Friends beyond time and distance

Yesterday I had a most wonderful experience. After much investigation, I was able to track down and reconnect with an amazing woman who was one of my first friends. Her name is Jen and she is one of the most lively, intelligent, beautiful, and sensitive women I have ever met. A true ball of energy and spontaneity, she is the kind of person who sparks life into every environment she walks into.

We met in a most peculiar way. I was going to college in California and enduring a particularly lonely and desperate time - feeling out of place and isolated from the Alaska wilderness and wildlife of my youth. To make a measly attempt at connecting with nature - I took my study books outside and headed to nearby meadow to do some coursework. As I was lying on my stomach, reading, Hermeneutics, a small ladybug landed on the page and seemed to just sit there, staring at me, daring me to turn the page. I sat mesmerized, feeling as though this were the most beautiful wild creature in the world - and God sent her directly to me for the bit of encouragement that I longed for.

Later that afternoon, I made my way to the campus gym and sat quietly watching a few guys shoot hoops. As I sat there, a girl I'd seen in classes, but hardly knew, came up and we began to talk about our day. I was blown away when Jen said that she was really missing the outdoor life of her Massachusetts home. She began to tell me that to cope with her frustration, early that day, she headed out for a jog, praying that God would help her reconnect with nature. As she was out for her run, she encountered a bumblebee and was immediately overwhelmed by the fact that God sent it her way. We laughed at the oddity of it all, and how strange it was that we were both in the same place, at the same time. As we sat there, a man walked up and told us that he had two tickets to a whale-watching trip scheduled for the next day. "Do you two want the tickets?" We were blown away. It was exactly the kind of nature connection we had been praying for.

The next day, we found ourselves onboard a charter boat in the Pacific Ocean, scanning the seas for sign of whale, giddy, renewed, and alive. We didn't find any whales during that trip - but we did find a new friendship. One that always seemed full of adventure.

After about four years, life took us in separate directions and we quickly lost touch. However, I never stopped thinking about our friendship and wondering where her path had taken her. While we spoke, yesterday, I was thrilled to her about her world and the joys that have come her way. I was equally hurt when I realized that she, like myself, has experienced great hurt that I never knew about.

We come across amazing people in our lives and cherish the moments that we spend with them. However, often it is easy to walk away and obliviously surrender ourselves to the whirl of life around us, never seeing the whirl in the worlds of others. I missed out on some amazing experiences and opportunities to share with her how much I valued her in my life.

Perhaps this is a lesson to us all to do what we can to maintain friendships and connections, beyond time, distance, and challenging experiences. Life is an adventure and we need all of the support we can get and give.

Icy Hot Lips and other rebellions

The other day, I was visiting my grandmother in her nursing home and had an experience that was both sad and hilarious at the same time. Grandma Yadon has always been a bit crotchety toward me, however increasingly more so as her Alzheimer’s Disease has progressed. With her heightened state of frailty and confusion, her reactions have become much like a frightened preschooler, exercising her independence and revealing her denied inadequacies at the same time.

I stepped away from her bed for just a moment, and when I turned back to her, she had grabbed a jar of Icy Hot ointment from the nearby dresser. The lid was off, and she was dabbing her thin, gnarled finger into the translucent balm and proceeding to raise her hand toward her lips. Realizing what she was doing, I quickly grabbed the jar and told her, “Grandma, this is not for your lips.”

“You can’t tell me what to do. I know what this is. See!”

“No, Grandma, this is for the pain in your knees. You use Carmex for your lips,” I said, reaching for the small, yellow jar by her bed.

Angrily, she told me I didn’t know what I was doing and quickly began rubbing a large glob of Icy Hot across her lips. Torn between laughter and horror, I wrestled the lid back on the jar, while she still held it into her hands. From the angle that she held the jar, she apparently did not realize the lid had returned, and she continued to defiantly dip her hand on the lid, and back to her lips – as if she were continuing to add more and more balm to her mouth. All the while, I tried to maintain a respectful demeanor while she glared at me as though I depriving her from the moisture her parched mouth longed for.

Finally, after three solid minutes of staring me down, rubbing her finger on the smooth plastic lid, and back to her Icy Hot coated mouth, she told me she was finished.

I didn’t have to wait for long. Within minutes, her weary eyes began to water and she started asking me if we had any ice or water. My amusement at the situation (albeit inappropriate) was overridden by the knowledge that she had to be in a horrid state of discomfort. I spent the next forty minutes wiping her lips with ice and holding the sippee cup of cool water up to her fiery mouth. I felt horrible for her, knowing the burning sensation must have been driving her crazy, but all I could do was assist her in this miserable state.

I immediately began to think of all the times, I have defiantly stood my ground against the advice of others, only to find myself in a terrible, burning predicament. More so, how many times have I pushed forward with my life, without heeding the nudging of God, only to find myself in a place of sheer pain? There, in a circumstance created by my own brash pig-headedness, I call out and beg him to ease my suffering. So many times, God has had the right to say, “I told you so”, but he never has. He lovingly begins wiping the cool ice of refreshment and healing and causes my self-induced pain to dissipate.

While I hope I will never have true Icy Hot lips, I hope this serves as a reminder to myself pause, listen, and follow. Even though he doesn’t say, “I told you so,” I don’t want to keep giving him reasons that he could.

Beth Moore, Haunts, and Freedom

Following much anticipation, I spent Friday and Saturday at a women’s Living Proof Live conference listening to Beth Moore teach the II Kings 18-19 story of Hezekiah and Sennecherib. Her amazing sense of transparency blended perfectly with well-prepared teachings, as she shared insight about the power of fear, appropriate rebelliousness, and boldness in the face of overwhelming odds.

In addition, she discussed the power of negative words that have been spoken over us and the influence they have throughout our lives; it was here that I personally gleaned the most. While I try to portray a together, carefree, happy-go-lucky life, I’ve always battled internal conflict between who I longed to be and who I seemed to be. Throughout my past, I have memories of people I looked up to, who have told me that I would never be what I dreamed of, I could not be trusted, I did not truly have a call on my life, the world would be better off without me, and that everything I’ve experienced in God was a lie, because God would not communicate with a person of my nature and character.

We all experience rejection, disappointment, or a general sense of failure at some point in our lives. However, the source and circumstances of these experiences is an indicator of how greatly we allow these events to dictate our thought processes.

While I have heard many people say great, positive words over me, I suppose it was the level of the high value that I placed on these people, that allowed their negative words to influence me so greatly. Because I trusted their judgement and respected their positions, these views of me molded my view of myself. It was here in this place of turmoil, that I found the need to recognize that the memories, words, or actions that haunt me do not dictate who I am; my core is not the sum of my experiences; they may revolve around me, but they do not define me.

This was not the first time I’ve heard this teaching – but this time I clearly had a fresh understanding of my identity in Christ, a view that stood above all my previous self-visions. This new look was welcome and freeing – an experience I’ve been longing for for quite some time.

I’ve recently been studying Biblical grace and mercy, and I’ve been overwhelmed at what I’ve found. It is through these amazing gifts from God that we are free to truly live, beyond the barriers that we or others have placed upon ourselves. By grasping to this amazing, liberating understanding that God loves us, period, my life changed. He loves us, not because of our performance, not because of adherence to rules or guidelines, not because we love him. He simply loves us, first. Period.

The thoughts that have haunted me are not who I am, nor who I was. I am, have been, and always will be God’s child, his love.

Can we be any freer?

Kodiak: A weekend to change my life

Rolling, green mountains, dotted with giant spruce, the color of dark envy rise high into the icy blue sky before plunging deep into the emerald waters. Tiny, rocky islands dance across the ocean’s surface like a velvet bag of gems poured out on a glassy mirror.

This scene of ethereal beauty is where we spent our weekend. Kodiak, Alaska: a land of enormous bears, intriguing people, and breathtaking beauty.

After our community bible study on Thursday, Toby and I flew off to Kodiak, Alaska, an hour southwest of Anchorage. Located on a majestic island, this fishing community is an amazing convergence of traditional bustling life of a fishing village and the serene calm of a coastal resort town. We traveled there to visit our friends, David and Mechelle Bradbury, who are also planting a church and starting in their home.

We had an amazing weekend walking through the forests (after which, we noticed the signs about recent bear sightings), enjoying the local restaurants’ fresh fish menus, and sea kayaking in one of the nearby bays.

As truly hospitable guests, David and Mechelle hosted a barbeque to introduce us to their friends and together we had a great time talking, laughing, and eating, eating, eating.

While there is nothing like the security and familiarity of one’s own bungalow, it is always refreshing to step away and visit the worlds of others. I feel like I learned a lot about my friends and about myself on this trip – lessons that were welcome and helped me see myself in new perspectives.

As I was paddling my kayak back into the beach, I began to glide and just paused to breathe in the surroundings. I was leading the pack, so all I saw before me were the sparkling ocean tides crashing onto the rocky beach, tall grass framing a nearby riverbed, and mountains rising high before me.

That’s when it hit me. This is how I want to spend my time. Enjoying life. I don’t want to waste my days with the mundane tasks and commitments that don’t truly fulfill me. I want each moment to feel like I’m gliding across glassy waters; each day to be filled with excitement and true enjoyment.

I don’t need to kayak every day, but I do want to learn to truly live in the moment; to learn to capture opportunities for joy; to simply live.

While I’ve been saying this for quite a while (35 years to be exact), this weekend helped emphasize this in a whole new way, and hopefully was impacting enough to give me the courage to make positive change.

It was a wonderful weekend with friends. And hopefully, it was a weekend to change my life.

A Beautiful Weekend: Love, Fishing, and Spinach Salad

This weekend was great is so many ways.

Not only was the weather unbelievably beautiful, but an open schedule allowed us to simply enjoy life. Friday and Saturday were a bit hazy due to a nearby forest fire, but the temperature was perfect for yard work, so Toby and I spent the evenings building our fence, prepping the lawn and cleaning flower beds.

By Sunday morning, our church gathering was already experiencing the typical Alaskan “summer slump”; with six months of winter behind us, people are so excited for great weather, that they literally spend all summer outside: hiking, fishing, camping, biking, kayaking, hunting, etc. Even so, we still had a full living room and great conversation about the values of God. We discussed the concept that the two most important foundations in scripture are first, to love God with no holds barred, and second, to truly love others like we would ourselves. While this seems elementary and assumed, scripture says that every commandment and concept in the Bible falls within these two categories. This simple understanding of how God sees the world should mandate how we treat God, those around us, and ourselves. It is so easy to place rules and guidelines as the identifying factors of who loves God, who is striving to be like Him, or who we identify with. Do they do this, or line up with that? But God simply asks, “Do you love me? Do you love them?”

There are guidelines in scripture that are important and have been set in place to help us live healthy and whole lives. But these principles are all founded upon maintaining proper relationships with God and others; if these guidelines are followed and the relationships are not tended – the guidelines mean nothing and our adherence to them is empty. Do we love Him? Do we love them? That’s the bottom line. That's the beginning and ending of everything.

After church, Toby loaded up the boat and canoe and headed off to the family cabin on Long Lake with four guys from our group, John, Matt, Craig, and Tony. All Sunday and Monday, they fished, swam, talked, and just hung out.

Enjoying this bit of freedom, I stayed home, worked in my yard, read, and wrote to my heart’s content. The next day I celebrated our nation’s freedom by playing with Abbey and enjoying the traditional Memorial Day grilled tuna and spinach salad.

It was a beautiful weekend – in every way.

Peaks of Retreat

The summer season is upon us and Alaskan days are warm, bright, and long. As I was reading Donald Miller's, Blue Like Jazz at 11:30 last night, I had to pull the blinds down to keep the brilliant daylight out my eyes; there’s nothing like the midnight sun…

Yesterday, Toby took our pup, Abbey, for a walk up to Flattop Mountain and across the trails to the second peak. A couple of guys from the Air Force base joined him and together they climbed passed the point where green grasses give way to snow-covered trails. At one point, they were within 10 feet of a momma black bear and two, infant cubs the size of 5 lb sugar bags. Tiny and curious, these little creatures were already climbing in trees and exploring their new world of scents and sounds.

It is an ethereal experience to climb above the world and look down on oceans, rivers, glaciers, volcanoes, and distant peaks. From here, you can see hundreds of miles West toward the Pacific Ocean, and North toward the tallest mountains in North America. The higher one rises, the more faint life's troubles become. The jeweled city below becomes a hazy memory of reality and one’s entire world is swallowed up in the magnitude of clear air and captivating views.

Wherever we live, we must always find a place where we can rise above our world; a place where we can retreat, to slow down and breathe deeply. Like a welcome oasis in an expansive desert, these places offer solace from the stress of life and the rush of mundane commitments. They give us the opportunity to withdraw and see our world in a new and fresh perspective. They allow us to feel strong again and make our struggles grow faint.

Perhaps this lofty retreat is a city park, a sidewalk restaurant, or simply the big oak in the backyard. Wherever it is, we must find our way to it as frequently as we can.

For in this peak of retreat, we find the strength, insight, and courage to come back down the mountain and rejoin our world once again.

From the Tundra to the Sun and Back Again

This weekend, we were visited by my amazing brother and sister-in-law. Roger and Kim Yadon were stopping through on their way back from a visit to Kim's family in Sacramento.

Living in Interior Alaska (Fairbanks), visiting the sunny state of California is a true welcome relief. There are few things that Alaskans enjoy more than blue skies and warm breezes.

However, if one can't seem to get away to the "lower 48", the next best thing is listening to the tales and stories of those who have returned from their voyage South. Sharing their experiences, news of friends and family, and stories of life in another world, Roger and Kim brought us with them on their venture.

We traveled to Sacramento and enjoyed warm laughs with Kim's family, we jaunted off to San Francisco to visit Roger's old roommate, Brian LePort, and we traveled back again on a crowded plane, late into the night.

This sharing of stories is what bonds us all together. We can't all escape when we need to get away, but we can grasp ahold of the rejuvenation and hope that others bring back with them. Through this, we all become connected and whole.

Thank you, Roger and Kim for sharing your trip with us. It was almost as good as the real thing.

Hum and Buzz of the Religious Rogue

They are the sounds that fill the backgrounds of our lives: the incessant whirl of a refrigerator, the chirping of birds, and the whispers of thoughts. While our lives are often structured by the obvious factors, easily identified by the eye, ear, and touch, it is the hum and buzz that fill in the gaps and create a full sense of reality.

If one were to have peeked into the breakfast nooks of pre-WWI Germany, the true story of the Great Wars could have been predicted and followed through the thoughts and conversations of everyday people. It is in this menial chatter that we begin to see the heart of people and faint pictures of the future are created.

My husband, Toby, is currently writing a book about the Hum and Buzz of the religious rogue. We are the generation who truly believes in the power of traditional Pentecostal prayer and worship, yet we are stretching to apply the ancient truth to today's culture and world. Desperately loving the truth found in God's word, many are torn after sincere questions have gone unanswered and beliefs systems are slowly reworked. It is here that we become outsiders or rogues - unable to live in the traditional ideals and unwilling to let go of essentials that keep us from true postmodernity.

This union of past, present, and future is the breeding grounds for the hum and buzz can be heard over kitchen tables, silent email conversations, and late night coffee house encounters. As the questions, thoughts, and searches persist, the hum and buzz becomes a silent signal of something to come. What? We don't know. We just know it is coming. It is the cry for authenticity of truth and the power of God to be honestly lived in today's world.

Have you heard it? The hum and buzz?

Boogie, Spike & other reinventions

We were supposed to be getting ready to go out. Toby and I were jostling for mirror space in front our single pedestal bathroom sink, laughing and chatting about the random thoughts flying through our heads as we primped.

“So how did you get the nickname, Boogie?” he asked.

“Well, originally it was a much more elaborate name: Bee-buga-boogula. Then, my dad decided the name was too long, so it became Boogie, for short.” I went on to share my father’s penchant for placing extravagant nicknames on his family: mom was “Wee-wonkus”, my little brother, Roger, was knighted “Podjo”, and my sister Debbie originally answered to “Dingle-berry”. (Until it was discovered that this was slang for fuzz caught in unmentionable areas of the body. Then her name became, “Dingle-flossie”; or “Flossie” for short.)

When I asked about my husband’s childhood names, I was shocked to learn that he missed out – although he did recall the need to develop one. Apparently, he and his two sisters decided they needed aliases, and after much discussion, Kacey became “Booboo”, Keri became “Bobo”, and Toby selected “Bubba”. (So much for creativity.) However, much to their dismay, none of the names really took off.

The challenge of the renaming venture came in convincing others to call him, “Spike”. (Once preteen wisdom kicked in, he saw the need to shift from Redneck names to Thug names). However, it’s hard to shift from “Toby” (he never made it to "Bubba") to “Spike” without orally tripping; you can’t just ease into it. Besides, nicknames are not to be picked out by one’s self – they are deemed upon us by those around us. We are at the mercy of other’s choices for our pseudo-identity. Suddenly requesting to be called, “Wasatooatay”, “Moose”, or “Zsa Zsa” is presumptuous and odd, if not a sign of unhappiness, insecurity or instability at best.

Later, as we were riding home from our evening out, my mind wandered back to the bathroom discussion, and an entirely different question arose: At what point in our lives do we first feel the need for reinvention? How is it that a ten-year old can determine the path his life has been on, picture the prospective future, and feel the need to make a direction change toward “Spike”?

As we meander through our lives, there are times when we desperately feel the need to escape from our identity into a more dramatic, elusive, subdued, or otherwise reverse persona. While this is normal and often short-lived, how does a person determine if the need for change is a healthy one or merely an attempt to run? Can we misinterpret escape as being freedom? Is it possible that our attempts to become someone new are merely relocating the original self? How can we ensure that our change is the real deal, and not merely a nicknamed guise or façade change?

I believe it is wise to evaluate our identity on a frequent basis, and determine if where we are headed is truly the direction we desire to be. It is in doing this that we can appreciate the places we’ve experienced and the life we’ve lived, and begin to understand how it contributes to our existence. The challenge in changing who we are is to understand that our past remains static and solidified in existence; what has occurred cannot be relived or revised. However, how we chose to interpret and apply it to our future is ours to determine.

Embracing who we have been with who we are today, develops honest and whole changes – increasing the probability for effectiveness and permanency. It is in the marriage of our past, present, and future, that we do not reinvent, but redirect. In this we do not become a reverse personality or 180 of our nature, but rather a unique blend of our history, our truest self, and our hopes and dreams for the future.

“Spike”? Probably not. “Tobias the Crusader”? Now, that’s a possibility.

The Beginning of an Alaskan Summer

The beauty around me is so brilliant it is tangible. You can see it, feel it, smell it, and almost taste it.
It is the beginning of summer in Alaska.

As temperatures soar to a welcome 63 degrees, the mountains surrounding this coastal town are a patchwork of blooming green and snowy white, against a backdrop of deep blue skies. Here in the Last Frontier, every day feels as though you are living in a postcard.

Soon our days will be filled with landscaping our wooded yard, playing among the wildflowers, climbing nearby mountain peaks, fishing icy, rushing rivers, biking Anchorage's miles of trails, and enjoying friends late into the midnight sun.

While I'd love to stay and chat for a while longer, I feel a higher calling today - a pull I can't resist...

...so I'm headed out to walk the beach with my husband and beautiful blonde pup, Abbey.

Prepping for a New Life

Okay... So it's been awhile since my last post. Although its been silent, there's been much scurrying in the Stevens home.

Knowing that learning to say "No" cold turkey would result in miserable failure, I decided to create a list of tasks, commitments, and roles that I felt were holding me back from my goal, and then set a final date upon which all the tasks were to be completed.

With two months ahead of me, I went to work: designing websites, finalizes accounting projects, mending clothes, developing data maintenance systems, cleaning closets, and a million other odd sorts of jobs.

When May 1st arrived, I celebrated two amazing days: first my 35th birthday and second, the welcome of my new life.

There were no flashing ribbons of aurora borealis color in the sky. No bells sounded their cheer. And I spent the next day doing the same things I've done for the past 15 years. But still, something changed. It was internal. A joy, a hope, an awakening.

It was my life.

Waking Up in the Middle of Life

There I was. Living my life like I was supposed to. Doing what was expected. Accepting normal as reality.

And then I woke up.

That’s why I’m here.

I’ve had a good life. Married my best friend. Worked with amazing people. Lived in wonderful places. But I’ve often felt as though something were missing, something I just couldn’t identify. It wasn’t anything horrible, just a gnawing of emptiness, knowing something wasn’t being fulfilled or was out of place.

And then I woke up.

That’s when I saw it.

I suddenly realized that I’d spent my entire life dedicated to promoting the fulfillment of the dreams of others. Whether entering the college type of my parent’s choice, spending countless hours of overtime working with the ministries of today’s religious leaders, or supporting my husband through grad school, everything I did was for a greater good, a benefit to a bigger picture. The black hole I felt was in what I didn’t do.

I didn’t allow myself to fully dream. I didn’t allow myself to follow my heart. I didn’t allow myself to say what I thought needed to be said, go where I thought I should go, or be who I desperately dreamed to be.

That’s when I sat up.

After much encouragement from my husband, I made a decision to change.

This is the journey of my change. The story of my quest. The map to my future.