Update: Busy, busy, busy

Again, I've been swept away by the sheer fact that everything I want/need/have to do may not fit in the number of hours that I have in the day.

You deserve an update, dear blog-reader. And now, having inhaled a very large iced coffee, I'm ready to start one by answering a few crucial questions.

Who? -- You! Thank you so much for reading this, for asking, for checking and talking and sending and giving and praying. I really don't have the vocabulary for all the gratefulness and warmth you've sparked in me over the last months. I'm just so surprised and overwhelmed by the grace you've given through investing in me and the future of spiritual movements in Sweden. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

What? -- Support-raising! I'm not done yet! One of the most helpful ways that you can partner with me is by linking me with your friends, your family, your bosses, your church groups, your blogging circles--anyone that you can think of, actually! Telling people about me and this crazy dream for Sweden is a great way to multiply your personal investment in what God is doing.

Where? -- Sylva, Cullowhee, Franklin, Hickory, and the Raleigh-Durham area: Let me know if you've got free time in the next month. I'm considering making a road-trip to meet supporters and I'd love to grab a coffee in a place that's closer to and more convenient for you. Leave a comment, send an email--we'll work something out.

When? -- Any time between August 21 and September. As soon as we reach 100%, we'll buy the plane ticket, kiss the family, and head out to Uppsala University (here's why) for a year. If you know that you'll be giving any amount any time in the next year, please let me know so that we can figure that into the total--and so that we can get on the plane sooner!

How? -- Pray. Give. Share. Please consider giving a small amount monthly: I've been thinking and if everyone I knew would give up having one coffee date a month ($7), that would make it possible for me to go and have a life-changing coffee date with a Swedish college student who needs to hear hope and grace. Would you consider sponsoring a fikapaus or two? It's easy to set up a monthly gift online here.

Update: Oh, hello again!

Wow.

That's about all I can say at this point.

I know that I've shared a little of how crazy this summer has been for me so far, but I'm not sure that words accurately paint the picture of how full my schedule has become.

I'm definitely struggling big-time with that--I want to be a human being, not a human doing.

There are a couple things that I want to touch on and let you know about before I go about setting things straight for today so that you're in the loop and know how to pray and so that you know that I haven't (how was it you phrased it, friend?) dropped off the face of the earth.

1. re: Financial Support -- I'm not at 100%. The next deadline is August 13th, and then I'll be reporting numbers on a day-to-day basis after that. Please pray that people will sense not only urgency in verbally committing (whether now or in the year to come) but also that this is something that we can do together. I think it's crucial to have some small-picture perspective here: giving up one or two coffees a month ($5 or 10) so that someone on the other side of the world can have a life-changing conversation is pretty do-able for most people. Pray that even here in the States, people would understand how much their financial support can be used for good, no matter what dollar amount they can give.
2. re: Emotional/Spiritual Support -- I am so encouraged by the outpouring (yes, even a healing outpouring!) of encouragement by phone, email, facebook message, etc. Thank you so much for sharing your situations and allowing me to partner with you in prayer. It's so easy to think that God is not here, now, but your words and actions have really helped me to continue pressing toward a goal that's not of my own design.
3. re: Physical Support -- I am fighting off a summer cold. This is the least of my worries (I mean, really. Who needs a body?) but it's important that I be in top condition to tackle these last few days of support-raising, preparations, and the like. Please pray that I do take the time to rest and that I wouldn't foolishly stay up to all hours of the night working on things that I could do just as well the next day. I might not be old yet, but I'm definitely not as young as I used to be. It's silly but true. You probably just laughed right then.

So, there it all is in a nutshell. Keep checking back this week; there are more Soularium reflections coming, more detailed stories, more requests and more life to share.

Personal: Here's looking at you, kid.

When I think about how fortunate I am to have the support of so many people, I just get excited about the vision of reaching Sweden with a message of change and hope.

But more than that, I'm excited by this process of raising the support in the first place. I was gently but firmly reminded of this as I read an email from a extremely smart woman this morning.

In it, she quoted Oswald Chambers, which I'll reproduce in part for you here:

We should never have the thought that our dreams of success are God's purpose for us. In fact, His purpose may be exactly the opposite. We have the idea that God is leading us toward a particular end or desired goal, but He is not. ... What we see as only the process of reaching a particular end, God sees as the goal itself.

It's hard to keep this perspective, as my support-raising window winds down. With so little time and so far to go, it's easy to not only get discouraged but to also start working in the motivation of my human fears. I can forget, and am grateful to be reminded, that this process is where I am finding God. Again, it's a daily thing. God is not waiting for me at the finish line; he is not elsewhere. It's all right here.

Personal: Answering the Call

There are so many ironic and/or funny things I could say about a phone right now. I've spent the summer glued to mine, checking voicemails and email and making tons of calls and waiting for callbacks.

But when I see this picture, I think more about how ubiquitous public phones were even up to a few years ago. Now that we're firmly in the age of cellularization, I've noticed that the pay phone stalls are fewer and farther between.

In some not so old movies, the pay phone is what drives the plot to action: there's someone who waits in the shadows for someone else to get closer to the phone, and then they call (that's how I learned that you can call a pay phone). The tension builds: will the intended person pick up? Will someone else step in? What if they ignore it?

I think that there are lots of ringing phones surrounding us these days--I know, because I'm on the other end of just one of them--and it's hard to know which ones to answer, which calls are for us, which calls are for anyone and which calls are just for the protagonist of a particular story.

So I've been praying for wisdom, discernment, and peace for everyone who hears the calls that I've made. Maybe you know it's for you to support. Maybe you know it's for you to pray. In whatever shape it takes, I hope that you find the strength to answer the call in the way that's best.

Personal: What matters is living in the mess.

I am a self-confessed nerd. Long after I was supposed to have grown out of them, I kept reading The Magic School Bus series. There was something so exciting about eight-year olds the size of red blood cells or a big yellow bus that became a space shuttle. I was fascinated by the science of everyday life.

And since repetition is the key to all learning, I still remember what Ms. Frizzle would yell as she turned her classes loose on the surface of the moon or in the ventricle of someone's heart:

Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!

My poor parents must have hated this stage of my development because I refused to clean up after myself. My room was an exercise in chaos theory (still is, actually). I grew experimental strains of bacteria in the bathroom. I needed to see things for myself.

I don't have to make all the mistakes in the world for myself and I can learn from others' experiences (which keeps me alive most days). But I think that a crucial part of being and becoming a real human is a willingness to engage with the mixed-up, crazy world around us. We grow to know a God who loved humanity so much that he too came here to be in it and show us what it is to interact and take chances. I can't escape my need to follow Jesus into and out of these same daily encounters, and to find him right there with me in my messes.

Personal: What Would Jesus Wear?

When I was growing up in church, I heard over and over again how Christians were supposed to be holy--a confusing church vocabulary word that means 'set apart'.

The way that got translated, especially in my junior-high mind, was that Christians were supposed to be 'set aloof'.

If you had shown me this picture then, I would have said that the people in dress shoes represented the Christians and the person in the ripped jeans was the person who needed to get their act together and dress to match the others. And I do still see, to a certain extent, how dressing and comporting our bodies in dressed-up kinds of ways brings honor and respect to the God of our worship.

But I much more see authentic Christianity as the kind of relationship with God that is comfortable in sneakers and grubbies. This world needs to see our genuine honesty about how not-together we can have it, and the understanding that it's not a crafted appearance or faked finery that counts for soul salvation. Being 'set apart' means being an agent of change and a breath of fresh air, even in our bodily life.

Don't get me wrong: I like my peep-toe pumps just as much as the next girl. But God says that my shoes (and the rest of the earthly stuff I can be so distracted by) are mostly beside the point when it comes to experiencing him and the life-change he wants to bring about in me.

Remix: What's so special about Sweden?

You may have just heard about me and what I'm doing. In that case, I wanted to make it easier to find some of the more important parts of this site. You also may have been here a lot and missed these crucial posts. In either case, I'm taking what was old and making it [somewhat] new. Enjoy! (I can't take full credit for the idea of re-posting something old. Thanks, SCL!)

Why you should think about Sweden, for a change:

1. Sweden is not Switzerland. Sweden is the birthplace of ABBA, has a population of 9.1 million, and 1/3 of the country is above the Arctic Circle (which means there are many more hours per day of sunlight in summer; much fewer in winter). Sweden is responsible for producing Ikea, Volvo, Anders Celsius, and Ingmar Bergman. They speak Swedish and some other Nordic languages, but are mostly fluent in (and better speakers than you and I of) English, too.
2. Sweden is a first world country. Swedes are brilliant. Swedes are literate. Swedes love to have coffee and deep conversations. Swedes are concerned about the future of a global economy. Swedes live, move, and have their being in a thoroughly postmodern context. Sweden's mindset is in a place now where America's next generations of students are heading, and heading fast.
3. 80% of Swedes are considered members of the Church, which is partially explained by the convention of automatically counting children born to members of the Church of Sweden in membership numbers. However, the actual number of believers in Sweden is close to 2% of the population. Most Swedes have never heard the story of Jesus in its entirety.

Through Campus Crusade for Christ, I've been given an opportunity to take this next year to share this story with the students of Uppsala University. My calling is to live my life in a transparent, authentic, and honest way and to offer them an introduction to the God of the universe who desires with unending compassion and overwhelming love to know and be known by each student on a very intimate, personal level.

This, my friends, is what I'm asking you to partner with me to do. You may not feel quite the same about Sweden, or Jesus, or missionaries, or students. That's a lot less important than believing that this is the right thing for me to do in this moment, in this day and age.

So, firstly, would you please commit to pray for me and let me know that you're doing so? This is a scary undertaking. People everywhere are nervous about the economy, about the future, about freedom--but I refuse to be disheartened or discouraged. God's commitment to us is unwavering. I stand by that. I also believe that we are strongest when we stand together.

And, secondly, would you please consider joining my financial team of supporters? There is a role for you to play, whether you sponsor the cost of registering for a visa, a plane ticket, or give any amount monthly.

One very difficult part of this process is the fact that if I do not have my full committed support team complete by August 13, I cannot go.

That's a swift deadline, but again: I refuse to be disheartened or discouraged. We are strongest when we stand together because no one could do this alone. We were never meant to.

For more details about how you can give and what kinds of financial support I need, see this post.

Remix: I get by with a little help from my friends!

You may have just heard about me and what I'm doing. In that case, I wanted to make it easier to find some of the more important parts of this site. You also may have been here a lot and missed these crucial posts. In either case, I'm taking what was old and making it [somewhat] new. Enjoy! (I can't take full credit for the idea of re-posting something old. Thanks, SCL!)

How You Can Help Send Maleah To Sweden:

1. Pray. Pray for Sweden. Pray for opened doors. Pray that students who seek will find. Pray that I am able to complete my team of supporters so that I can go and share. Pray that God would show you how you can be on that team, whether through prayer or finances or encouragement or speaking on my behalf to people you know. [follow all prayer requests here]
2. Give. Without enough financial support by the deadline, this mission won't be possible. It could be as little as 5, 20, or more now. It could be as much as 100 each month through the year. Every gift counts toward making this vision of Sweden a reality. You can give securely online or find instructions on how to set things up by mail. [detailed instructions here]
3. Share. This is not something that you or I can do alone. You can link to my site on yours. You may know someone I should call--share that with me. This dream of a change in Sweden isn't exclusively mine; join the team and let's get the word out together! [contact me here]

Personal: Details, details.

I'm a big-picture person. I like to dream and leave the details up to someone else. That's not always how it works out and as I've grown, I've learned how to manage some of the mundane.

But it often means that things get left to the last minute and I juggle lots of small things all at once.

Whenever I see this picture, I'm reminded that sticky notes are disposable. They don't last, they won't stick for long, and they can only hold so much. Although I'm sure many important transactions and ideas have been carried by a 3x3'' square, I don't plan on using them for contracts or official documentation any time soon.

Instead, I use them to help me keep track of things, and I try not to worry too much beyond that. Every day has its own set of tasks. I can only do what God enables me to do, and start again tomorrow. We ask for a vision of the kingdom (BIG) and our daily bread (small), and that's probably all that I could ever handle!

Personal: Catching my breath.

I've got to be honest. These last couple weeks and the promise of the next few to come were and are nothing but busyness. Phone calls, support appointments, hard conversations, big breakthroughs, goodbyes--it feels like I'm going in ten directions at once.

In all this, I am asking for peace. It's hard to keep the perspective that God is completely in control over what happens next, and that life is more than my to-do-today lists. I'll be ready for Sweden in a month, if God wills. The support will come in and it'll be time to head out into the unknown and meet students where they are with the love of God and the love of this community so ready to minister to their hearts.

Really, when it comes down to it, what more is there to life than to know God and make him known?

Personal: Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be

Today's picture (man and woman holding hands) is just adorable. My heart goes "Aww" every time I flip past it.

One of the things I still find myself studying even after graduation is the complicated maneuvers of human relationships. As I contemplate how leaving the country in a month will change things for people I know, I am amazed at how generous people are with their time, and their prayers, and their finances.

It makes me think about something I read long ago by Henri Nouwen:

It is sad to see that, in our highly competitive and greedy world, we have lost touch with the joy of giving. We often live as if our happiness depended on having. But I don't know anyone who is really happy because of what he or she has. True joy, happiness and inner peace come from the giving of ourselves to others. A happy life is a life for others.

I was talking with a good friend about this a few days ago and again yesterday: there are lots of ways to be generous and good relationships need a huge measure of trust and partnership in order to survive. Though I don't have many material possessions, I do have time and so that's what I'm going to give. I have this next year of no mortgage payments, no car insurance, no family obligations, no romantic entanglements, and no small children. God has given me a whole year to give without regard for anything other than the needs of the Swedish people. How exciting is that?

Personal: When the going gets tough, bite back.

Sometimes, you just feel like the world has got you under its thumb. I'm fairly sure I'm not alone in feeling like this.

One of the hardest parts of talking about faith is not that people are unresponsive or don't care. That definitely happens, but what gets under my skin even more than that is the fact that for a lot of people, thinking or talking about God or Jesus are just not things that they've been allowed to do. Cultures, government, societal norms--everywhere, there are voices that tell us that it's not worth thinking about the possibility of more to this life than life itself. That reminds me of something that struck me in the foreword to Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel A Brave New World:

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

That, friends, gets me all up in arms. That's just a blatant disregard for the design of the human experience. We have big questions; we need big spaces to work things out for ourselves. Exploring the idea of God is not an option; it's a necessity.

Discussing these things and really examining Truth can feel like being this tiny lizard--you push back against powers that threaten to overwhelm you. It can feel futile, but it's crucial to keep thinking about, to keep talking about, to keep fighting for in whatever ways we can because it's the right thing to do. We are called to wield our freedoms in ways that help others become free to wrestle and think for themselves.

Personal: It's a big enough umbrella...

Yesterday, I reflected on what it is to have hope despite being walled in by razorwire fences.

Today's image (a dancer in the rain) has got me thinking about what it is to have joy in the midst of those same discouraging circumstances.

Just like yesterday, though, I want to put a disclaimer on my remarks: it's not that these rough spots aren't truly difficult. It's definitely not the case that somehow a belief in God makes all things perfect. However, I do believe that faith in God changes one's perspective on even the hardest of situations. There's a real difference in the way that I respond to trials now versus when I was just beginning to know about Jesus.

Joy has become something deeper than a momentary gladness; it's a deep contentment in the face of suffering -- what Paul referred to as the secret he learned in moments both of sacrifice and plenty. It isn't a dependency on people or circumstance. It's the result of being connected deeply to a life-giving, life-renewing God. Joy like that can't help but be caught singing in the rain.

Update: Where did I go to high school, again?

My support coach (who I've been turning in numbers to all summer) just asked me for updated totals, and I realized that I've been miscalculating a little.

We're not at 25% of what's needed in hand on August 1.

We are at 35%!

This is really exciting news. I thought that I'd share so that you can rejoice with me and know what to keep praying for. Thank you so much for continuing to support the vision of a change for Sweden. Every step counts!

Personal: Let me tell you some stories

One of the incredible parts of my job is the chance to speak to college students about faith, spirituality, and experience--and the chance to ask them deep questions and genuinely listen to their responses.

One of the tools I love to use that can strike up this kind of conversation is Soularium, and I really enjoy using it in tons of different ways to spark different kinds of responses.

For the next 50 days, I'm going to attempt something ambitious that I've never done before. I'm going to blog my personal responses to each of the 50 images in the Soularium survey. My prayer is that this will not only mean that there's something new for you to read here daily, but that it will generate some interesting discussion.

The first image is of sunlight streaming through a razor-wire fence.

Obstacles are always before us, or inside us, or surrounding us. Situations never seem ideal. It would be foolishness or a lie to say that I'm not afraid of lots of uncertainties these days. Will all of the support come in by August 1? What will happen to my academic career if I really put it on hold right now? What about my personal life?

Everyone wrestles with feelings of unknownness; it's part and parcel of the human experience.

When I think about the future--from what's going to happen on August 1 to what's going to happen in a year--I feel like there's a lot to be hopeful about. Despite the culture of fear that dominates all discussion about economy and society, I consistently find light and life in very dark places. It isn't that I'm naively hiding from the painful truth that life isn't always sunny. It isn't a blind, superficial attitude of blissful ignorance.

It is simply (and that's not often simple) trust. I don't have to know everything, I don't have to stick to a plan, and I certainly don't have to have it all together to have confidence that the God who created the world and the human heart is still at work right here with us. Nothing on earth can overpower that, I hear.