“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”
(Ephesians 3:20 NIV)
This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about this verse. The last time was over two years ago on my previous blog. As I reread that old blog today, I was reminded that this whole adventure, this driving cross-country to IHOP KC to spend six months in his presence, was barely the whisper of a dream back in February 2010. And now it’s happening. And God orchestrated the whole thing in ways I never could have made happen on my own.
I have been absolutely blown away by the generosity of friends, and even some people I barely know, to help make this happen. I decided I wasn’t going to ask for financial support, and I haven’t, but every now and then God moves someone’s heart to bless me. A $20 slipped in my hand at church by someone I occasionally babysit for. A $20 left on my coffee shop counter by a church leader whom I had been talking about IHOP with. The complete payment of all my car repair expenses by the kind Christian dealer who sold it to me.
And there have been others, but none more surprising than the card I got in the mail this week from the parents of a good friend whom I had only met once. I knew they wanted to support me, so I told them that my tuition was all paid, but if they really wanted to I would certainly be able to use a Target gift card or something. Instead, they mailed me a check for more money than any one person has ever given me in my life.
I was completely floored, and even now I can hardly believe it. God has used so many people, some of them complete strangers, to encourage and support me in completely unexpected ways. And I am so, so thankful for his kindness working through the kindness of others.
I’m in Sedona, Arizona right now enjoying a weeklong holiday with my family. It has been quite relaxing and lovely. I’m glad to have this time before I officially leave… and I’m realising every day just how soon that is. Exactly three weeks from now, I will already be several days into the internship.
I got my driving schedule officially sorted today. I wasn’t sure how many days I would spend visiting friends along the way, but I have now finished confirming with everyone and I will leave on the morning of July 9. I’ll drive about 8 hours into Utah and probably stay in a hotel there unless I manage to find someone’s couch to crash on, then about 9 hours into Colorado to spend a night with cousins (by way of the unassumingly epic little intersection of Dekker Drive and Paradise Road–YES, IT EXISTS!). Next I’ll drive about 7 hours into Kansas to spend the night with Erica, with whom I originally planned to do the internship. I can’t wait to see her! Finally, on the morning of July 12, I will arrive at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri. The last leg of the trip will be only about two hours, and I need to be there between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm. And then the real journey will start.
Incidentally, the day I leave is the day I turn 22. This is the perfect time in my life for the greatest adventure I have ever embarked upon.
…or, “In Which God Comes Through and Idris Comes Home.”
Here’s what happened. After my new carabruptly died about two weeks ago, it went to our mechanic to be checked out. My mom called the guy who sold me the car to ask his advice. He told us to take it over to his mechanic and that he would help pay for repairs. (Wow.) So we took it to his mechanic… and discovered that it had one of two problems. One would cost a couple hundred to fix, the other would cost close to a thousand. Not good. When my dad relayed this info to me on the phone…I don’t like to use the word “panicked,” but the phrase “deeply concerned” feels apt. I had no idea how I would pay for my baby to get fixed, even if the dealer helped out.
I remember saying to my dad that a certain quote from (you guessed it) Doctor Who felt very relevant.
The Doctor: “Amy. You need to start trusting me; it’s never been more important… You’re going to have to walk like you can see.”
Doctor Who series 5 episode 5 “Flesh And Stone”
Up until now, my path to Kansas City had been pretty well laid out. I’d done the math. I didn’t send out support letters; one year of working at camp was more than enough to fund tuition and a car. I had everything budgeted down to the last dollar, then this happened.
And I suddenly had to walk like I could see.
I knew I was gonna get there. No question whatsoever. I just didn’t know how.
It’s like watching a TV episode where you know everyone’s going to be okay and they’ll get out of the mess somehow, but you keep watching to see how it’s going to happen.
So, after a few tense days, we learned that it was the more expensive problem– I had blown a head gasket. Apparently, that is very much Not A Good Thing.
That’s where God stepped in.
The dealer was more than true to his word and not only paid for THE ENTIRE REPAIR, but he also drove my car around town for a few days just to make sure it wasn’t going to fail on me again. I picked it up from his lot on Tuesday evening, and it has been driving like a dream ever since. 🙂
I am absolutely blown away by how good God has been to me in this whole process. It’s like over and over he keeps stepping in and announcing to the world, “Look, I said she’s going to IHOP–she’s going! Don’t you dare try to put anything in my daughter’s way, because I’ll just knock it aside!”
Life is temporarily back to normal… whatever “normal” is anymore. I came home from camp on Thursday, and discovered that I can indeed fit six months of my life in my car, and also that driving on the mountain doesn’t intimidate me nearly as much as it used to. I am living at home for the next two weeks or so, and trying to fill my suddenly very empty schedule with babysitting, arranging insurance etc for IHOP, planning a party, and packing/organising my room. Well, I did have a bit of an adventure yesterday…
Just when I was thinking that I could get used to having my own wheels, Idris (my new car) stalled on my way home from the thrift store down the street. Sigh. I was sitting in traffic a few car lengths away from a busy intersection with my fifteen-year-old sister in the passenger’s seat, and the car just refused to go forward when the light turned green. The engine cranked just fine, but wouldn’t start. I called Mom (yes, I still rely on my mommy) while my sister fumbled around trying to turn on my hazard lights. I sat there for only about three minutes, though, because just when I was about to do an epic *headsteeringwheel* and silently praying, “Okay, God, this one’s up to you,” two LDS missionaries passing by spotted me and offered to help push us into a nearby parking lot. Never in my life have I been happier to see those white shirts, ties, and nametags! We had a brief pleasant conversation afterward. In retrospect, I wish I would have asked them about some of the things that confuse me about Mormon theology, but I was too distracted at the time to be thinking about that. Ah well. I have plenty of Mormon friends, so perhaps another time. 🙂
My mom, my uncle, and the AAA guy all met us in the parking lot. My uncle took a quick look under the hood and said that it was probably just a blocked fuel line, quick and easy to repair. He also said that it’s a good thing this happened NOW instead of on the road to KC somewhere. I calmed down greatly after talking to him, and then he gave the three of us a ride to the mechanic and then back home.
So, Idris is now getting a full checkup at the mechanic and I will hopefully have her back on Monday. And my uncle is right; God was very much taking care of me by letting this happen now, protecting me while I was dead in the middle of the street, and sending me a couple of handsome young men trying to do his work to help me out. Not to mention my uncle being in town to help me and the mechanic being so helpful and trustworthy. Even in the un-fun times, I love seeing how God is pulling strings behind the scenes. I am so glad he’s always got my back. This next season of my life is going to be such an incredible adventure.
I hinted in my last post about a car that I might be getting. Well, I GOT IT! My new car is a 1999 Chevy Lumina in fantastic condition with only 72,000 miles on her. I got her from a family friend’s father-in-law, who is a used car dealer, for only $4750! I budgeted $5000 total for the car plus registration, etc, so this is perfect. Such a blessing.
My car, Idris, also nicknamed the “Golden Lady.”
Since I’ve been living on the mountain, my parents helped me a lot with the car search. My mom texted me on Monday or Tuesday that she had maybe found something, and then she looked at it on Wednesday and emailed me a bunch of pictures. I went down the hill right after dinner with OE students on Thursday to see it with both my parents. My dad looked under the hood, had me test all the features, and test drove it with me. I fell in love and drove it back up the mountain that night. The car dealer was incredibly wonderful, a great Christian man, and gave me his personal number in case I ever have any questions at all about the car. The entire experience was so God-orchestrated.
Idris and the Doctor
I’ve named her Idris after a character in Doctor Who. Idris was the name of the woman whose body housed the TARDIS’ energy matrix (essentially its soul) for one episode in series six. So essentially, Idris is the closest thing the TARDIS has to a real name. (Well, Sexy might be a bit closer. But I didn’t want to have to explain all the time why my car is named Sexy.)
So there you have it–this is the car in which I shall be driving to Kansas City! My own TARDIS, my own travelling companion and fellow adventurer. Or so I like to imagine. 🙂
This has been my mantra all throughout 2012 and through much of 2011 as well. After I graduated from APU in December 2010, I really had no idea what to do with myself. Little by little, things started coming together. I got a short-term marketing contract at a Wal-Mart, then a summer job at the Christian camp I grew up at which transitioned into a substitute position with their Outdoor Education program. In December of 2011, a year after graduation, I decided to take the leap toward going to IHOP in July 2012. Shortly thereafter I was hired full time with OE, got to work with the Christian camps on the weekends, and am now making great money, working with amazing people, at the camp in the mountains I absolutely love! And now, when I have a few short weeks left to buy a car, Jesus may have brought the perfect one right to me!
My God has been so, so unbelievably faithful to me.
It’s amazing for me to look back on and recount the last year or so, because there have been so many points of uncertainty and occasional downright anxiety. God has brought me through all those points, blessed me and taken care of me. It’s like I wrote about when I was on CR–those pockets of peace God always sends me to pull me through the hard days. I cannot walk through the woods, with the fragrant branches of the incense cedar and the wide blue sky spread out above me like a curtain, and NOT marvel at his beauty and goodness, both in allowing this to be my life and in just who he is. He has blessed me so many times over, and it’s completely not fair. I’m starting to feel like the world is really off balance, or maybe I’m due for a crash, ha. For some reason, he still chooses to give me so much joy and beauty and abundance, and all I know how to do is affirm in gratitude, over and over, “God is faithful.”
BAM. That is how I feel right now. I just called the IHOP business office and paid the remaining $4500 for my internship in July. I did just wipe out nearly half my bank account, but that’s okay, because I have a few more paychecks coming before I’m done with the OE season at camp. And it definitely feels so good to be all paid up and confirmed.
July is coming up so fast… as RIDICULOUSLY EXCITED as I am, I will also be very sad to leave camp. This place has been home for the past five months, and on and off for the past two years. I’m being less careful with my budget than I should, but I don’t want to miss a single chance to hang out with these wonderful people. Sunday night church followed by hanging out at a restaurant has become the highlight of my week.
It’s too early to say goodbye yet, though. I have five weeks (possibly four) left, and I intend to soak up every minute of them. A lot can still happen in five weeks.
I promised you about four hours ago that I would be completely unable to do anything besides obsess over IHOP today. I was right. I have spent most of my afternoon/evening reading the blog of a girl who was a One Thing intern in 2006. The posts are old, so I’m sure some things have changed, but I feel like I just lived her journey with her a little bit. She wrote several times a week, with tons of details about her schedule, her life, her friends, and what God was showing her. I almost cried at her graduation post.
Creepy, I know. It’s like she became my own personal novel.
Anyway, I really liked her description of the eager young interns coming in soon after her internship was over, so I thought I’d share it:
Today is the next group’s turn. The July ’06 Onething Interns have started arriving and moving in. Many come voluntarily, holding their heart up to G-d with all their dreams, fears, and prayers. Others come reluctantly, holding onto sins but still secretly hoping they will change. All of them, every single one, will be transformed this next half-year. 41 girls, 18 guys. Six months. 18 hours of teaching, 30 hours in the prayer room, and all three services. Enforced community, to embrace or to try to reject. Meals together in the cafeteria, hugs in the hallway and the bathroom, moving as an organism to class and the prayer room. They signed up for G-d, but they’ve been tricked — they get G-d and they have to deal with each other. Once they accept that, accept the schedule, and say to G-d, “Here I am, as I am. Enjoy me!” — they will be in for the journey of a lifetime.
Yesterday I emailed Niki, who has been my contact regarding my OTI admissions process, asking when I could expect to hear back about my acceptance. Today I woke up to find this in my inbox:
So sweet deal, I’m officially in!! Apparently, this still isn’t the “official” acceptance email from the admissions office yet, but Niki was kind enough to expedite the process for me. 😉
Things I know now that I didn’t before:
The internship starts on Thursday, July 12, 2012, not July 5 as I previously thought. Check in is between 10:00 am and 1:00 pm on that day.
Graduation is December 17 and that is the day I will be moving out.
I will be living at the Herrnhut Apartment complex just around the corner from the IHOP prayer room.
The dorms do have kitchens!
Guests may not stay in intern housing, but there are plenty of local hotels IHOP has connections with.
The NKJV Bible is the preferred version, but not required.
“We endeavor to create a sanctified living area for the interns; therefore movies and secular music are not permitted in the dorms.”
(^^Yeah… this one… I’m either gonna need a major heart change or a long talk to sort this out with the IHOP powers that be. I have large feelings about the whole idea of labeling media as “Christian” or “secular”… I wasn’t a theater arts major at a liberalish Christian college for nothing. BUT even there, there are way more important issues at stake, such as humility, unity, and submission to authority… so one way or another it’ll be fine.)
In any case, I am extremely excited and it’s pretty much worthless to ask me to think about anything else today.
You already know I am deeply in love with Doctor Who. Well, Doctor Who is in its off season right now and won’t be back until November. *tear* To tide myself over, I’ve been watching Torchwood, an earth-bound spinoff about combating alien threats on Earth. Series 4 is called Miracle Day, in which the human race simply stops dying. No matter how ravaged a body is, death refuses to come. With a swelling population and hospitals exploding past capacity, the governments of Earth adopt a new health care system in the form of overflow camps, where those who should have died and are now a burden to society are held. The Torchwood team is working frantically to discover the cause behind Miracle Day and to shut down the camps. While undercover in a camp, agent Gwen Cooper uncovers the horrible truth of its existence, and is trying desperately to save her father from the fate that awaits him.
Gwen: Sorry, listen. You have to change this. They move the Category 1’s at six a.m. They take them to the module.
Doctor: Sorry. Not my department.
Gwen: Really? Is that so? Well, do you even know what your department is, Dr. Patel? Do you know what happens in the module?
Doctor: Like I said, I’m rather busy.
Gwen: They burn people. They burn living people. The Category 1’s, they’re still alive, but they’re being burnt. This place is built on institutional murder.
Doctor: I’m not the one who makes the rules.
Gwen: You knew about this?!
Doctor: Category 1’s are dead. That’s the law. Under the emergency rulings, for the sake of public health, dead bodies can be incinerated en masse.
Gwen: Well, I’m glad you’ve got the law on your side. But are you actually there in the module? Are you actually there throwing the switch? Well, are you? No. No, you’re here, nice and safe, hidden behind your paperwork. You haven’t got the nerve to actually watch them burn. Because then you’d have to face the truth–that this isn’t a hospital, it’s a concentration camp.
Doctor: Excuse me.
Gwen: They built a concentration camp here, in Britain, today, and you, you, you! You are one of the staff!
Doctor: The entire health care system is about to collapse. What am I supposed to do?
Gwen: You say no. You say no. That’s what you do. For the love of God you say no.
Soon after, Gwen records a message to the world and takes dramatic action against the incineration modules.
“This is the truth, for the whole world to see. We let our governments build concentration camps. They built ovens for people in our names. Now I don’t care if the whole of society bends over and takes this like a dog. I’m saying no.”
Torchwood frequently makes me think and grabs my heart, but this episode was different somehow. I wasn’t just weeping for fictional characters this time. The system, the rationalisations, the categories of life were so eerily reminiscent of issues in our world today. One issue, mostly. Ask yourself this: Where in our world have we legally redefined what life is? Where have we murdered those unable to defend themselves? Our society has so much blood on our hands, and as one character observes in Miracle Day, you can scrub your hands raw, but you can’t get rid of the blood.
Gwen compared the “overflow” camps to Hitler’s concentration camps. So many people looked the other way during the 1930s and 1940s while Hitler gassed, starved, shot, and buried alive millions of Jews. Some closed their ears to the stories, others hid behind public policies, others kept their disagreement secret in order to save their own lives. And so Hitler was untouchable year after year. What would have happened if the world had stood up and said NO, just a bit earlier? How many lives could have been saved?
Of course, hindsight is 20/20. We can be so self-righteous from the safety of our history classes. But there is another Holocaust happening right underneath our noses. It isn’t making the daily headlines, but the numbers keep ticking by.
Since Roe vs. Wade in 1973, an estimated 53,310,843 unborn babies have died in the American Holocaust of abortion — and that’s just up through 2010.
Watch this documentary. It paints a powerful picture comparing the Nazi Holocaust to the abortion crisis in America today.
Someone needs to stand up and say no, before history looks back on us as the generation that did nothing.
“You say no. You say no. That’s what you do. For the love of God you say no… Now I don’t care if the whole of society bends over and takes this like a dog.
