Jesus – Page 13 – Louise in the Light

July 9, 2014July 14, 2014

From the mountain tops

As a Colorado native, the Rocky Mountains are something that I took for granted for roughly twenty years of my life.

Don’t get me wrong– the mountains are beautiful. I mean, they’re the way I grew up understanding which direction was West, and they’re why everyone and their moms were invading our state, but that was about all I knew about them.

As someone who doesn’t enjoy freezing my tush off, I never got into skiing or snowboarding, and while I absolutely adored camping as a child, it was something that typically only happened once a summer due to the huge and divided nature of my family.

And thus, the gorgeous mountains that I stared at everyday and I never became intimately acquainted.

Ironically, it wasn’t until I made friends with “Denver transplants” from all over the country that I began really exploring the Rockies about two years ago.

My beloved friends– the ones who had “invaded my state” for the sake of hiking, skiing, or general outdoor shenaniganry– and I began exploring nooks and crannies in the mountains on holidays and weekends. And shocking enough, the more time I spent in the mountains, the more I have absolutely fallen in love with them. (Maybe all of those tourists I grew up making fun of were actually onto something… Oops, sorry y’all!)

There is something incredibly sacred about the unpolluted silence at the top of a mountain or the ability to drink glacier water straight out of a rushing stream.

This summer as I have been learning to slow down and experience the beautiful world around me, the mountains have become the place where I feel most in tune with God and where I hear Him most clearly in my heart.

No wonder He always told the leaders in the Bible to meet with Him on a mountain top!

Think about it:

Moses met with God regularly on top of Mount Sinai all throughout the book of Exodus.

Elijah had an absolutely wild encounter with God where He met him in 1 Kings 19:

“So he said, “Go forth and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. And behold, a voice came to him and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

(Uh, say what!?)

Jesus himself gave his famous “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew chapters 5, 6, & 7, well, from the top of a mountain. (Which p.s. if you’re looking for a good read, whether you’re a Christian or not, I HIGHLY recommend reading these few short chapters. What a beautiful message for mankind!)

Peter record hearing the voice of God audibly say, “This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased,” when he was on the top of the holy mountain with Jesus and John in 2 Peter 1:16-18.

There are over 50 references to mountains throughout the Bible and all of them somehow relate to the majesty and power of God and His beautiful Gospel.

All of this to say, God LOVES mountains. And so do I.

Eventually, once I finish processing all of the magical things that God taught me during my time in the Alaskan mountains, I will write about it right on this here blog. But until that time comes, I simply wanted to leave you all with some of the beautiful photos that I was able to capture during my time in Port Alsworth.

Oh, and I wanted to encourage you to GO OUTSIDE. Get into the mountains!

(Or if you’re not lucky enough to drive 30 minutes and be immersed in the mountains– ahem, I’m lookin’ at you, Texas– then just go somewhere and experience the goodness of God through his creation.)

Put down your phone!

Stop reading your Facebook or this silly blog and go hear what God is trying to tell you!

I promise you will hear it more clearly at the top of a mountain where there isn’t wi-fi, cell reception, or a hundred thousand people buzzing around you in taxis or cars.

Lake Clark Beach in the evening (Click to enlarge — my blog hates panoramic photos…)

The Alaska Range meeting the Aleutian Range

The gorgeous Alaskan mountains contrasted by Josh’s very shadowed head

The view of Lake Clark from my puddle jumper

But seriously, I could look at this lake all day and never get sick of it

The Alaskan Range from the middle of Lake Clark at dusk

Pike fishing on the Newhalen River

The Lower Tanalian Falls at the base of Mount Tanalian

For the rest of my photos, check out my Facebook.

But seriously, go outside and experience God’s creation first! It is RAD!

July 4, 2014July 5, 2014

Waiting at the end of myself

Sunday night was one of those evenings that make my heart smile.

After an action-packed weekend of climbing a 14-er, having a bonfire with friends from out of town, playing several games of volleyball, attending church with my roomies, and eating more ice cream than I should probably admit to, one of my roommates walked into the room I was laying in and flopped down on the bed next to me.

As the sticky summer breeze blew threw the open patio door, we both sighed and then laughed at our tandem exhaustion.

“I had such a good plan for my life, Jules,” I said as I stared at the ceiling.

“Me too. It’s funny to think that we both wanted to be doctors. Ooooooh how different life would be right now,” Julie said, laughing to herself.

“Yupp,” I sighed. “I was going to become a cardiac surgeon and here I am– a broke missionary “ex-teacher”– just about the furthest thing ya can be from a surgeon. I had everything all planned out and now I’m laying on here contemplating changing the entire trajectory of my life yet again with one seemingly simple decision: Do I finish this master’s program at GIAL? Or do I do the seemingly illogical thing and stay here in Denver, where I have given everything up and have no concrete plans for, well, anything?”

Oh yeah, you read that right. Those words came out of my mouth and then part of me immediately wanted to shove them back in.

After nearly a year of preparing to move to Texas and several months of praying through my waffling heart, I’m suddenly pretty sure that I’m not moving to Dallas in December.

I had a lot riding on Texas. (Well, that’s a sentence I NEVER thought I would type…)

Texas was my only real plan at this point.

Throughout all of the chaos and transition of my last few months, moving to Texas was the only stable thing that seemed to make sense.

“I’m not going to enter into a lease here in Denver because I’m leaving in less than a year.”

“I’m not going to sign a teaching contract for next school year because I’m leaving after Christmas.”

“Thinking about getting involved with this activity or that ministry simply doesn’t make sense because I’m moving…”

Blah. Blah. Blah.

Texas was “it” for me and admitting that I was wrong… that I rushed into something (big surprise there)… that I have been trying to fit my stubborn square peg into God’s perfectly rounded plan… Well, that honestly is a blow to my pride and my adventure-obsessed heart.

Yet I know that it wasn’t all for nothing. I know that over the last few months as I have “prepared to move”, God has stripped me down in the most glorious way possible.

He has exposed some pretty gnarly idols and lies that were eating away at my blinded heart throughout all of this– idols of adventure, fear, comfort, and affection; lies about who I am and who I was before I fell in love with Christ…

And now? After being stripped completely of all of my plans and the paths that I was trying to stubbornly (Did I mention that I’m stubborn?!) create in my own wilderness, it feels like He is simply calling me to be silent and wait for His direction– something that I clearly suck at.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again– I’m guilty of being an over-committer, a go-er, a woman is seemingly incapable of sitting still for more than five minutes, even though God continuously has told me to simply sit my butt down and stay a while.

I am hungry for adventure and new destinations, when in fact, I should be hungry for Him and only Him.

Somehow, the fact that God is not a destination or a box to be checked on my bucket-list continuously slips my little mind.

Yet every time I stupidly forget who God is and what He has called me to, He reminds me that He is relational. And as He reminds me of this, He also reminds me that my relationship with Him consists not only of praying and meditating on His Word, but also of waiting and listening.

So, what better place to be silent and wait on Him than in Alaska?

(But seriously– I’m sitting on the terminal floor at DIA, waiting for my plane that leaves for a tiny village in Alaska in less than an hour… It’s funny; it’s like God knew that I was going to be a scatter-brained, mental-case right about now and would be needing a week away from my distracting life here in Denver, in a secluded village in the mountains where I can focus on little but Him.)

Photo credit: Kathryn Bronn (Click here for more photos of where I’m headed and for an awesome blog post from one of my favorite ladies.)

In the midst of my breathtaking, but busy life here in Denver, it is easy for me to forget that silence and stillness are necessary and beautiful parts of my relationship with God. I cannot admit enough that it is incredibly difficult for me to quiet myself completely and simply lay in His presence and wait for Him to move, but as I said before, I know that is what He is calling me to.

He is calling me to Himself.

Maybe He will still lead me to Dallas eventually. Maybe He will continue to tell me to park my tush right here in the community that He has brought me into.

Either way, I am (slowly) learning that I want Jesus more than adventure or forward motion— a lesson that seems like it should’ve been more straightforward and less confusing to begin with… but nope. I’m hard headed and obviously easily confused when I’m not constantly listening for God’s voice in the midst of my own chaos.

But as I’ve read through the Psalms this summer, I have realized that David continuously wrote about this confusion within his heart and mind, and for that, I am incredibly thankful. (After all, if David, “The Man After God’s Own Heart” didn’t have anything concretely figured out either, I’m probably not doing too bad in life.)

All throughout the Psalms, David teaches an incredibly important lesson– When you don’t know what is going on, go humbly and honestly before the Lord; pray and then wait.

Sometimes God answers prayers and moves quickly. Sometimes He doesn’t. And I’m learning that slow answers are equally as beautiful.

As a wise blogger once wrote, (okay, wrote four days ago…)

“David knew a thing or two about waiting. Even after Samuel appointed him king of Israel, David didn’t immediately go slay Goliath. Saul was not promptly impeached and David sworn in. David had to wait. Before he could rise to his calling to become king in the future, he had to fulfill his responsibilities—as a shepherd—in the present. And so do we.” (Read this awesome post about waiting on God on Relevant here.)

So here I am. Simply a mildly confused, very tall woman with a blog, a heart for the Nations, and no clear long-term plan for my life. Will I stay in Denver forever? Will God end up taking me somewhere better than my little brain could have ever dreamed up? Will I ever return from Alaska where the sun stays up for 24 hours straight in the summer? Will learning to be patient and wait on God kill me? (Okay, probably not… Honestly, if anything Him forcing me to be patient is making me fall even more deeply in love with Him everyday.) As for the first few questions though, it looks like we’ll have to wait and see…

What is God asking for you to wait on Him for today?

“Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
all you who wait for the Lord!”
(Psalm 31:24)

June 24, 2014June 24, 2014

Swing dancing in the presence of Jesus.

(Ancient swing dancing photo: circa 2007. Also, proof that I was once short!)

In dance, there are two very clearly prescribed roles: the leader and the follower.

When you’re out on the dance floor as a woman, more than likely you will find yourself in the role of the follower. When you’re the follower, you don’t get to plan. Instead, it is your dance partner that leads you in every step, twist, and turn that you take.

The gentleman in the pairing has to have a plan for the dance in mind, and it is their job to execute said plan by gently leading you, one step and squeeze of the hand at a time.

As the follower, if you try to anticipate the step or move that is coming next, you can almost guarantee that you will screw something up. You might step on your partner’s foot or maybe you’ll just trip both of you up… Either way it’s awkward and the only thing you can really do is apologize, try to get your rhythm back, and dance on.

As I was being twirled and whipped around the dance floor last Sunday night, by a partner far more experienced that I, I couldn’t help but see the similarities between swing dancing and my walk with God.

I tend to get too far into my own head while God is twirling me through life and whenever possible, I try to anticipate the next step in our dance together.

Then, lo and behold, I somehow screw up the dance every stinkin’ time with my anticipation and tendency to try to lead.

Always trying to anticipate God’s next move not only makes our dance a bit more clunky, but it makes it nearly impossible for me to enjoy what is happening here and now. I trap myself in the anticipation of what is coming next and struggle to see all of the beautiful things that He is doing in my life in that moment.

As an independent, mildly stubborn, day-dreamer and “go-er”, I’m always pumped about what God is going to do, where He is going to take me, what the next step is going to look like… and I don’t necessarily think that any of those qualities or thoughts are bad in and of themselves.

But as one of my beloved friends recently pointed out to me, my anticipation becomes a hindrance when I begin to miss out on what God is doing here, today because my eyes are always focused on tomorrow or the day after that.

It’s no great secret that I’m sort of in a season of transition right now. Being technically homeless, single, and relatively underemployed isn’t exactly where I want to be for the rest of my life (Shocking, I know.) and therefore some days it is hard not to look expectantly at the future.

I have full confidence that this is simply a season, and just like in swing dancing, God is teaching me to be present where I am and cherish this season, instead of trying to rush our dance by taking the next step on my own.

So while I royally suck at seasons of rest, I have realized that this summer is beautiful for a multitude of reasons:

Since I’m not working full-time or living in Vail like I had planned to for the summer, I get to nanny this absolutely precious little cupcake and continue deepening my friendship with her momma on a daily basis.

Because I’m single, my priority for relationships gets to be in deepening my relationship with God through our morning coffee dates and singing worship songs at the top of my lungs in my car all afternoon.

Since I’m nomadic, I have the opportunity to travel where ever He takes me. In just the first three weeks of summer, I’ve been able to go home to southern Colorado, to camp with my students, backpacking with friends, and I leave for Alaska in less than two weeks to volunteer at a summer camp there for a week.

This season is beautiful simply because it has been given to me by God. Period. Not just because it is leading me to something else.

God knew that I needed rest. He knew that I needed to be here near my family for the summer. He knew that I was struggling with being present… and therefore He is placing me in a season of quiet where I can learn to do nothing but look at Him, take a deep breath, and smile.

So, with that being said, I am laying here on a park bench by Sloan’s Lake, watching the boats sway in the harbor, learning to do nothing but lay here, on a park bench, and watch the boats sway in the harbor because this is exactly where God has put me for the summer, and it is magnificent.

Are you a sucky follower in swing dancing or just in life in general? An over-ambitious go-er struggling to be present? Let’s have coffee & form a support group.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
    for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
    I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.”

Psalm 23

June 5, 2014June 6, 2014

Messiness made beautiful

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)

May 27, 2014May 27, 2014

Destroying mud pies

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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