vaso-vagal episode

one minute i'm eating my quesadilla and washing it down with diet coke and the next thing i know, i'm on the floor to the sound of my mother screaming.

"HELP!  help!  Mack, what are you DOING?"

"WHAT is going ON?  Mom, stop SCREAMING!"

after about 7 hours of paramedics, doctors, waiting rooms, and EKGs, i found out that i'm prone to vaso-vagal episodes, which basically means that when too much adrenaline flows through me, my blood pressure skyrockets, causing my heart to stop and signal my body to shut down.  aka black out.  

no harm done...the only things that are hurt are my face, nose, and chin due to slamming into the tile floor.  

the scariest part was when the first doctor told me her EKG showed an irregular heartbeat.  it was the first time a doctor has had that infamous sympathetic, trying-to-be-strong look on her face.  "your parents are taking you to the emergency room."  somehow i didn't cry but i was scared out of my mind.  but it turned out to be nothing...just a slight irregularity with her machine.

my poor parents.  my mom won't leave my side.

1 Corinthians 12:12

This verse begs for community.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has this to say about it: "From this conviction that Christ himself is the community, there arises the idea of an organic life in the community in accordance with the will of Christ derived from the image of a bodily organism...Thus Christ is really present only in the community. The community is in him and he in the community...and 'to be in Christ' is the same as 'to be in community.'...The community is the body of Christ, but only under the gathering and unifying influence of the Holy Spirit."

If each community can be said to be the Body of Christ (just as each body itself is a part of the Body itself), which part of the Body is not getting the love and attention he or she deserves as a member?

If there are members of a community that feel left out or left behind, the whole community is going to function at a lesser level. Jesus is community, we've got to be Jesus to each other.

"Christ is the measure and standard for our conduct, and our conduct is that of a member of the body of Christ, that is, of one endowed with the strength of Christ's love, in which each of us can and will become Christ for one another..."

love.

man i've been thinking about this a lot lately. why are we so closed off?  talking to anna about this post spurred it on...and i can't stop.  

our first instinct when we get hurt (or sometimes even if we don't) is to close up.  "guard your heart"...i don't think that's what he was talking about.  

we've got to show the people around us that we love them.  get out of this isolation mess and love people...then LET THEM KNOW!  life's so much easier when you're confident of the love all around you.  and it makes receiving love from the Father so much easier.  

this is my favorite song of all time and it's on repeat right now.

dream

so i had this sick dream a few weeks ago, but didn't know it was sick until i talked to my pastor about it. legit.

okay so here's the dream: it's clemson like normal but there's a feeling of darkness over the place. basically it was dark outside the whole dream, even during the day. one of the old brick buildings had caught fire and all that was left was the brick. all my friends and i would go play in the ashes and soot inside and come out almost black. then all of a sudden i was walking around and saw one of my friends that i've been praying for for about 2 years talking to this older man telling him about all the miracles that God's done in clemson.

so that's it...and it was just encouraging at first because of the last part, i felt like God was reaffirming that He wants her heart and giving a taste of what's to come. i left it at that and didn't try to interpret the other parts...until i was talking to stephanie, one of the pastors at new day.

she said that the feeling of darkness was a physical manifestation of the dark stuff (drinking, sex, drugs, etc.) that goes on in clemson. she said that she felt like the building that caught fire was God's holy fire and asked if there was a building like that where God was glorified.

umm...YES. so i was like "TILLMAN!!!" so encouraging. then she said she thought that the significance of playing in the ashes was that we were a marked people and that people could tell who "played in the fire" when they came out.

hope this is as encouraging to other people as it was to me. blew my mind. yeah Jesus!

love, joy, peace, and righteousness

confession: i was extremely close to backing out of going to st. louis the week before. when i say extremely close i mean i had typed up an email to send to nikki that i just hadn't sent yet.

i forgot that i never told anyone that. and i even forget why i didn't want to go. i think it was because i was seeing all these legit things happen in other peoples' lives but not in mine and i didn't think i was worthy of being on the prayer team because of it...

well...that's all gone now (with the exception of a few 5-minute breaks in logical thinking here and there) and i'm sitting here thinking what would happen if i hadn't gone.

i'm definitely not saying that our group would have been worse off without me...i'm just thinking about what my life would be like right now. totally NOT where it is. if i could have guessed where i'd be during summer before spring break, it would probably not be here, and my soul would absolutely not be in it's current state.

it's astounding me as i think about the series of events that has put me right here in charleston, right now, writing this blog. i wouldn't have some of the same friends. i wouldn't have love, peace, freedom, and joy written into my soul and carved into my face. my actions wouldn't have produced the same fruit. (no one would be calling me mama...and boy is that catching on)

i'm just totally blown away by the way He puts things in motion. He knows His plans....and they're GREAT.

The Love of God. It's all that matters.

i keep trying to expound on this, but nothing else matters. it all sounds foolish and childish. this post was supposed to be about taking off the chains of trying to be something that looks like other somethings. but it turned into the LOVE that He has for us. everything stems from it.

if you start speaking in tongues after getting filled with His love, grace, beauty, mercy, and everything else that is Him, then it's beautiful. if He manifests Himself in a different way in your spirit, that's beautiful too.

the point is that everything He does and everywhere He is is beautiful. and however He manifests Himself is beautiful.

but He is all that matters.

alone

i've been having a lot of alone time lately. not necessarily purposefully, but not necessarily unpurposefully.

this is not like me. sometimes at school when no one was in the apartment i would go to the library even if i didn't have work, just to be around people. i guess you could call it an insecurity, but i think it's different. i don't need to talk to people or even interact with them (in fact, i'd rather not), i just like to know there's another living being near me.

but back to the alone time. i've had a lot. which is good. i've had a lot of time just to spend with Jesus. and a lot of time to spend reading.

but because of society's view that being alone is considered "lame", i've been beating myself up about it. not okay. i'm not lame. (i'm affirming myself, not trying to tell anyone else) it's okay to do things you love to do, like read, and paint, and meditate, which require you to be alone.

i'm definitely not saying that being alone all the time is good..."love thy neighbor as thyself" doesn't work too well when you don't have "neighbors" to love. but it's okay if no one knows where you are or what you're doing at every moment of the day. it's okay to be alone.

update on my life

so i just realized that i haven't really told anyone about how God SHOWED UP.  a few posts ago i admitted that i was at the end of my rope.  there was nothing left for me to do except wait for God.  

the sermon at church today was about how before God can part the red sea in our lives, we have to take a step of faith.  even moses had to.  and i learned this about two weeks after i took that step.  ah, the irony.  

what was my step?  i signed up to volunteer at both hope lodge (for cancer patients) and crisis ministries (a homeless ministry) here in charleston.  why was that a step?  because the day before i was contemplating moving back home with my parents (and when i say contemplating i mean that my parents were about to force me to) and working at a job making $$$$.  

the very next day i got an offer to babysit in hilton head for 3 days.  done.  the next day my roommate asked me if i could take another babysitting job for her.  done.  then a few days later i got a call about overnight babysitting for a family at new day.  done.  i finished all three of these and got another overnight job from the family at the church.  provision?  yeah, i'd say so.  

i have my rent for the rest of the summer taken care of already.  and there's another job for the church sitting during a parent's teaching class for the next six weeks.  

the coolest thing about all this is that it's been so fun.  i've been having crazy times with the Lord like never before, and gotten to talk to/pray for people i never thought i would.  man, He's so, so, so good.  jeremiah 29:11 is basically stalking me at this point.  and i believe it.  

(since He already knows the plans He has for me, i've been talking to Him about what i'm going to do when i graduate and guatemala keeps coming up.  i'm totally psyched.)

intro to the book of Acts from "the Message"

this was so encouraging to me that i had to share.

"Because the story of Jesus is so impressive-God among us! God speaking a language we can understand! God acting in ways that heal and help and save us!-there is a danger that we will be impressed, but only be impressed. As the spectacular dimensions of this story slowly (or suddenly) dawn upon us, we could easily become enthusiastic spectators, and then let it go at that-become admirers of Jesus, generous with our oos and ahs, and in our better moments inspired to imitate him.

It is Luke's task to prevent that, to prevent us from becoming mere spectators to Jesus, fans of the Message. Of the original quartet of writers on Jesus, Luke alone continues to tell the story as the apostles and disciples live it into the next generation. The remarkable thing is that it continues to be essentially the same story. Luke continues his narration with hardly a break, a pause perhaps to dip his pen in the inkwell, writing in the same style, using the same vocabulary.

The story of Jesus doesn't end with Jesus. It continues in the lives of those who believe in him. The supernatural does not stop with Jesus. Luke makes it clear that these Christians he wrote about were no more spectators of Jesus than Jesus was a spectator of God-they are in on the action of God, God acting in them, God living in them. Which also means, of course, in us."

(ps everyone neeeeeeds to read "the Happy Intercessor" by Beni Johnson. like now.)

VIPs

the Lord has been opening up a friend of mine's wallet and He has been blessing it like crazy.  she went to the hillsong united concert last week in atlanta and she felt like the Lord was telling her to buy a ticket for a woman who takes her to church, so she asked her if she wanted to go.  the woman said yes, and madden (my friend) went early to buy tickets.  the lady at the ticket window handed her the tickets and said "i'm going to throw these wristbands in too."  madden thought they were the kind of thing you wear for decoration, and she and the lady were joking about wearing them on the way over.  as they got into the venue, they met someone who was working that the lady knew.  after chatting, the girls asked him about the wristbands and he said they were VIP wristbands and would get them front row seats.  they had lawn tickets and it was raining, so this was a huge blessing.  they went up and actually ended up standing in front of the security.  they were close enough to touch the stage.

this might be a silly analogy, but so often i feel like that's how we live.  we are given VIP wristbands.  we are allowed to be close enough to the Lord to know his voice, even his thoughts.  but instead we sit out in the rain choosing to watch from behind the scenes.  we're a royal priesthood, VIPs of the Most High God, all we have to do is walk up to the front and listen.