I'm no longer a slave to fear.

I am a child of God.

When I was 7 or 8 years old I went down to the lake with my dad and my sister and he prepared to dunk us in the lake.  Cristin went first, because she's older.  He baptized her in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and she came up screaming.  She had stepped on a nasty, square staple, and my grandpa had to pull it out of her foot with pliers.  Needless to say, there was no way I was getting in that lake.  I eventually was baptized a short time later (I honestly don't have a clue how long) in a nice, heated, baptismal at my grandparents' church.

A lot has happened since I was 7 or 8.  I am not the child I was then.  I am not the person I was just a few years ago.  I remember when I was making some poor decisions not all that long ago, my father said "this isn't like you", and I responded "yes it is.  I have done this over and over again.  This is who I am."  I realized later how blessed I was that God kept me from being known for my sins.  I grew up in a very small town, and everyone knew my family.  It would have been the most natural thing in the world for me to be known as Pastor Cline's Daughter Who Always Does [Insert Current Sin(s) Here].  But God saved me from that, and my father saw me the way God does: for who I was created to be.

Fast forward about 4 years.  I got married, moved to Texas, did some great things, did some less great things, met people who touched my life in many ways, had a friend die, experienced multiple minor mental breakdowns, moved to Bend, started a whole new life again, got new jobs, quit one of them, met more people who are still changing my life, bought a house, bought some mountain bikes...I could go on and on.

"Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first;" Revelation 2:5

This morning in church, I was listening to our pastor, Randy, talk about baptism.  Today was Father's House's annual baptism.  Everyone gathers at the park, eats burgers and hangs out, and then they go baptize a whole bunch of people in the middle of the Deschutes River.  Randy was talking about how we are called to be baptized; baptism is an outward sign of our repentance.  He said something about how there are people here who have been baptized in the past, but they are ready to repent, to turn away from whatever is going on in their lives, and do this again.  I literally thought "maybe next year.  There are things I need to deal with first."  Really mature, right?  I took communion, and I prayed that God would help me fix these things, but I wasn't totally honest about it.  I knew I wasn't ready to let go of those things.  Honestly...well, I'm a work in progress.  But I re-realized something today as I watched Randy baptize 20-something people in the Deschutes River: four years ago my father didn't just see past my poor choices, he saw me for who I really am.  I don't have to be a slave to fear, because I am a child of God.

I was sitting on a blanket at Tumalo State Park, eating cookies and listening to people plink on the guitar, when Randy walked by and said "hey Rianna, do I need to dunk you today?" then he laughed and walked away.  But he wasn't too surprised when, as he was looking around and walking back in from the river, I dropped my phone on the bank and splashed out to meet him.  He smiled, asked me what the story was, and said "I had a feeling this needed to happen."

Baptism isn't something we do after we have fixed our lives, it's the beginning, the declaration that we are ready to turn around, let go, and act like the people we are.  So I got baptized today.  I am ready be honest with myself, and with God.  It won't be easy, but it will be better than being selfish.  I am ready to not be a slave to fear, anymore.  I am letting go of my fear that I am defined by my sin; I am letting go of my fear of what the people around me will think; I am letting go of my fear of not being in control of my life.

Amen.

Central Oregon Part Two: Homeowners

Why hello there!  It's only been 7 months....For the record, I do have at least 4 posts started that never made the cut, so I haven't been completely ignoring my chronicles, but things have been hectic.  Let me give you a quick snapshot of my life:

Yes. I was collecting eggs in heels and a pencil skirt, because sometimes the different parts of life get blurry.

At this moment I am sitting on my front porch, eating a tortilla smeared with refried beans and watching the sun set behind the mountains.

Life could be so much worse.

In the seven months since we have spoken, a lot has happened.  I took a second job at a daycare, because I wasn't working much and I love kids and it happened to work out perfectly.  I worked there for 5 months.  I started out at a couple hours in the mornings, and then I started going back in the evenings as well, sandwiching my time at the office.  Then I got busy, and I didn't like rushing myself out of the office every day, so I went back to just working mornings.  Then I started opening for them, and then we kept getting busy, and by the time I quit (two weeks ago), I was working 6-9:15 at the daycare, and then 9:30-6 or 7 at the office; I was drinking coffee every day in between just to keep my eyes open; I had zero patience with the children, and not much brain power to be of any use at the office (which was why it was taking me till 6 or 7 every night to get my work done); I was nauseated for 3 days straight, there at the end, and I had a constant pain in my neck and shoulders to the point where it hurt to swallow.  It was time to make a change.  So I quit the daycare, and sold my soul to the law firm, which is another story in and of itself.

Jesse took a job, took another job before even starting the first one, left that job for the job he was planning to take when we first moved here, and is currently working in the mornings for Justin and the evenings at Nosler.

When I was working both jobs, I was getting up at 4:30 and he was coming home at 11, and we would literally go days without seeing each other conscious and/or in the light of day.  Now, thank goodness, he gets home a little earlier, and I get up an hour later, and it doesn't kill me to stay up until he gets home, and he's actually awake when I leave, and it is much better.  Like I said, life could be so much worse.

The coolest dude in the world got to come share some of our life with us last week!  Long story short, my Uncle Chris is working over on this side of the mountain, and came to stay with us for a few days, and we spent our evenings sitting out on my front porch, watching the sun set behind the mountains, and face timing everyone we know.

Wait, what was that?  My front porch?  When did I get one of those???

Goodness, a lot sure has happened.

I won't try to sort through the details of how God gave us our house; honestly, it was confusing, and it gets mixed up in so many other stories, so let's just say that He provided, and it is everything we need.  It's a 3 bedroom mobile home, nothing fancy, on 4.5 acres of dirt and rocks and scrub brush outside of Redmond.  It's a half hour drive to get to work, but it came with a dozen chickens and a trampoline and two baby apple trees.  Also a cat, but we ignore him in the hopes that he'll go away.

We had 20 people over the Saturday before July 4th, and about half of them stayed all weekend.  It made the place feel like home.  I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be able to have my family in my house.  Call me crazy, but that's something I've been dreaming about for years.  Maybe soon I'll get it together and give you a better picture of that weekend.  It was beautiful.  Homemade bread and smores and hiking and sparklers and alligators, and watching my siblings grow up in front of my very eyes.

There are so many more things to say....ahhhh!!  But it's 9:00, and it's my bedtime, because I got distracted watching people dance on youtube....but I am just going to post this, even though it isn't finished, because it must be done!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!

Room for Improvement

"I rarely make the same mistake twice."

I have boldly proclaimed this many times in my life, and it might even be true.  Unfortunately, there are so, so many mistakes I still have yet to make!  I was feeling fairly despondent the other day, and told my dear husband "someday I will figure all this out and be done making all these mistakes".  I have had a lot of slip-ups lately.  From little things like not letting the ice cream freeze long enough, to bigger things like putting something on the calendar in the wrong year and having to spend a day scrambling to make up for it, to important things like running my mouth and not thinking about the way my words will affect the people I love.  The move to Bend has been one huge opportunity for me to make all kinds of new blunders.  In Texas we had a routine, and I knew where I fit into it, and it worked.  I had found my role and I was rollin' with it.  Now I have so many new roles to figure out, and have to make them all fit together....it's been an adventure.

Yet, with adventurous as it has been, there isn't a whole lot for me to share with you.  I go to work every day, come home, make dinner, and go to bed.  Then I start all over again.  There are little things that make me laugh, other things that make me cry, some things that make me take deep breaths and count to 10 (or 10 times about a thousand).  It is the beginning of a new year, though, and with that comes all the usual things...Ponderings and recollections of the past year, aspirations to somehow make this year "better", to be "better" and do "better".  For example, Jesse was bragging the other day about all the great things he was able to do in high school, and how in-shape he was, which has obviously resulted in new fitness goals for me.  Fitness goals, period, really.  I'm not one for "fitness goals".  That is a phrase I have never used before.  

But anyway, goal for 2016:
 superman planks!

I honestly have no idea if that is what they are actually called, but I'ma be able to do them, whatever they are!  As an early step I've started adding some weights into my morning mini-workouts.  Not anything beastly (I will never be a "weight-lifter"), just adding some 10-15 lbs to my regular shennanigans.  Here we are a week into this process:

Jesse has also started something resembling an exercise routine.  He may grumpify at me for revealing this on the interwebs, but I gotta talk about him some time, right?  The Clarks have a stationary bike in the living room, and Jesse's current habits have him hopping on every evening for a little bit.  We've been plotting all the mountains we're going to climb this summer, so it may have something to do with that.

We have been somewhat lacking in the job department, which has been frustrating, especially since we are living in someone else's house and feeling a little bit like lazy moochers.  However, Jesse is supposed to be starting a full-time job on Monday, and Bryan is attempting to take the steps to get me on actual payroll, and I've started looking for a second job as well, so hopefully we will be gainfully employed adults contributing to society again soon!  Maybe we'll even get our own living arrangements.  How crazy would that be?

Fully unimportant side-note: I definitely just typed "arraignments" instead of "arrangements" just now.  That's a word which is new to my vocabulary, but has clearly pushed itself to the forefront of my mind.  I typed it a lot today.  Lots of checklists.

New living arrangements will definitely be welcome, for while there is room for improvement in many places of our life right now, there is no more room in this house for much of anything.  Our life has been spreading out and taking over the entire place.  I know I am capable of living with fewer material possessions (obviously, since half of them are in boxes in the woodshed), and I am tempted to throw so much stuff away...but I really enjoy having all the multiple yoga mats and foam rollers and resistance bands and crap that are filling up an entire corner of the room!  I'm trying to think of other examples, and realize I don't even know what I have.  I have a food dehydrator in the back bedroom, but I actually use that every week or two to dry bananas so I can take them to work and not leave banana peels in the trash can I never empty.

Anyway, I could ramble on all night about bananas and yoga and all the frustrations I have with myself and all the improvements I would make if I was omnipotent, but instead I will recall something I read this morning:

"The thing molded will not say to the molder 'why did you make me like this,' will it?  Or does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?"            Romans 9:20-21

I suppose from that I can ask So What?  And then answer myself: There will always be room for improvement, but in the long run, I should not aspire to fill any role but the one(s) God has intended me for.  There is no use getting my knickers in a bunch when I am not a body builder, or when my brain takes longer to process things than I would like, or when I am an introvert.  I am, however, an assistant and a roommate and a sister and a daughter.  These are all roles I have been given and can improve on.  I am also a wife, and that is a role I ought to be working actively to fill in a godly manner and be the crown of my husband (Proverbs 12:4).

And with that in mind, I will fetch my husband a bowl of ice cream and go to sleep.  At 6:30 pm.  Yay old people!