NO. DON'T GIVE ME A LIFE RAFT. I WANT TO DROWN.

Did the title of this alarm you? Don't worry--I'm not suicidal or anything. At least, not in the sense that you might be thinking. But, I'm going to throw you for a loop, I do really want to drown.

Drown in grace, that is.

I heard this song at Pine Cove and I'm pretty sure it's called "How He Loves Us". I don't know who sings it but I do know that there's this one line in there that says, "if His grace is an ocean, we're all sinking".

And, for me, I only see two kinds of people as pertaining to this song. People who fight the current and people to let it go. But yeah, you can have people who do both. I am certainly one of them.

When Jesus died for us, He gave us this immeasurable amount of grace. But there's a distinct difference between grace and mercy.

When I think of mercy, I think of someone who is about to be punished for whatever and the punisher says, "But I will be merciful on you and give you a lesser sentence/no punishment." You know, in some deep voice with a British accent. That's just how I picture it. Yeah, go ahead and reread that dialog in the accent. Anyway, mercy is not punishing us for what we deserve.

Grace, though, is God extending kindness and blessings even though we don't deserve it. So, on top of giving us mercy and not punishing us, we're also given blessings and love that is so far past what we deserve it can only be given by God.

So to get to the two people. The first are the fighters. Some of them feel absolutely unworthy of this precious gift and therefore do not want it. They don't want help. These are the people who feel like they can earn their way to Heaven and won't just accept the grace. Then there are others who just don't think that anyone can give that kind of gift out and don't believe in something so redeeming, or such a powerful Redeemer. They just don't think such a thing exists. Still more, some don't want to give up their lives enough to totally sink into the ocean. They know the grace is there, but they're terrified of letting go. It freaks them out. So, I guess there are sub-catagories to the fighters, but they all do the same thing--try not to drown. When this is the one thing you need to drown in.

However, there are people who just freely let go. They leap off the boat, or the diving board, or the side of the dock, or the beach, and just go. They're ready. They want to give their lives to Someone who will give them something so much better than what they have. They have such faith. They know that grace is one thing worth dying for. They know they will be blessed beyond all measures in this vast ocean. They want to sink. They will ignore the lifeguards, and the rafts, and the boats, and then rest in the ocean when they've gone far enough and be submerged and not fight it and are enveloped in this all-healing, all-consuming, all-powerful grace. They surrender. They give God everything they've got by sinking into that ocean of grace.

I'm a fighter and a sinker. Sometimes, I'm screaming, "No, no, no! I can do this. Don't touch me, God. I can do this all by myself. Don't worry about it." And I fight that current with my meager strength and the shore won't get any closer and I'm getting tired and I'm just wanting to control the situation when I very obviously can't. And when I finally realize that there's no way God's grace is ever going to stop, I stop fighting. My arms, exhausted, stop trying to propel myself forward; my legs quit treading. I don't even hold my breath when my head goes under. I breathe in and out--under this water. I feel a sense of peace. I know hurricanes will come my way but I'm in an ocean of solid grace, meaning that I will continue to be blessed and loved and cared for even when the height of the storm is on top of me.

I don't need the Coast Guard. Don't get me a rescue boat. Keep your life jackets. Let me sink. And, might I make a suggestion? Jump in with me. The water's just fine.

"Beyond Belief" by: Josh Hamilton

You probably know him as the American League's MVP. There's a chance you knew of him when he played for the Reds. You might have even heard of him when he was the #1 draft pick in 1999. I got on the bandwagon late--not knowing who this dude was until the baseball season of 2008.

But I have seen the error of my ways.

When I learned his name, my sophomore year of high school, I thought, "Cool. Rangers might be good this year with this guy." I've always been a Rangers fan (been going to the games since I was 7 years old) but I sort of followed them during that 2008 season. Then the next season, I really started avidly following my boys in Arlington and feeling sad when they lost and rejoicing in their victories. I genuinely cared about them.

My church started working with this campaign, if you will, called I Am Second. One day, I spent more than an hour on the website. Basically, they interview normal people and they give their testimonies of faith. But they had a couple famous people, like Stephen Baldwin. And then they had Josh Hamilton. I heard a brief version of his testimony and I decided that he was pretty amazing.

So then I decided that I needed to read Josh Hamilton's autobiography called "Beyond Belief". I just finished it literally ten minutes ago. Did I cry? You got it. Have I been inspired? Absolutely. Will I ever look at the number 32 the same way again? Nope! I physically feel different. Something about that autobiography that has really effected me. And I can't quite describe it.

Anyway.

So basically, here's Josh Hamilton's story in a nutshell:

He was a BEAST at baseball. A child prodigy at it. He was a first grader playing on a team for fifth through seventh graders. He was shooting balls out of fields further than high school kids when he was in middle school. He was stand-up, all-American, class A kid who was picked right out of high school to go to the Devil Rays. He was the first one to be picked right up since A-Roid (if you know me at all, you'll know the certain Yankee I'm speaking of). Then something went wrong. Even in the story, he said he couldn't pinpoint what was the catalyst for his behavior. Maybe it was the 26 tattoos. But whatever happened, one night he ended up drunk as a skunk and had tried cocaine.

And like every beginning addict, he said that he didn't need it. A hit every few days--no problem. But, of course, it escalated. He left every thing that tried to help him. No rehab place was enough. No one could threaten him out of it or scare him out of it or anything. Nothing was working. And it got worse--he got on crack. He tried to barter his wife's wedding ring for drugs. He had officially hit rock bottom. Then he went to his last resort--his grandmother's house. After losing a ridiculous amount of weight, his grandmother (Granny) made him eat and slowly, slowly, he got better. His wife did the almost-impossible and totally forgave for all his negligence. Josh handed his life over to God. And his life...changed. It was a miracle that he was still alive, really. After a bunch of amazing "God things", he got back in the pro ball business and played with the Reds for a while. Then they traded him to my boys, the Rangers.

The most moving part of the book, though, was probably one of the last stories. He was at one of his first press conferences with the Rangers when he saw Ian Kinsler, Michael Young, and now-former player Hank Blalock in street clothes in the back of the room. No one had ever done that for Josh before. No teammate had ever come to just support him--much less three of them.

Yeah, that was when I cried.

He also said that the Rangers felt like home. Which I'm thrilled about. So, #32, keep doing your thing. Because you've got A TON of people looking at you for inspiration. Including me.

Josh Hamilton went from zero to hero in a matter of just 6 years (which is a short amount of time when we're talkin' addictions). Throughout the whole book, he just kept talking about how he wanted to be a better man of faith, husband, and father. I have such a massive amount of respect for him now. And it helps that he plays for my team.

Dear Josh Hamilton,

I hope you don't mind--I call you J-Ham sometimes. I think you're an amazing individual. You're a living miracle and such a Godly man. Hallelujah! The world needs more of those. You are no doubt a great dad and awesome husband. And I think your mom is right--God does love ball players. Praying for you, #32. And I'm glad you consider Texas home. It's pretty awesome. GO RANGERS!

Love,

Linley.

Something(s) interesting

I went to this thing called Winterfest at Pine Cove. It's basically a week of Pine Cove (an amazing week-long summer camp in East Texas) crammed into one weekend. At Winterfest, four different speakers talked about Christmas but from different perspectives. So I felt like sharing them with you guys, because I thought they were extremely interesting.

Friday night:

We opened our Bibles to Genesis 15. The speaker asked us to just read it. And when I did, I was very weirded out. It talked about an animal (a sheep or goat) that was cut in half and the blood ran between the halves and a fiery tornado and flaming torch passed through the blood. And I was just like, "What the heck is this?" My friend Paige and I exchanged confused glances and I was completely rapt in what the speaker had to say to us.

The scene takes place when God is making his awesome deal with Abraham. You know, about how Abraham's decedents will outnumber the stars and how they will be a great nation and that they would be God's chosen ones, etc. All that good stuff. But it was a deal, meaning that Abraham had to have some part in it. God's request? "Be blameless." Oh yeah, okay. Sounds great. Just be totally perfect and all this will happen. Easy shmeasy.

Not so much. Genesis tells us that Abraham fell into a dark and terror-filled sleep over this. Obviously, he was human, so he couldn't be blameless. But how do you walk away from such an incredible gift from God? He would be walking away from an extremely personal connection with the creator of the world and the promise of a ridiculous future for his decedents.

In those days, you made a deal by cutting an animal in half and letting the blood run between the halves. The major party would then step in the blood and basically say, "If I don't hold up my end of the deal, let this be done to me." So, if he didn't hold up, he was going to be killed. Then the minor party would do the same thing. It was binding and irreversible. So Abraham had killed the animal and now the deal was about to be sealed.

The flaming tornado was God. He passed through because he was the major party. So, logically, it was Abraham's turn. Walking through that blood would pretty much be committing suicide. But what choice did he have? But then the unbelievable happened. The flaming torch, God again, passed through the blood.

Get what that means? God was saying, "If you don't hold up, which you won't, I'll take the blame." Remind you of someone else? That's what Jesus did for us. A foretelling of Jesus came all the way back in Genesis--the very first book of the Bible. How crazy is that?

My mind was BLOWN. I just sat there in shock and thought of how awesome God is and how powerful his plan is. It's absolutely crazy and wild and I almost wouldn't believe it if it hadn't been written out for me. Wow. Just wow.

Saturday morning:

King Herod. He was the leader of what was going to become Israel for Cesar. And he was absolutely petrified of anyone coming to take his power away from him. He was paranoid like no one has ever been before. He killed two sons and a couple wives because he was threatened by them. What a nut job, right?

So you can imagine it went over really well with him when he heard about a king coming in and the people following him instead of Herod. The king was insecure like nobody's business. So he did the almost unthinkable.

But hold on one second. Let's get a little more information.

Remember the 3 Wise Men from all the stories? They actually weren't from Herod. They came from some place way far away and had studied all the prophecies and saw the signs (so did Herod) and decided to go find this savior. On the way to find Jesus, they met Herod and ate with him. And Herod lied his fool head off.

He said that when the three guys find the savior, to come get Herod because he wants to worship the savior too. Well, the wise men are called "wise" for a reason. They aren't stupid. They realized that Herod was a paranoid control freak and that he would probably kill the kid. But the three said they would come get Herod and went on their way.

After a year, Herod realized the three wise men hadn't returned and decided that they had lied to him and that was when the massacre was decreed. Herod, not knowing how old the child was but knowing he wasn't older than two, he ordered that every boy in Bethlehem under the age of two be killed.

The potential threat and absolute paranoia of one powerful man killed hundreds of innocent kids. And Jesus wasn't even in Bethlehem--he was in Egypt.

Saturday night:

I've always thought that Mary gave up the most to have Jesus. You know, she was looked down upon in her village or whatever because everyone thought she'd been with another man or with Joseph too early.

But you don't ever think about what Joseph endured.

Let's make a list.

1. His carpentry business? Out the window. Everyone would've assumed that it was his kid and he broke rules that have been in place for as long as anyone could remember. No one would support someone who did that; no one would give business to a person who had no respect for ancient customs.

2. The shame. Can you say "social outcast"? If he said that the child wasn't his, he was piling shame on a blameless Mary. If he said it was his, then he (like the reasons above) would suffer because people thought he was a tradition-ignorer. And that was a very serious crime.

3. The fear. He doesn't know why God has done this to him and is totally freaked out. Angels keep coming to him and his wife is suddenly pregnant and now he has to take this journey with a pregnant wife and doesn't really know what's going to happen. He only knows that he is about to have the Son of God in his midst. As his child. How terrifying is that?

Joseph was a strong, Godly man. And God could not have picked anyone better to help His son grow. But the sacrifices and emotional trauma are often overlooked. Let's stop that. Let's acknowledge Joseph. Because he absolutely deserves it.

Sunday morning:

The three wise men had pretty cool gifts. But, I'm going to be honest, I only knew what the first one symbolized. Shows how interested I was. But when I learned what they meant, I was absolutely blown away.

The gold. Yep, that's the one I knew beforehand. Gold, obviously, is very precious...especially to a young family who is only holding onto God and each other. Gold stands for Jesus' kingship. He is the King of Kings and that's what the gold is. Yeah, it's pretty brainless and, "Yeah duh" but it's still crazy to think that this stranger went up to Mary and Joseph and basically said, "Your son is going to rule the world."

The frankincense. It's just a fancy form of incense. You know, what priests use for holy stuff. I'm going to be honest and admit that I really don't know that much about incense (because I'm not Catholic) but I know that priests use it. Super impressive, right? Anyway, when this guy placed the frankincense in front of Mary and Joseph, he was telling them that their little boy was going to be the spiritual leader of the world. The Priest of Priests. Like if the Pope and Billy Graham had a baby...except times a billion and more.

The myrrh. I had no clue what this stuff was. Didn't even know how to spell it until that day. It's pronounced "mur" in case you didn't know. Anyway, this stuff was used in ancient Egypt as a preservative. For bodies. It was like embalming fluid for the Egyptians of the past and it comes from the myrrh tree. Because Mary and Joseph's ancestors were Egyptian, there was a good chance they knew what that stuff was. This last gift was probably the hardest to give and receive. It said this, basically. "Your little boy is going to be a sacrifice, he's going to die, for the world." I don't know about you, but I would flip if someone told me that about my firstborn. And I'm not even a parent yet. Imagine how hard that must have been for Jesus' parents. Like, their son was born to die. Heavy stuff.

So, needless to say, I look at Christmas a little differently now. It's so much bigger than Jesus being born. It was the start of the rest of the world. It was the beginning of a masterfully planned revolution. And I fully intend to be in that revolution, waving my flag high and pronouncing my allegiance to Christ the Lord.

And don't you dare try to stop me.

Christmas Break is for kayaking.

Today, I went on an adventure.

So, my house backs up to a creek that's pretty shallow and with a mud-bottom...meaning that it is straight up nasty. Like, the huge catfish that live in it survive off of the trash that gets in there. But, while gross, it also holds much potential to have adventure.

And because my dad likes to think our family is adventurous, he bought two kayaks shortly after we moved into our house...which was seven years ago. Those two kayaks have been used only a handful of times, including today.

So here's what happened.

My friend Tannah and I have been planning a kayak adventure since this summer but whenever she was available, I wasn't, and vice versa. We could never find an available time to go kayaking. But today was the day. She was home from Baylor and I was out of school for two weeks and it was a balmy 61 degrees outside. We wore shorts, t-shirts, old tennis shoes, and ill-fitting life jackets as to not drown in the five foot deep waters.

We decided to go upstream, which wasn't overly difficult in general. Really, the only hard part of our epic journey was trying to maneuver around the logs that had fallen across the creek. And the first of those came about a hundred yards from where we departed.

Basically, a couple months ago, a tree fell during a storm and stretched over the width of the creek. A bunch of trash had built up on the side of it but there was a space just big enough for a kayak and a few passengers to squeeze through. We had to duck and still got tree bark in our hair and on our shirts. Then we got stuck the first time going under and had to reverse and duck again. Then we got it.

Since we were going upstream, the current wouldn't exactly let us go straight, so we had to turn the kayak multiple times and we got very, very wet. We went around a couple of bends and we felt like Pocahontas, so of course we had to sing "Just Around the Riverbend". Then we ran into another log that I almost singlehandedly got us over. It was pro maneuvering skills, I assure you.

Tannah kept making bird noises and I thought a bird was just following us around (she didn't confess until the next day). We encountered some more logs and laughed and splashed each other. Then we had to get out in the mud because we didn't think we could get through and we had some extreme troubles getting back in the creek.

But it's hard to push into the water when you're laughing so hard.

Then we encountered the "rapids". Someone had dumped a bajillion rocks into the creek and it was super shallow, probably only a foot of water. Tannah and I were having issues. Then there was this tree that jutted out into the middle of the creek that we spent five minutes wrestling and booked it when we finally escaped. We made it past the rapids after three attempts, but we were so tired we just drifted right back down...going backwards.

Soon we approached the part where we had to get out the last time and we discovered a small passage to get through. But we still got out and climbed over a log and almost fell in. In fact, Tannah climbed a tree (pretty much if it's climbable, Tannah will climb it) and misjudged her step and her foot plunged into the creek. Her face was priceless. Then I got out and just had to hold onto the kayak while Tannah got in and then I got back in and off we went.

Though our arms were tired and we didn't ever want to wiggle under a tree again while in any sort of boat, that might have been one of the best experiences of my life. It was full of laughter and adventure and rarely do I feel that...free. Nothing was holding me back and being surrounded by God's glory was the best possible start to my Christmas break.

"God of wonders beyond our galaxy, You are holy." --God of Wonders

My church is about to become a less-paid but happier Wal-Mart

So, I go to Valley Ranch Baptist Church. About 11ish years ago, we were challenged to spread outside our walls. Yeah, missions in other cities is a big part of the expansion, but the church is located about 40 miles away from south Dallas, a place ridden with poverty, drugs, violence, prostitutes, lack of education, and general desperation. This will be the 11th year to do what we like to call "The Christmas Store".

Basically, my church becomes Wal-Mart. But better. Much better. Months in advance to the second weekend in December, parents start signing themselves up at VRBC's sister church, Cornerstone, so they can be "customers" at the Christmas Store. When the weekend is upon them (and everyone at VRBC), these south Dallas residents are picked up via van (driven by men from our church) and taken to my church. Once they arrive, they are seated in a hospitality area and given food and drink.

Then the fun begins. A GPS (guider, prayer, server) who goes to my church will come and get them from the lobby and start to get to know them. The GPS and customer (generally a woman because men tend to not be around in south Dallas...a sad fact I've grown accustomed to) will then go pick up some shoppers in a designated room.

Shoppers are generally younger kids, in elementary or middle school, and their parents and they carry the bags with the customer's name and kids' names on them. The GPS will then guide the shoppers and customer through our church, aka, the store. They go into the rooms where the gifts for each child are held, seperated by age groups (ages 0-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, 13+), and the parent or guardian of that child picks out a big gift and a small gift for each of their kiddos. After getting the gifts, they then go get socks, underwear, and a sweatshirt for the kids and parent(s). And the kids get stockings stuffed by VRBC's children's ministry and those have candy, toothbrush, toothpaste, and other little necessities for a growing kid.

After getting all the goodies, the shoppers had back to the shopper room and the GPS and customer go to the santuary where they will continue to have conversation. The GPS will then pray with his or her customer and possibly share the gospel. Then prayer requests by the customer are written and tacked onto a huge, wooden cross at the front of the stage. The GPS then hugs their customer and takes them back to hospitality where they wait for the next van going back to Cornerstone.

Oh, and did I mention that all gifts are being wrapped while the GPS and customer are in the sanctuary and in hospitality? It's basically a free Christmas for these people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford one. Without my church, nearly 1,300 kids wouldn't have Christmas gifts under the tree. Powerful stuff.

But that's just half of the deal. You're probably wondering where all those 1,300 kids are while they're parents are shopping? Wonder no more! I have an answer!

The parents go in shifts and the whole ordeal, travel time included, takes about three hours. So while the parents are shopping on either Friday or Saturday, a lot of their kids are at Cornerstone church in Dallas under the care of VRBC's youth group, henceforth known as 86:12. Naturally, not all 1300 kids go to Cornerstone--that would be just a tad overwhelming. And a lot of the kids have aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends to stay with, so we generally have somewhere between 400-700 kids that run through Cornerstone on Friday afternoon and all day Saturday.

These kids then get to practically be in a carnival and each kid is assigned a "buddy", which is an 86:12 member. They get coloring and activity packets that are Christmas-themed. They make a bookmark that tells the story of Salvation (I led that section and God blessed me with the opportunity to lead 5 kids to Christ!!) and write prayer requests on green pieces of paper that they then tack onto a wooden cross. After the prayer requests, they move onto the book section where they can sit down and read a book with their buddy and then get to pick out 6 books to take home. After the book fair, they migrate to the nice craft room where they make a present for the parent at my church (this year they made ornaments). Then they go to the craft room that's for themselves (candy canes with beads and pipe cleaners). However, the favorite is the play-dough, cookie, face-painting, video game room which is where they go after they've done everything else. That's also where they get to get the wide variety of food that our awesome men in the kitchen are whipping up for us.

Every once in a while, there was a nativity story that was led by a couple guys in my grade, Drew and Luke. They narrated the story of Jesus' birth while the kids put on costumes acted it out. It was rough going the first time but when middle school teacher Haley came and organized it, everything ran much smoother. The nativity scene is always a highlight.

I'm in RLT (refuge leadership team--refuge is the name of our youth group) and there are about 30 other RLTers. We all had specified jobs to do, like I was in the bookmark room. People were manning the craft rooms, the little kid room, the nursery, the carnival room...etc. There were jobs for everyone. Then there's LIT which stands for "leaders in training". They're sophomores who will graduate into RLT the next year and are training to be the next leaders of the youth group. They ran the book fair this year.

The Christmas Store is amazing and a humbling experience. I love being able to participate every year and will be sad next year when I can't come and help because of college. I'll always hold the memories close to my heart and am excited to hear stories in the future.

THANKS AND GIG 'EM

Fair warning: I just got the answer today.

I HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED INTO TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY (COLLEGE STATION) AND WILL BE ATTENDING THERE FOR COLLEGE.

I mean, it's no big deal, really. It's only my dream school...

Yeah, it's not the prettiest campus. No, it doesn't have all the glitz and glamour of other schools. But it has rich traditions. The campus is alive. It's an military school. One that people in my family have been attending for 4 generations.

And I get to go there. So, any admissions people who happen across my blog, THANK YOU. God has blessed me in so many ways and this is absolutely one of them. So, thank you Lord! What a great day.

When I saw the page where I go to check my application status, my jaw dropped and I could literally feel my heart in my stomach. My hands started to shake because it just said "a decision has been made". Then, below it, it said to "click here" to accept offer. So the logical side of me registered that I got in because they wouldn't be offering me something if I wasn't accepted. But there was still that other part of me that was just thinking, "There's no way." Then the little box was like "Congratulations, you have been accepted into Texas A&M University!"

I started bawling. Then I called my mom. And cried more. Then I updated Facebook. Then I woke up my dad (who has had food poisoning) and told him. Then Tanner and I did a happy dance. Then I accepted the offer.

Talk about a load off my chest.

The amazing part is that just yesterday, a family friend had just prayed for my A&M application in the woman's Bible study she's in. The thing online said the answer went out in an email yesterday. Mind blowing! God works in amazing ways.

Part of me won't fully believe this until I have the acceptance letter in my hands (which will probably happen tomorrow). But then I'll apply for housing (hello, Commons?) and get a room mate and be well on my way to getting myself a degree and ring from Texas A&M University. I am just SO happy right now. Unbelievably happy. It's ridiculous.

So, I will leave with three things:

1. Jeremiah 29:11 (look it up)

2. "I will cut off the horns of the wicked..." Psalm 75:10a

3. WHOOP! (even though, as an incoming freshman, I'm not technically allowed to do that. But I think exceptions can be made...)

Thanks, and gig 'em.