Alpha Beta Dorcas.

Hey guys!
How are yall doing? I'm well.
I was just thinking about an interesting thing. Last night, I had to interview some of the sophomores who are applying for the LEAD program, part of the honors program at Belmont (the elite part). Anyway, my friends Emily, Daniel, and I were interviewing our friend LT. Which was more like a conversation because we all already know and love her. And she is having a hard time with a decision she is making. Anyway, we started talking about Emily flipping a coin in order to make the same decision, and then it moved to the fact that last year, Emily drew lots to see which immersion trip she should go on for spring break. And we were laughing about it, but it's such a cool thing.
We were talking about how they used to cast lots for everything. And Daniel said that it just came out of complete trust in the sovereignty of God.
And that just kind of blew my mind. I've been thinking about it a lot. (hehehe). But really, what if I had that much confidence in God's sovereignty?

Also, I am going to Texas this weekend! I have never been to that state. I am so excited to see my dear friend Emily's homeland and to spend time with Zeke, who I don't get to spend as much time with lately. Also I think I am going to try to finish The Two Towers. Because I just need to do that in order to be a more complete person.
Additionally, I am registered to vote.

Happy Tuesday Night, World!
Happy Birthday, Heidi! (my roommate)
Keep up the good work. Buy yourself a London Fog at your local coffee shop. Wear an entirely gray outfit. Have soup for lunch. Slip on your favorite socks. Gather that hair into a ponytail. Rest.
These are all things I have done today, and I recommend them.

A Thing or Two.

Hello, World.

I exist. Kind of. These last few weeks, I've just been thinking, "It will be so nice to exist again." Times have just been absolutely crazy around these Belmont parts. I have had enough work to fill the workload of at least 3 people, and I am tired. I won't go into the details of how late I've stayed up each night this week, but let's just say I was up til 5:30 three (3) nights last week, and one night I didn't go to sleep at all. Sorry. Wah wah wah.

Anyway, I am not writing to tell you about that. I am writing to tell you about how happy I am right now! I still have a bit more on my plate, but somehow I am just feeling so at peace at the moment. Which is funny because this has been a crazy day in a lot of different ways. So, I want to share some of the things that I am thankful for that are bringing me peace:

1. My friend Kristin, who is a mother of two and wife of one and is filled with absolutely ravishing wisdom, helped me. In a huge way. Which I know is vague, but I just have a lot on my plate, and she just started eating right alongside me. You guys don't know how much I love her. She has known me through a lot of different stages of my life and she still loves me. And she lets me love her kids. And she gets coffee with me, and she is one of the most marvelous things that God has put in my life.

2. Being a religion major. I had a study group with some of my religion major friends at Belmont tonight after having dinner at my religion professor's house, and I just feel so happy to be a part of the REL department. the professors are all so loving and care about each student, and the students are funny and fun and will order a pizza with you at ten o'clock at night. I am blessed to be a part. And I am glad that I got a new religion department shirt for absolute FREE.

3. I'm going home in a minute!! I am so excited to be with Kristin and my brother and my parents and Haley and Heather and all of my home friends! And I am excited to go to the beach, and see my dear friend Megan Brittney get married, and to throw her a party. Also I am excited to read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I made a goal on my half birthday to read the whole series by the time I turn 20. I can do it!

On a slightly different note, something that is true about my God is that He is in control of suffering. Sometimes he uses suffering to work for His glory and for our good. Sometimes we endure trials of various kinds, and while sometimes that is from the devil, sometimes it is, in fact, God growing in us. People often disagree with this by saying that "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above" (James 1). But I think that being a Christian demands a redefinition of the word "good." I think there's something that people don't understand when they read verses like that one in James 1 and another that says "For those who love God, all things work together for good" (Romans 8:28). The problem is what does good mean?

Well, based on the life of Paul, and Peter, and pretty much every apostle, good doesn't mean comfortable, healthy, or even alive. Paul's life was certainly not comfortable or healthy (2 Corinthians 11), and most of the apostles ended up dead.

So if good doesn't mean any of the things we usually interpret it as, what does it mean? Well, we know that God is working for His own glory, and that He mercifully lets us be a part of that (Isaiah 43:25). So what were we created for? To glorify God. And I believe that the most fulfilled a person can feel is when they are doing what they were created to do. When you are being used in the way you were intended to be used, that is when you are happiest. So, as humans designed specifically to magnify the glory or the Lord, the ultimate good for us would be to glorify God.

So I believe that when the Lord promises our "good," He is not promising a life free of sickness or poverty, or even free of death (for God never promises us safety), but that He is promising us, if we will accept it, a life full of purpose. Mmmm. Rest in that.

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
1 Peter 1:17-19.

Morphed & Mindy.

Lately, I have been doing a really bad thing.

It is the thing of equating my future spouse with Jesus.

Note: I know that it is not guaranteed that I will have a spouse. I’m okay with that. I have, though, been feeling more and more called to marriage lately. Not like I need to get hitched tomorrow, but like God is preparing me to grow with and submit to the man of His choosing, and like I could use a strong spiritual leader in this life-o-mine. All that to say that for the sake of this blog post I am going to speak as though there is an actual husband in my future.

ANYWAY, this man that I will marry, well, he won’t be Jesus. It’s one of those things about humanity. He’s not going to be that.

And that is where my issue is.

My thinking has become so morphed, and just blatantly wrong. I’ve begun to think of him as Jesus.

I expect him to forgive me,

I expect him to accept me,

I expect him to make me feel valued,

I expect him to redeem me,

To lead me,

To make me grow,

To teach me,

To rebuke me,

To change me,

To fix me.

And while, yes, I want my future husband to forgive me, accept me, rebuke me, etc, I cannot expect that I will one day get married and suddenly all of these needs will be provided for.

I cannot expect another human being, no matter how much he may love me, to fix all of the issues that come together to be me.

I think I expect him to be some sort of priest. Like, when I’m married, I’ll be able to confess all my sins I’ve ever done to him and then I will be free from guilt, but the truth is that I am already free from guilt. The Lord has taken all my sin, and though I am an awful, awful person, he has forgiven me, and I no longer have to feel the weight of my guilt. I don’t know why I let myself forget that.

I know this must sound ridiculous, because explicitly stated, it just sounds dumb, but my hope for a partner has somehow gotten so deeply embedded in my psyche that this good gift has been perverted into a ridiculous expectation.

Here’s the truth:

A husband cannot forgive me,

A husband cannot accept me,

A husband cannot make me feel valued,

A husband cannot redeem me,

He can’t lead me,

He can’t make me grow,

He can’t teach me,

He can’t rebuke me,

He can’t change me,

He can’t fix me.

Not without Christ.

And that’s probably not a startling new insight, but I just needed to say it, I just needed to say it out loud (or rather, type it on my computer) that my thinking is broken. And it’s taking over.

This makes me think of a story my pastor told once.

One day his wife sat up in bed and just said, “Dave, you’re not Jesus.”

And it was a turning point in their marriage. She realized that she couldn’t expect him to save her, that he couldn’t be the greatest thing she lived for. He realized the same.

And I think about that all the time.

And this Advent, I don’t want to be focused on waiting for a human husband to fix me, but on waiting on the return of a divine Savior who has already fixed me, and at the same time is in the process of doing so, who knew my flaws and chose me anyway, who has forgiven me, accepted me, valued me, redeemed me, led me, grown me, taught me, rebuked me, changed me, fixed me.

I want to wait on that Guy.

Cheers.

Also, on an unrelated note, I made a Freaky Friday Soundtrack YouTube playlist tonight. Keepin it classy, keepin it real. Link to the Magic.

Ephemeral.

I got a lot of things on my brain.
Just none that want to be blogged.
Sorry I got all dicey on ya.
Apparently "archipelago" is pronounced ark-ih-pehl-ih-go. Talk about a paradigm shift.

College.

Fruition.

This summer was a blast and a half. I was so surrounded by such spiritually encouraging people. Spending every day with the other counselors on the Orange Team has focused my heart so much on Christ. Their devotion to glorifying God and loving well has made my heart strong.

This is Kristin. I will not see her for a year as she will be in Ireland.
My heart is sick, but she is doing God's things.

God has been moving and shaking this summer, and I'm having a hard time leaving it behind. I feel so used by God in the summer, and not so much during the school year. I'm preparing myself for it not to be that way this year. I need to be glorifying God every moment. That's my purpose, you know. Just ask my campers. One of my favorite things this summer was asking the room at large, "Why are we here?" and hearing, "TO GLORIFY GOD!" Good stuff.
Right now I'm getting my heart ready for a move. Here is something I read on my pal Mary Palmer's blog that I am quite considering for the coming moments:

Soon shall close the earthly mission,
Swift shall pass thy pilgrim days,
Hope soon change to glad fruition,
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.

It reminds me of my reason. Hallelujah.

Thanks for being my friend. Here's a special treat. Alaska Moose Head.

I Somehow See What's Beautiful In Things That Are Ephemeral.

Every time I get happy someplace, I have to leave.
It's okay, but it's a workout.

Good Night & Good Luck.

This is a word to/about my church.

Dear Ethos,
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I just want to say that I am the most thankful for Ethos Church. It is a church filled with people that know how to love others well and how to love God well. I have seen His truth demonstrated so much in what Ethos has done and been this semester, and I am going to hate being away for three months. Every week, by Tuesday I start to get a hankering in my gut for Ethos, but I always have to wait a week. A whole summer may be the death of me.
Though you may not read this, thank you, Dave, and thank you, Brandon, for the leadership and truth you provide there. And, thank you church people for your honesty in worship and in prayer and in living for God. You are all beautiful. I am honored to be a part of you and to have been loved by you.
It has been a privilege to love our Lord and Savior with you.
Love,
Becca.

That's it.

Say This Like a Secret to Everyone.

Something my prayer book told me:

While we sat in darkness, Lord Jesus Christ, you interrupted us with your life. Make us, your people, a holy interruption so that by your Spirit's power we may live as a light to the nations, even as we stumble through this world's dark night. Amen.

I'll Have What They're Having.

Something that my Haley mentioned when she came to visit me was that in Hebrews 11 (you know the one that's called "The Hall of Faith"), it says that all of those faithful dudes died without having their hope fulfilled.
Specifically,
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
Hebrews 11:13.
Okay, so there's that.
I've been reading, rather sporadically, in Hebrews lately. Want to know a secret?

                                                                           Before, I never even liked Hebrews. I know it's horrible to not like a book of the Bible, but I just couldn't get into it. Shhhhh.

Regardless, when I came to this, I remembered what Haley said, and I got excited. I know it's kind of a funny verse to get excited about. It's essentially saying, you can do all the right things and have faith and be didactic and search for peace or joy or truth, and regardless of all that, it may never show. You may never see it. Um, yay?
But for some reason it gives me hope. They strove for something, for Christ, and strove and strived and strove. (I looked it up. You can use strove OR strived.) And, they never got it. They waved at it from across a super-vast space. And they were exiles on the earth. They were eternally uncomfortable and never felt the peace of being at home.
But still, this verse makes me feel clean. Cause even if they only greeted their Prize from afar off, they did see Him. They saw the warmth in His eyes, and the truth in His hand, and the peace in His gaze.
AND, best part: they had a reason to live. It may have looked illegitimate to those who saw them die before this unrevealed something came to fruition, but it wasn't. They were ransomed from futility. This is one of my favorite themes, if you will, of Christianity: We are ransomed from our futile ways (1 Peter 1:18-19). And, we are called to no longer walk in them (Ephesians 4:17).
And that, baby doll, is why I love the rest of this little Bit-O-Hebrews (That is a play on Bit-O-Honey).
For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.(!!) If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city.
Hebrews 11:14-16.
What I'm saying is that I want in on that.

Heavy & Many.

There are a lot of trials today.
I have so many people on my heart.
I'm reminded of the heaviness of so many people's burdens, so many of my people's burdens.
Trials are heavy and many.

And also, I am reminded of the heaviness of my failures.
So many times I have chosen to hurt people when I could have chosen to love.
So many times I have chosen to break people when I could have built them up.
So many times I have chosen uncleanness over purity, cruelty over love, rebellion over submission.
My failures are heavy and many.

Today, my grandpa is moving. He is moving to the nursing care part of the retirement home he lives in. When he moves to nursing care, he can no longer live with my grandma, his wife of sixty-odd years.
They love each other. A lot of the the time, they suck at showing each other that, but they love each other with a love beyond what I can say. They have been married for three times as long as I have been alive. They depend on each other, but they've gotten to the point where they can't support their own selves anymore, much less one another.
They are tired.
But today, my mom and dad have to move my grandpa from the hospital where he has been staying since something happened last week that caused his health and awareness to decline immensely. I don't know how my parents do it.
They have been so faithful to Meemaw and Peepaw.
My mother takes care of them so well. She cares so well. She is a person who gives so much of herself, but she doesn't even realize how much she gives. She doesn't really think about it. The natural response for her is to care, and to give of herself, and to serve. She doesn't realize how beautifully sacrificial she is.
My dad has been there for them so much. He has had to make decisions for them, uncomfortable decisions that have upset them. He has been willing to do what is best for them even when it hurt, even when they weren't happy about it, even when it felt too heavy to bear. He has loved them in one of the hardest ways to love.
My grandpa, needless to say, is not happy about moving. But this is something else that my parents will do for his good. Because their love is so strong.

I have them on my heart today. And so many other people, too.
I want to do something, to lift them, to be there. For all of them.
But I'm not. So I'm here, blogging.

And Tasty, Too!

Something cool that Ezekiel did was eat a scroll.
(We are talking about the kind of Ezekiel that is in the Bible.)
He was having a vision, the way that prophets do, and God said, "Eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel."
The next verse says, "So I opened my mouth, and He gave me this scroll to eat."
He just ate it. I like that Ezekiel wasn't like, "What in the dickens are you talking about?" or, "Can you pass the salt?" (I apologize for that stupid joke. My head hurts, if that explains the lack of hilarity.) Anyways, I like that he just said, as if it were the most matter-of-fact thing in the world, "Then I ate it." Then again, I guess if you are staring God's splendor full in the face, you pretty much eat whatever He says to.

Anyway. My favorite part is when Ezekiel says, "Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey."
For the record, the scroll was a scroll that talked about God's wrath and judgment. But the truth and the holiness and the purity of it was sweet. Because what God does is good.
Ezekiel delighted in God's word. He did it in a bit of a different way than I'm looking to, but he delighted.
I would quite like to delight in the law of the Lord, in the judgment of the Lord, in the mercy of the Lord, but a lot of times, my spirit is too sleepy to feel much of anything.

Restore to me the joy of my salvation.
Remember that kid who ate Maurice Sendak's picture? I want to be that kid about scripture.
She saw it, she loved it, she ate it.

For God Alone My Soul Waits in Silence.

I have labored in vain.
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.
Yet surely my right is with the Lord,
and my recompense with my God.

"Then you will know that I am the Lord;
those who wait for Me shall not be put to shame."

"Behold, I have refined you...
for My Own Sake, for My Own Sake, I do it."

Amen.

Uncle.

This is a picture that my friend Haley took of my hands. She’s a genius with a lens. Anyways, for a long time I’ve thought that this picture tells a story. And even though I know exactly what was going on when this picture was taken, I felt like this picture tells some bigger grander story. Like it tells the truth. But I couldn’t find it.

Tonight, I found it.

Tonight, I feel very dirty. In light of the purity of the holy One, I find myself shamefully unclean. Not only the dead in my transgressions bit of me, because, hallelujah, I am raised to walk in newness of life.

The newness of life bit of me is the dirty part.

I am supposed to be freed from futility. And yet in my striving, and sometimes in my not-so-striving to become worthy of the One, I fail.

I fail, I fall, and my hands get dirty.

Tonight, I just looked at this picture for a minute, and I saw it.

My hands are dirty. Hopelessly.

They reach out, trying to grasp, well, anything.

They are weak.

But on my finger, my Jesus has placed the sparkling and pure beauty of his love.

And though my hands get dirty, his love remains. Clean enough for my hands.

The Mamas and the Papas.

I am Becca. I have a mom and a dad.
They are named Gary Edwin and Janey Lee Campbell Kennedy.
Sometimes I call him GarBear.
Those two have always been the mama and the papa of me.


Sometimes when you always have the same momma and papa, you don't think too much about it.
Then, one day, you do.


For college, I had to write a paper, a very long paper on something that happened to my family. Familial Rhetorics Paper, it was called.
The basic idea was to write about something that has happened to my family that has affected my life. Something about my family that struck me as "alien" or "different." Something that was "heavy" for me.
I was drawing a blank.
Then, my father came through for me. He thought of the story.


Some of you people may not know that before my parents had me and my brother, Logan, they had another son named Geoffrey.
When he was born, my mom had preeclampsia and they had to do a c-section at 31 weeks.
Geoffrey was very sick. For his whole life, he was in and out of the hospital. The longest period of time he ever spent at home was something like 6 months.
At 18 months, Geoffrey passed away. He had an infection in his brain that gave him crazy fevers and seizures.


So, this is the story that I chose.
It was obviously heavy. It was different. But did it affect me?


When I called my mom to straighten out the details to this story, we ended up talking about it for something like thirty minutes. She told me how worried my dad had been when she was sick, how kind Geoffrey's nurses and doctors were, how the hospital staff became their friends, how they had a schedule while Geoffrey was in the hospital: Momma got off work at 3:15, and went to spend time with Geoffrey, Daddy got off work at about five and met his wife and son at the hospital, they spent a while there, then went home. She told me about the first week they spent at home with Geoffrey, they took him for a walk in his stroller and it was beautiful. She told me about the schedule they worked out when Geoffrey was home, how Dr. Logan would stop by twice a week on his way to work, just to check on Geoffrey. She detailed their final week with Geoffrey, telling the story of taking little Geoffrey's temperature and the mercury going all the way to the top of the thermometer. She described Geoffrey to me, his expressive eyes that could, so aptly, share joy or disdain.


And after listening to all of this, all I could think was, "How did you do it?" She was young. This was her first baby. She and my dad had barely been married a year when Geoffrey was born. She must have been something else.
So I asked her. And she answered, simply, "You just do it."
I don't think I could ever "just do it." (No Nike pun intended.)
I think I would sob and cry and scream and break. I think I would let God know that He had handed me too much, that I was in over my head.
But my parents, they just trusted.


In Brennan Manning's The Furious Longing of God, he prays, "Jesus, human words cannot bear the weight of Your mercy and compassion. My union with You is like being so attached that life seems impossible without You. Detached from You during my days of sour wine and withered roses was a shadow life. I have no sense of myself apart from You. My bones say thank You for this now moment. Amen.”
Since reading this, I have longed for that kind of radical faith in my Jesus. To "have no sense of myself" apart from Christ. That's what I want. To make no sense without Christ.


And, in writing this paper, I realized that's what my parents' life is.
As I sat here in my dorm room trying to figure out how it was that they were bonded together rather than being torn apart, how it is that despite this great loss, they are still now so in love after, what, 22 years of marriage. I tried to figure out why losing a child pushed my parents to clutch Logan and I less tightly, to hold us with open hands, to give us fully, with no reserves, to God's will, even from the time we were tiny babies, how this pain caused my parents to trust all the more fully in God's rich sovereignty.
And I couldn't. I couldn't figure it out.
It made no sense.
No sense at all.


Apart from Christ.


So, I guess the point of this post is to exclaim my joy in seeing that I have two parents whose love, and whose life makes no sense apart from their Savior.
It's some of the best news I've learned.
And I'm jealous of them.

The Naming of Things

Today I just wanted to say why my blog is named, "Cut Out All the Ropes and Let Me Fall".

First things first. Skinnny Love, Bon Iver. That is the song from which my blogging title is derived. Enjoy it. Feel it. That song is one of the good ones that you can feel inside your bones.

Well. Once upon a time, I went to a little country called Costa Rica. My high school youth group took a trip there to share our Jesus. We met some kids in a slum called La Carpio and we took them on a trip to a camp in the mountains and had a week of overnight camp there. My youth group was dedicated to loving in deed and in truth, according to 1 John 3:18.

1 John 3:17-18 (English Standard Version)

¹⁷But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? ¹⁸Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.


This is why I miss my youth group a lot. It was so scriptural. 


So, as per 1 John, we loved in deed and truth. Not only did we share with them the Gospel (truth) we gave them backpacks full of new clothes and toothpaste and such (deed). And 17 of those beautiful little kiddies were saved to a new hope in Christ Jesus our Lord.


So, yes, we were in Costa Rica. And I did a lot of learning there. The thing that stood out the most to me was learning to trust. I learned so much about trusting God in Costa. Although I am so imperfect and fail everyday to rely fully on Christ, I am trying and I am growing in my trust.


One of the biggest ways God speaks to me is through music, although not usually through Christian music. I kind of hate Christian music actually. But that is another topic for another day.


But in Costa this song kept coming into my head, especially the line that says, "cut out all the ropes and let me fall." To me, that is about trust. Not relying on your own ropes, whatever it is that you put your trust in, money, your face, boys, whatever, just cutting out the ropes and falling into God's ridiculous love. It's beautiful to me.


So, now in my life, I want to trust entirely in my Jesus. So that's why this blog is named that. Trust.


On the cover of my notebook that I write all of my thoughts and my words and my Jesus times in is taped a note from my friend Meg. It says, "Dear Becky, Rest in Sovereignty." That's where I'm at. Resting, Trusting in the marvelous sovereignty of my glorious and holy God. He's got the whole world in His hands, right?


Psalm 91:2 (English Standard Version)

²I will say to the LORD, "My refuge and my fortress,
   my God, in whom I trust."

P.S. This blog is named after a song by a wonderful boy named Andrew Bird. To learn more about this, click Archipelago. Also try "Heretics" and "Why?".