made beautiful.

Messy people create safe spaces for other messy people to be loved and learn to love in turn– and after all, isn’t that what we’re all here to do?

I invite you to share your mess with someone else today.

Will it be uncomfortable? Definitely.

Will you be embarrassed? Perhaps.

Will it be worth it to share what God is going to do within your mess in the long run with another messy person? For sure.

Trust me. Learn to let people in and let God be God, both in your neatly packed life boxes and in your areas of disarray.

“I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.

He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.”

(Psalm 40:1-3)

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Destroying mud pies

Give up your small ambitions

There has always been something about the American Dream that never quite sat right with my heart.

For two years in college, I was a TA for an American Civilization course and taught along side one of the wackiest communist professors I’ve ever met in my life. (Not that I know a lot of communist professors… but you get the point.) After seeing his view of American politics, I began to attribute my anti-American-Dream / idealistic-socialist viewpoints to the fact that I had worked along side him for so long.

But the deeper I fall in love with Jesus, the more I realize that the American Dream doesn’t sit right with me, not because of Charles Angeletti and his shenaniganry, but because it is essentially in direct contradiction with the life that we, as Christians, are called to live and love.

Here in America, we are taught to value success, as dictated by your bank account or the size of the home that you could one day buy with your spouse and then fill with your 2.5 children and dog. Once we attain this status of “success” we are to spend the rest of our lives buying things from stores to fill our homes. Pretty stuff. Practical stuff. Stuff to put your other stuff in. Stuff to organize the stuff that you have put your other stuff in… I think that we can all agree that we are over-stufffed.

And in this cycle of stuffing our lives with stuff, we lose sight of what is important. The Gospel. The sick. The dying. Those who desperately need clean water or just the love of someone, anyone…

In our relentless cycle of buying and selling, moving up, and out doing each other, we are neglecting our one true calling– to love God’s people, even if that means sacrificing everything we have.

These things– our stuff, our account balances, our job titles and degrees– become not only the way the way that we measure our success, but they also become our affections and ambitions.

As this school year has drawn to a close, God has pointed this out in my own mixed up soul.

For the last six years, everything that I have done has been devoted to either becoming or being a teacher, and now that season of my life is over… and I’m mildly freaking out.

As I pulled my students’ posters and my infamous glitter-glue Jesus painting off of my classroom walls this morning, panic set into my heart.

This is happening.

I am not a teacher anymore.

One of the largest comforts that I have been clinging to within my life here in Denver has officially been shaken up.

I am homeless.

I am taking a job for the remainder of my time here in Denver that has nothing to do with my degree.

Aside from the fact that I have a plane ticket to Alaska for a week in July, I have little to no plans for the next seven months. And even though I’m not a huge planner, my mind is whirling with the chaos that God has placed me within.

But as I stood staring at my blank purple classroom walls, the last part of that sentence rang in my brain: the chaos that God has placed me within.

I am not alone here. He has a plan– a plan that I’m sure is far superior to anything that I could ever think up. I simply need to follow Him and make Him my focal point and the one that I find all of my comfort in.

In 2 Corinthians 6:12, Paul addressed the Corinthian church saying, “You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections.“

As I read this over and over again, I couldn’t help but realize that while God and His will is my affection and one true desire, that I have some secondary affections and desires lingering in the depths of my heart because of the culture that I have been raised within.

I am affectionate toward comfort– a mailing address, a bed to sleep in, you know… the things that I never thought much about until recently.

I am affectionate toward the idea of being perceived as successful and not just as some crazy hippie girl who has gone rogue against society.

I am affectionate toward my job and the idea of being able to use the degrees and teaching license that I slaved away to earn.

I am affectionate toward the idea of settling down in a cute house in Denver with my someday husband and our cute outdoorsy, Coloradoan children.

I want things. Stuff. Comfort. A 9-5 life including volleyball tournaments with friends on the weekends and lots of camping trips in the summer.

I have been sold a dream– the American Dream– and it has seeped into my heart. But God is in the process of rooting that out. I am being called to give up my small ambitions and affections for a life much greater.

Yesterday, as I gardened in the wet mud of the house that I’m currently staying at, I was reminded of C.S. Lewis’ mud pie analogy from The Weight of Glory:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with worldly ambitions when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

I refuse to remain comfortable here with my mud pie dreams; even if it kills me (which it won’t, because you know… Jesus and stuff) I am going to follow my King. For He is my comfort and my rock in hard times and life tornadoes.

I am going for my holiday by the sea where my teaching license is nothing but a piece of paper and Jesus is my everything.

What are your affections and ambitions? Are you willing to lay them down to follow Christ where ever He is leading you?

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Butterfly season

I seriously believe that every person who has been in ministry work for a while has had the “I quit” moment.

This moment comes when our work begins to feel pointless: So-and-so relapsed back into drugs. That kid got thrown into jail. My favorite woman at the shelter decided to run back to her abusive husband. The orphan I had been nurturing back to health for months died in my arms. These are all real stories that I’ve heard come from the mouths of my friends in ministry, and regardless of your ministry platform, I can guarantee that if you’ve seen these things, or things of that nature, that you’ve had that I quit moment.

Serenity is the 21 year old house mother at a home for women trying to escape homelessness, drug addiction, and domestic violence in Oklahoma. She spoke about her experience last weekend at Nomads saying,

I’ve had women break my heart. In fact, the first woman that I took into the house was also my first heartbreak when she chose to prematurely leave the program and return to life on the streets. I wanted to quit then, but I continued on. A few weeks later, I had a woman pull me into an alley and dig into every insecurity that I’ve ever felt. You’re too young to do this. You think you can run a home? You couldn’t even finish college. You’re stupid. You’re worthless. You’re… You’re… You’re… That day is the day that I tried to quit. I got into my car and instead of driving back to the [mission agency] headquarters, I started driving to Arkansas, where I’m from.

But as I was driving, it hit me. I was leaving everything and going to nothing. I had sold everything I owned. There was nothing left in Arkansas for me. My home was here now. My support system was here. And so I turned around and drove to my friend’s house at the headquarters, sat on his sofa, and cried for the afternoon. Eventually my ‘I quit’ turned into ‘I quit for the day. I don’t quit, but I can’t go back today.’

You see, I can’t quit. I can’t go back to living my old life. I am broken for these women now and there is nothing that could ever fill my heart like the calling that God has given me to live in this home with these women, even when they break me in turn.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had my fair share of “I quit” moments. Things around the school seem exponentially more difficult than they have during any other fourth quarter I’ve ever seen. And I know that it’s spiritual warfare.

As a staff we are intentionally praying for and with our kids more. More of our kids have come to know Christ than I’ve ever seen in one school year and even more still have begun to seek Him. Students are asking for Bibles to read at home and asking to attend church with us.

These kids are thirsty for God.

And in turn, the devil is pissed.

It’s not something that I can put into words, but I can feel it in the depths of my soul whenever the ish hits the fan.

Part of our jobs is to be close with our students. And I’m not talking “I know each of your academic goals and reading level” close, but the kind of close that happens when you get crying phone calls at 2 am from a teenager and end up on their sofa eating Popsicles and processing life together.

My kids are my life and in turn, they know about my life.

They know my insecurities and weak places. They know where I struggle and stumble, and therefore they know just where to stab me when they are angry.

Because of this, I’ve gotten fairly wounded by the ones that I love as of late. I’ve spend my fair share of time crying in the hallway or in my coworkers’ classrooms.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that my students are the ones attacking me; to be honest, I don’t think they mean to hurt me. But I know the enemy does.

And so with every stab wound, he throws in some salt– the same salt every time. No one likes you. You’re stupid. You’re a b****. How did you get to be a teacher? You’re worthless. You’re too young to do this. God? He’s not using you for anything. You should just give up.

Last Thursday, as I sat in my empty classroom after school and sobbed, I was close to giving up and letting the darkness win. But God has created me to be far too stubborn for that nonsense.

So instead, I quit for the day and after work I bought a floppy sun hat, a pair of gardening gloves, a shovel, and absolutely went to town on weeding the garden of the house that I am currently staying at.

As I yanked plants out of the ground and cried, I also prayed. For my kids. For my coworkers. For my sanity. For protection from all of this insanity.

As I was nearing the end of my weeding mania, I sat against a fence post and took a break. Right then, a gross looking lime green caterpillar crawled onto the fence beside me.

I don’t understand how something so funny looking and gross can turn into something as beautiful as a butterfly. And then my English-teachery brain made a connection:

I love my students, but sometimes they are gross kinda like the caterpillar. No, they don’t ever look that weird (thank goodness) but because they’re still growing into butterflies, their actions and words are weird and gross sometimes. Sometimes they’re pokey and hard to hold onto, just like the creepy wormish thing crawling next to me.

But eventually that weird worm will turn into a butterfly and will be something that will take my breath away. And I know that God will do the same thing with my kiddos.

The darkness will not overcome us. They will grow into the magnificent young men and women that God is planning for them to be and I will be able to say that I survived working with a bunch of gross caterpillars while I sit and bask in the sunshine that will be butterfly season.

Like Serenity, I can’t quit. I love my weird little worms far too much. And in the most beautiful way possible, they’ve ruined my life. I can’t go back to living life without a parade of teenagers following me everywhere. I can’t go back to “normal” because God has called me to something so much more beautiful.

 

*Ps. Prayers are seriously SO appreciated right now. I know that God is bigger than all of the devil’s tomfoolery, but the onslaught of it is annoying. Prayers for protection and the mending of relationships within the school is also much appreciated. xo, Lou

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Leather sofas, dying, & being a homeless hippie

Baptism(Disclaimer: This picture will make way more sense to you by the time you finish reading these ramblings. Don’t try to figure it out now. You might hurt your brain.)

As I write this my butt is in a car driving home from Nomads, a mind blowingly good missions conference in Oklahoma. (Don’t worry, I’m in the passenger seat. Nicole is currently driving.)

What an absolutely wild weekend it has been and what a wild week I have ahead of me. But before I get into that, I have a short story related to what is on my heart right now.

~

Once upon a time in a magical land called Aurora, there was a tall Mexican girl who owned a leather sofa. (Okay, it’s me. Go figure. Moving on.) Around the same time, I had a tiny apartment in which the white leather sofa / pull out couch lived. Every night in said teensy apartment, I would make dinner, tuck my god kids into my fluffy queen sized bed, and go sit on my white leather sofa with my then-boyfriend and study while he watched television.

Life was simple, but it was good.

Over time, that tiny apartment in the ‘hood became home. We got a puppy and nice dishes, painted the walls and bought random kitchen appliances. (You know, “American adult stuff”.)

Mr. Wrong and I enjoyed couple-y events and late night dinners with our neighbors. We took the puppy for walks around the lake near our house and sat on our patio and talked into all hours of the night.

In my own limited perspective, my life was everything I had ever wanted.

Aaaaaand then it all went to H-E-double-hockey-sticks for a little while.

By the time my lease renewal came up the following May, life had changed.

I had lost custody of my god kids and had returned to sleeping in my own bed instead of on the sofa bed.

Mr. Wrong and I broke up for the first (but unfortunately not the last) time.

I decided not to renew my lease and instead to move in with a friend in Denver. And when moving day rolled around, for some reason we legitimately could NOT get that stupid white leather sofa out of my apartment.

Seriously! For three hours I sat back and watched my dad and brothers hem and haw, push and pull, position, reposition, and then try to smush the sofa through the doorway that my friend and I had slid it through (without any hassle) a year earlier.

Nothing.

By the end of that day, my walls had holes in them from my beloved family trying to cram the sofa through a hole that it clearly was not fitting through and I had experienced at least two emotional freakouts from my siblings and dad.

Eventually, out of my own emotional exhaustion, I went into my tool box, grabbed my hammer, and began beating the sofa to pieces, ripping the leather while simultaneously cracking the wooden beams that held its frame together. After about twenty minutes of manic hammering, slightly terrified stares, and nervous laughs from my brothers, the sofa was in pieces, ready to be carried out to the dumpster.

Not quite my classiest moment…

Looking back on that today, I simply sit here and laugh to myself. Not only because I went absolutely bananas on a poor, undeserving inanimate object, but because my life today is so drastically different.

Clearly, I no longer own the leather sofa. I still have most of my nice kitchen appliances, dishes, and linens, but they have been shoved into a ten by five foot storage unit, awaiting my grand adventure to the South. (Which, side note: I drove through Texas on my way to Oklahoma and oh MAN. Pray for me. It is the WORST.

Anyway. Mr. Wrong is out of my life, despite his attempt to wiggle his way back in last week, and my dog is currently living on my mom’s ranch up north.

Oh, and me? When I get “home” to Denver tonight, I am packing up my guitar and the three boxes of my belongings that remain in my tiny apartment, and for all intents and purposes, I’m voluntarily becoming homeless.

Essentially, I am living the opposite life as I was four years ago. Back then I was a young woman playing the part of a surrogate “mom” to two little ones, with an apartment, a schedule, bedtimes, nice furniture, and a waffle maker.

Aaaaaand the intensity of not living a life like that anymore hit me today like a train.

As I was sitting in the grass before Nomads worship this morning, making a mental check list of things that I needed to do to get us back to Colorado in one piece, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of grief.

I have no home.

I have no solid plan for the next seven months.

What am I doing?!

And that’s when I heard it. Literally. It wasn’t some booming voice from heaven. Nope, it was the voice of Bono. Actually, a video of Bono that had begun to play on the screen in front of me while I had been obliviously stressing out.

“This is not a burden. This is an adventure.” Bono said, addressing the crowd of world changers & missionaries in the video.

And there, in my petite pity party on the grass in Oklahoma, I remembered why I’m doing all of this.

Jesus.

Jesus has a plan. God knows the grief in my heart and is going to provide in ways that I can’t predict or even try to comprehend.

After the video of Bono had ended and I had managed to pull my slightly emotional self together, Jamie Zumwalt, one of the women that God used to call me into international missions work this time last year, stood up and announced that they would be moving the crowd over to a swimming pool on the other side of the property where they would be baptizing anyone who wanted to devote or redevote their life to following Christ.

I had already been baptized once when I became a believer, and because I was not expecting the urge to go anywhere near a body of water this weekend, I didn’t pack a bathing suit. But ten minutes later, with all of my clothes on, I hopped into a swimming pool and was re-baptized (I’ve decided that’s a thing.) by one of the most formative women in my missions journey thus far.

Today, I chose Jesus. I chose not only to follow Him in my heart and mind like I did when I was first baptized, but with my whole life. Today I needed to make a statement (more for myself than anyone else) that I am dying to my desires– my dreams of white leather sofas, waffle makers, and stability. I am following my Savior where ever He leads me.

So here I sit, in a car somewhere in Kansas with soggy clothes on, the windows down, and worship music blasting on my way back to the great state of Colorado.

As of today, I have nothing figured out. I have a vague idea of where I will be staying for the next few months but I know that God has called me into a season of adventure and obedience. I will go wherever He calls me, whenever He calls me there, and it will be beautiful.

My name is Kacy and I am becoming a nomad for Jesus.

As they were going along the road, someone said to Him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another He said, “Follow me.” But the man said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.”
(Luke 9:57-62)

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Wake up call

Easter Sunrise“Babe, wake up. Look at the sunrise! Come on, Kace… Wake up!”

For a year, I woke up to these words at least once a week. My ex-boyfriend, who I endured the slight misadventure of sharing an apartment with, was a morning person… and well, I am not.

Every Saturday morning he would beg me to wake up and watch the sunrise with him. Me, being the extreme romantic that I am, would roll over, smash my pillow over my head, and tell him to shut up and go back to sleep.

When we split a few years back, nothing really changed in regards to my non-morning-person-ness. Don’t get me wrong, I think morning people are wonderful, but try as I might, I just have never had that streak within me. If my job allowed it, I would sleep in until 9 am every morning and stay awake until 3 am every night.

That being said, this time last year when my friends and I had the bright idea to wake up and have our own little sunrise Easter worship service at Lookout Mountain, I was a little bit less than excited. I knew that it would be an amazing morning adventure, but I wasn’t incredibly jazzed about the idea of waking up at 5 am.

The night before Easter, I set five alarms on my phone out of fear that my anti-morning brain would over sleep. As I fell asleep I remember laying in bed dreading my early morning wake up call and thinking about all of the times I told Mr. Wrong to leave me be or let me sleep.

Just four hours after falling asleep, I sat straight up in my bed in my dark apartment– an hour before my alarm. Instead of my usual slightly grumpy / pre-coffee morning attitude, I was stoked for the day and wasn’t able to fall back asleep.

I hopped out of bed, turned off my alarm, took a shower, made coffee, and got dressed. (And not just in sweats– I’m talking “did my hair, put on a nice sundress, and managed to get some makeup on” kind of dressed.) I walked the dog and if I remember correctly I even had some quiet time with God that morning… All things that I hardcore struggle to do before 9 am, even on my most alert mornings.

Around 5:30, I hopped in my car and headed off to my friends’ house to load up and head to the mountains.

Wide eyed and bushy tailed we arrived at Lookout Mountain that morning just in time to watch the sun start to peek out from behind the Earth. That morning, with five of my closest friends, I sat on the mountain side and worshiped my King to the harmony of an acoustic guitar and a harmonica.

In that moment, everything was beautiful.

I didn’t mind that it wasn’t even 6 am yet, that it was still relatively dark, or kind of chilly.

In fact, as I sat there and watched the sun crest over my city, I felt God whisper in the depths of my soul. I woke you up to watch this sunrise with Me. You are my beloved and I am redeeming you.

And that He did, and continues to do so every single day.

A year later, sunrises still aren’t my favorite times of the day, but they no longer bring up the bitterness of a time of personal brokenness for me.

After all, isn’t that part of the beauty of Easter? Our Father sent His Son to reconcile our relationships with Him and His Spirit to dwell within us and begin to heal the wounds in the depths of our souls.

He is a wonderful Father and Lover, a beautiful Redeemer. He is my King and today we celebrate His risen Son.

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on Earth.”

(Ephesians 1:7-10)