Dust Myself Off and Try Again

You know those times in your life, or situations that seem utterly perfect, those moments you wish could last far longer than they do? That was this weekend for me.

Most of the “magic” of my last three days is obvious; I was in my favorite place in the world with three of my very favorite people. But past all the new inside jokes and adventures there were other details that made this weekend especially great. We stayed in my family’s cabin in Hayward, WI. This is a remote place off in the north woods with no television or Internet (although there is 3G coverage, I pretended that wasn’t true). And although our sleep schedule was out of whack due to a seven-hour drive that started at 2am Friday morning, I managed to wake up earlier than everyone else and have some Spirit-filled quiet time each day down by the lake. The simplicity of our time in Wisconsin and my sustained discipline to start my days in prayer and Scripture led to an eye-opening weekend for me.

First of all, God really spoke to me about the fact that I have a call on my life that I can’t ignore. I’ve been really struggling lately with the direction my life is going and the slow speed at which this is happening. I feel incapable and nearly powerless to complete the task I’ve spent the last five years working toward and at the same time I have the option to change my plan. I finished nursing school and got my degree, but now it seems impossible for me to get my license. I know I should not feel discouraged by the difficulty I’m having, but I do.

I know I can do all things through Christ because He strengthens me, but I don’t have to do this. I don’t need a nursing license to be a missionary. I don’t need to be a missionary at all. This is my frustration. I feel like I am questioning God’s call on my life, because I’m scared. But it’s not that I’m scared to go to dangerous places, or scared I might get sick, or scared of being in a constant state of financial instability, my fear is that of failure. I want to be the kind of person who can get things right, who is successful in their endeavors, and I feel like the complete opposite of that. I feel like every time I try to do something I fail. But then I look at people like Abraham Lincoln or the Apostle Paul both of whom I consider great men who led successful and world changing lives. Both of them failed, a lot, before they succeeded at those things for which they are remembered.

The failures I have met are not catastrophic, but they do allow me the chance to give up. I didn’t give up on graduating college though I wanted to so badly, and now I have my bachelor’s degree in nursing. A few weeks ago, I failed my licensure exam, and I am determined to keep going until I can be at this same point in reference to my license as I now am to my degree, being grateful that I kept trying. It’s not like I have to go all the way back to the beginning, I just have to pay a couple hundred more dollars and study for a few more weeks and answer questions for a few more hours. Hopefully this next time I get it, but I’m scared because I was so close the last time and I fear I can’t actually do any better.

2 Corinthians chapter 4 addresses this quite precisely. That God has called me to a certain ministry, and the fact that He called me means I shall not lose heart. And although I feel afflicted and perplexed, I shall remain intact and hopeful. My spirit is renewed every day, and these hardships and being forced to get back up and try again refines me and builds character. When I was waiting for my test results I kept thinking, I have already learned what I can from failure. I’ve been through it. It sucks. And I kept trying and now I know that I can do this. So I thought God wouldn’t let me fail again, because there would be no benefit. Now that I’ve had to decide to not give up (again), I realize that facing repeated adversity makes the character growth that much stronger. I am of a bolder conviction now to keep trying, over and over, until I am at last complete with God’s call on my life, which will not be until death or Christ’s return. And I am coming to the realization that failure is probably going to be a constant aspect of my life. But I also know failure is an event, not a person. I am not a failure. It is something I must overcome, not something to which I should succumb. And with God, failure is never forever.

I think one anecdote from this weekend illustrates this entire issue well. My friends and I were driving around old logging trails on a 4x4, when we went down one path that had a hill that looked far too steep for our Ranger to make. Two of my friends were convinced we were going to topple over or get hurt, and so they got out of the Ranger and refused to go. However, my other friend and I were determined to try it, knowing that we might fail. So I drove the Ranger up the hill and we made it to the top with no problem! The other two walked up the hill and got in, and after driving only a few yards down the path, it abruptly ended. So we did a thirty or so point turn and went back down the hill and path. I never stopped trying out new paths no matter how many dead ends we hit. And after we got back to the cabin, we watched the video that one of my friends watching us go up the hill took, and it looks like we’re driving on almost level ground! It didn’t look steep or scary at all. We all laughed at how much we underestimated the Ranger and the next time we went out on it, we drove up and down far steeper hills with success. This is the how I know getting my license will be. I’ll look back on it and laugh at how silly my perspective was. And then continue on to bigger and scarier things with success.

Godliness with Contentment is Great Gain

C. S. Lewis once wrote in a letter, "It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can."

Currently, my lifestyle seems quite ideal to much of society. I can sleep in as late as I want. I have no appointments of which I will have sustaining repercussions from if missed. I have an apparently infinite disposable income. I have no family commitments beyond those I create myself. I honestly have no one that expects anything in particular from me at any time, and can thus do whatever I want, without limit. I have utter freedom.

One would think that I am thus happy. However, I have found myself over the last four months often feeling depressed and discouraged. I feel as if I have nothing to offer the world and no motivation to move forward, or up, or sideways, or in any direction at all. I fill my time with an average of 1.5 films daily and a haphazard pursuit of self-improvement. This has come in many ways, but the way that I am realizing is most pertinent for me is through educating myself on issues of faith and society. Thus, when I discovered Steps of Justice and their Justice Awareness Month prayer guide, I fell in love. Not only does this book give me a schedule and template to follow in regard to social justice issues, but it prompts me with creative ideas to put my increased awareness into action. I would suggest investigating Steps of Justice to anyone who cares about the world around them and wants to help change it for better.

For me though, this has brought be back to the happiness in my life that has been hard for me to grasp. It has provided me with goals to achieve each day, and a framework with which to base my prayers and self-education. I guess this means that I am an outwardly motivated person, and that I do not intrinsically have a desire to do, well, anything. However, I am motivated by God and His call on my life, and He has once more provided exactly what I needed to continue working within His will.

One of my favorite Bible verses is Micah 6:8,

"He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

This has become a life theme I try to remind myself of often, because this is where I find joy, in my God, and He works in me through justice and mercy and humility. These are all things I am constantly working to improve upon in my life, and that is what I think this time that God has given me is about. In Psalm 37:4 He promises,

"Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart."

What delights my heart is to continue glorifying Him. So it seems we've got a pretty sweet cycle of glorification and delight going on between us. And I wish to continue on this road though I still don't know where it is leading except to eternity with my Father.

Vamos a la Adventura!

I'm ready for new. By this I mean I'm getting really stir crazy in my current excessive living condition. I've been making some interesting changes, especially in the areas of diet and product use. I currently do not eat meat or very many animal products and have given up most commercial cosmetic products, including shampoo. I also don't use body wash. That's right, I no longer lather up in the shower. I also have gone back to my shower schedule of twice a week or so. It's very interesting. We'll see how that hold up. I am feeling more and more fed up with my own consumption, so I've been cutting back though I have a long way to go.

I've been attempting to be a more well rounded (better rounded?) conservationist. This mostly springing from a deep desire to maintain God's creation and an increased weight of the burden of this responsibility due to my own growing awareness. I often joke about how I was a "hippie" in high school, but I was just beginning then in a journey of understanding the impact my lifestyle choices have on the world around us as well as ourselves. I have returned to my vegetarianism, which though difficult at time due to my love of food, feels more like me.

I have even been working on making my own clothing, like the dress I wore to my friend Lisa's wedding last weekend (see photograph). But in addition to wanting to be a more sustainable human being, I am also hit with how harmful many products we consume are to our own health. One fact that particularly hit me was that some ingredients in bath and cosmetic products can mimic our own hormones. This is frightening to me because when we mess with our hormones it affects so many parts of our lives, particularly our emotionality. As I keep learning more and more about this it triggers me to want to change, and I'm starting to get a lot of flack for it. I am trying to stay aware of if my hygiene changes affect the way the people around me feel (i.e. if i start to smell), but as someone who has never been a regular partaker in deodorant use that's not too different.

And despite the self education and personal revamping involved in this whole ordeal, I still crave adventure. I have been entertaining thoughts of different travel opportunities and am still waiting for the perfect one to present itself. It's just hard when I don't have a definite amount of time with which to go off exploring, and my parents are very concerned about going alone to most of the places I want to visit. At the same time, I don't have any time limits, because that's what I plan to do with my life- explore God's creation while remaining intentional about my impact a.k.a. further myself by furthering the Kingdom.

"Further up and further in"

-C.S. Lewis The Last Battle

Next Stop: RN

Sitting here, riding on these smooth Metra rails toward my downtown testing center, I find myself reassured by God through friends and family both intentionally and not while I gulp down this persistent nausea. I'm going to take my NCLEX exam. If I pass it, I get to be Samantha L. Pierz RN BSN. That's a lot of letters. And I keep feeling undeserving of them. Somehow I convinced Illinois Wesleyan to give me a degree, and now I go to prove myself worthy of the license I've been working toward for the past five years by answering questions for what may (and probably will) take up to six hours. I'm scared, but not really, just anticipating the cruelty that is the NCLEX.

Fortunately I have a God who is faithful and good, even when I'm not. And He has the power to do anything, even if I don't feel like I can even pass a test. He wants good things for me, and He's led me down this rocky path that has felt more like a rollercoaster (one of those old wooden ones that aren't smooth and always give you a headache) than the paved road it looks like from afar. He's taught me to align my will with His. I never wanted to be a nurse until He put the idea in my head. So everytime I question my abilty, I'm questioning His call on my life and His ability to provide the knowledge and strength and talent I need to be exactly what He has made me to be. I mean, I also never wanted to go to Mexico, and now He's got me pining away after the country like some distant lover. He will get me through this, and if I'm meant to learn something from failing this first exam, then I'll learn it. It may hurt, but I think I've proven that I can be strong, when I lean on Him for my strength. He keeps instilling in me that His plan for me is good and so I have nothing to fear. I will go where He leads me, and I will go there loving and trusting Him with all that I am and have.

Clean Chair

During my five months in Mexico doing mission work, we had a lot of seemingly magical times when the Spirit was alive and active in our ministry. Usually after we did our consistent children's ministry stuff (clowns, songs, etc.) and we moved on to our adult dramas, that's when we really saw the Spirit at work and hearts changed. One of the drama's we did was called "The Clincher" (which pronounced in a Mexican accent is "clean chair") after the main song in it by the band Chevelle. This was exciting for me, because the guy who was the bassist in that band went to the same Bible study group as me a couple years ago, and we became friends (the picture of him on wikipedia was taken in the same kitchen [his] as the picture I took [to the left] of one of our many dance parties...gosh I miss him). And so besides having been a huge fan of the band when I was twelve, I had a special connection to the song.

During our lecture phase we learned this scriptless drama, and I was decidedly the main

character in it. If you've seen the "Everything" drama to the Lifehouse song, it's very similar to that, only more violent.

So during the drama I get beat up and thrown around (see fingerprint bruises from them grabbing and pushing me in photo) and for a portion of it I stand and watch as Albertho (who played Christ in the drama) is crucified in my place. During that part of the drama in particular, I don't know if the inner actor I was born to be comes out or if it's just the fact that it is an overly emotional thing for me to think about my salvation in such a realistic way, but I am near real tears every time. It really did tear me up inside every time we did the drama, even when we practiced. It wasn't until we went on outreach that I saw that I was letting the Spirit use my belief to show the truth of Christ's redemption.

When I would look out to the crowd watching as we demonstrated the gospel story, there would be tears streaming down most faces. People identified with the drama, but I think more so, they felt God's Spirit speak to and move in them. It was always physically and emotionally exhaustive to perform that drama, but to see how people were brought to the Truth through it, created such a spiritual high that I felt fully restored. Every night we would explain the drama, and usually someone would give a short message, and then people would ask for prayers, and more often than not there would be people ready to give their life to Christ. Part of my job was to count those people every day, and by the end of the trip we had hundreds upon hundreds

of tally marks collected during out short two months. I am not one to keep score, but it was thoroughly reassuring to see that God was working so significantly through us.

Bonding Over Hair

so i don't think anyone's actually reading this, but for it's therapeutic effect and just in case, i'll write something about Mexico for today.

Hair is one of those things that most girls are very particular about. Either they have a certain way they like to do it, change it often enough they can't get too bored, or give up entirely and basically don't care. One of the first nights I was in Tecate, one of the girls in our school, Sinai had to dye her hair, because she wanted it all black to match her passport. So we went and bought black hair dye. After dying her hair entirely, there was plenty left, so we decided to dye my hair underneath so that on top I was still gringa, but I had a little more Mexican in me. It was fun, and got us all giggling. Some good girl time.

Then during our second week, when I was still just getting to know everyone, somehow I convinced Dina to braid all of my hair into cornrows. So we stayed up well into the night doing just that. We snuck out of our cramped room and into the kitchen where we could have light to see, and she braided my hair. This left a lot of time for one on one discussion, which didn't happen much when you live with 25 people. We really got to know each other better, and downright felt like sisters by the wee hour when we headed to bed.

I also officially got my hair cut in Mexico. Don't ever get your hair cut in Mexico. Haha, not really, but I did have a bad cut. The day after I got it, I decided to straighten my hair. And to everyone's horror, it looked like this:

It was all choppy and looked as if a child with scissors got a hold of my head. Dina however, came to my rescue and took me back to have them fix it. This I would not have done, mostly because of the language barrier, but it taught me that it was okay for me to rely on her to get things done.

By the end of our lecture phase (the first three months primarily in Tecate) we had grown quite tired of how little there was to do in our free time. We were also going a bit stir crazy knowing that our outreach phase was coming. There was also the stress of losing our beloved Courtney (the only other American) and mi amorsito, Israel, in the same week. However, we made a new friend, John Paul who came down from Detroit with his father to spend a little time with us. One day we didn't know what to do with ourselves as we were given a few hours with which to do whatever we liked, and turns out Dina and JP share a love for the color purple, so of course we decided to dye my hair that color. I was too scared however to lose all of my "gringa", so I left the front of my bangs blonde. It actually turned out quite well, and just in time for the "fun day" with all four San Diego/Baja bases at a waterpark in Tijuana, where I got to spend the day with my lovely Susie! Below is a picture of me with my friend Jonathan who was in my DTS. Note the many colors of my hair, the obvious purple, but also the blonde bangs, and the black underneath, also Jonathan had just cut his hair into a mohawk-que chido!

During outreach there was little time to ever fuss about hair and even less use in doing so. We really learned to not care about the way we looked besides being presentable and and respectful as we could with dirty missionary clothes, and the rare bathroom in which to shower or even freshen up. But it was so much fun! Those moments and experiences centered around my silly hair really created fun and allowed my relationships with people to grow, mostly with Dina. (Mind you, Dina has the most magnificent hair ever!) It helped that I dyed my hair purple, because she loves that color so much it made her love me more. However, I did have to have my hair to a "normal" color for school, and most of it had faded out by then, unlike my love for Dina. Despite our distance, that hasn't faded at all.

a year later...

It's been a while. More precisely a year, since I returned from completing my DTS in Mexico. And I still miss it. I want to write to reminisce, but I fear that may take all my time, so I'm going to allow myself a small recollection of joy and learning from my time in Mexico each day. This is coming as a study break as I spend my last week attempting to prepare myself for the NCLEX. That's the exam that I take next Tuesday to become a REGISTERED NURSE! I'm feeling far less than confident in my ability to pass the first time, but they let you retake it if necessary. So as I study here in my room, I feel like I'm going slightly insane. A little bit of blogging may just remedy that.

You may have noticed the change in appearance here, or perhaps this is your first time viewing, either way, the photo at the top is going to be the focus of today's tidbit from Mexico.

In the Discipleship Training School I attended in Tecate, Mexico through YWAM, we were fortunate enough to spend some time at their mission bases in Tijuana and Ensenada as well as our own. We were blessed with the opportunity to spend some of this time with a School of Worship (SOW) that was going on during the same summer. While in Ensenada one week, the SOW shared their lectures with us. It was great to see the ways that God was working in them as they focused on different forms and styles of worship. This was one of the most influential part of my DTS, as we learned and experienced harp and bowl worship. It changed a lot about the way I worship and pray, and I became more aware of God's presence and the power we have through Him in prayer. It was amazing, and we had some time to go out to the beach and just pray and see what God wanted to tell us. It was amazing to purposefully just wait upon Him and listen with no agenda. I made my way to the sand just out of reach from the waves, and was overwhelmed with feelings of love from above! It blew my mind. I started drawing pictures in the sand and ended up drawing a huge heart in the sand and sat down inside it, in the same way that we are held so dearly inside God's heart. I listened to God as He told and showed me how He loves me SO much. How much He gave for me and how much He forgave in the name of Grace for me all came rushing through me and my Spirit was on fire with love in return.

The entire feeling reminds me of the song "How He Loves" (written by John Mark McMillin) which always gives me "Godbumps" and really expresses the way God makes me feel. My favorite line from the song is "If His grace is an ocean, we're all sinking." Which is exactly what hits me whenever I look back on that photo of me praying on the beach, and honestly every time I see the ocean. Needless to say, this is one of the reasons I miss the coast so much.