A love like mine.

" I will never hide, diminish or suppress my love for you." 

Love is such an interesting beast. It swoops you up, invites you on a wild ride and leaves you feeling upside down, inside out and soaked to the core in joy. Love can make you feel like your experience is one in a million. Like you're the only one, in the whole world, who has ever felt this way about anyone. 

I used to think that way. When I would look across a room and see Patrick and my heart would start to beat faster and my cheeks feel warm, I thought; "no one has ever loved anyone the way that I love him." 

Have you ever had a feeling like that come over you? You look at your significant other and you're flooded with love, a love that seems like it was created just for you. Love that has you convinced that no one, in the entire galaxy, has ever felt anything quite like what you're feeling. 

Love, everything that encompasses the word, is so special in the way that it makes us all feel like what we have is unique. Which, in a sense isn't wrong. We are all handcrafted individuals with distinct skill sets and personality traits and to love another requires us to adapt and modify in a way that only we can. All of that I understand and think is really beautiful. 

What's even more beautiful is that your love is not unique and neither is mine. Love is definable. Love is measurable. Your love isn't unheard of. It is special, because it's yours and it's mine but it's not singular.

The realization that people all around the world, are overcome with feelings very similar to mine gives me so much hope for the future. 

Love changes the world. Your love. My love. God's love. Love casts out all fear, is patient, is kind, is long suffering, doesn't envy or boast. Love trusts, cares more for others than self, is level headed and it never fails. Love never fails. 

I do not want to be the only person capable of that and I shudder at the thought that my capacity for love is the ceiling. I fall short in my love for Patrick, often. I rejoice in the truth that there are people whose love for their partner surpasses mine. That in their world they are a beacon for selflessness and kindness and patience and fearlessness. That my current ceiling is their floor and their ceiling the floor for someone else. 

Thank God for Jesus. A man whose love for us is so massive, all encompassing and full...a love that came to fruition in death.  A love that trumps all hate, breaks down walls, warms hearts and heals wounds. A love that has no ceiling and knows no end. 

I'm not sure if my heart is incapable of loving anything the way that Jesus loves us, you and me. My heart is brave yet forgetful, loving and easily distracted, passionate and at times distant. A love like mine and maybe this is true of a love like yours as well, is learning as it goes and is doing it's best to get it right the first time. 

So I'll  love with everything I have and quote cute lines about the strength of a love like mine and be encouraged, humbled and inspired by the loves that far surpass my own. 

"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." - John 3:16

The Assault Rifle Chronicles.

I remember when the Aurora shooting happened. I had been in Colorado for three weeks and I woke up to sound of my phone going off over and over again. I looked at it and saw a missed call from my mom and messages from friends back home all asking me if I was okay and to call them back. 

My mind was groggy from sleep and confusion when I decided to google 'Colorado news,' and within seconds I was filled in on the horror that unfolded just a few hours earlier. During a midnight viewing of The Dark Knight Rises a gunman opened fire in a packed theater and killed 12 people and injured 70. 

Most people I know, people barely old enough to rent a car by themselves, have had similar experiences. They've gone to bed in a seemingly normal world and woken up to the news that another shooting had occurred; this time at an elementary school, or in a night club in Florida or at a music festival in Las Vegas. 

The news is crippling. 

Within 15 minutes of waking up on Monday morning I read about the news of what happened in Las Vegas and for a moment I couldn't breathe. All I could do was sit in my bed and pray. Pray to the God of the universe, the one that made the sun and the moon and all of the stars...the one who made Stephen Paddock and every person he killed. 

I asked him to give us grace for the horrible things that we do. I asked him to bring peace to our country and to our world. I prayed for Paddock's family and I prayed for the families of every person affected. I prayed for my family and Patrick and his family and all of my friends and colleagues and students. 

Then I sat in my bed and stared at the wall in silence. 

This stuff is real and it's intense and it's heavy. I was in a funk the entire day on Monday because I didn't feel right talking about seemingly trivial things and enjoying coffee and good food while people were trying to find out if their loved ones were alive.

It seems like The Assault Rifle Chronicles are a never ending series in our nation. Each episode slightly different and more disturbing than the one before, yet fitting perfectly in with the theme of the season. Each act has a different writer and a new cast but they all face the same fate, each event ending in the same blood spilling way. 

Jesus come.  

Now more than ever I believe that we need more than just empty statuses and seemingly disingenuous prayers. We need mobilized communities, people who love their children and their fellow human beings more than their guns. A nation that invites God into the mix not only after a tragedy but during the mundane and the boring, the happy and peaceful. 

Jesus come and embody love for us, because at the end of the day it's love that will turn this upside down world on it's feet again. It's when we start loving people more than we love our rights and start putting their lives and souls before amendments that I believe we'll start to see a change of tide. 

I don't know all the answers but I do know that as a writer and an educator and a follower of Christ, I feel like it's my duty to join the conversation. Actually, not JUST join the conversation but to love harder and to care for others on a deeper level and to reach out to the lost and hurting more than I ever have before.

There are too many people in this world that are hurting for us to waste time debating or fighting about ideals and beliefs. It's time to love and it's time to love in a real and tangible way, in a way that prioritizes health and safety and uses common sense.   

May the Assault Rifle Chronicles come to an end in my lifetime. May my children and my grandchildren not grow up in a world where shooter drills are taught to students in kindergarten. In a world where concerts and movie theaters are no longer safe and churches no longer sacred. May we tell a new tale, one of love, one of Christ and one of people waking up to a world more peaceful than the one they said goodnight to.

Sending you all so much love and light. Xoxo! 

P.S. You can text RESIST to 50409 and if you give them your name and zipcode they'll connect you with your state senators. You're then able to compile a message that, all through text, you're able to have faxed to those senators! Let me know if you need an idea of what to write or if you want to share the letter you sent! 

My first 40 days

This year I decided to do lent for the first time. For some reason when the opportunity presented itself and I had the chance to give up all of my favorite things for an extended amount of time, I took it.

For 40 days I gave up coffee, candy, social media and alcohol. I wish I could say that the hardest part was the no coffee but lets be real, it was giving up candy.

Before this year I didn't really know much about Lent. Growing up my family wasn't big on Easter, we would go to church the weekend of but besides that we wouldn't do Easter egg hunts, or baskets or anything. I grew up with the sense that Easter was another holiday that society capitalized on but didn't truly understand.

The last 40 or so days have changed my entire view of this season. Easter is more than just another day out of the 365 that we get each year. The concept, the truth behind Easter, is the foundation of the Christian faith.

For those who aren't super familiar, the 40 days leading up to Easter, lent, is meant to model the 40 days that Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness. The bible says that Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness and he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights and when it was over he was tempted by the devil. Hebrews says that because Jesus suffered and was tempted he is able to help us when we are tempted.

On Easter Sunday, as I sang a set of worship songs to a congregation full of people the truth of Easter reverberated in my soul. I realized that regardless of what we add to the day, how we enhance it and make it marketable, Easter is and will always be about Jesus.

Lent for me was not about just taking a break from things that I enjoy. It wasn't about forcing myself to stop going on Facebook and to lay off the candy for a few weeks. Lent helped me to be able to narrow my focus, It took away the heavy distractions and clutter that often fogged my view. Lent pulled away the junk in my life and pointed me straight to the giver of life, it pointed me to Christ.

Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's what happened after the disciples saw Jesus hanging on a cross, crucified. Jesus, their hope for the future, was gone. The messiah had seemingly been defeated and death had won.

The truth though is that death is defeated and Christ is risen. He rose again on the third day and renewed the disciples hope in him as their savior and as the savior of all mankind. The darkness of the weekend and the sight of him hanging from a tree was erased by the joy of seeing him again in all of his honor and glory.

Easter is so much more than just pastel colors and packed church services. Lent reminded me that the resurrection is the Christian story. It's the three years that Jesus spent preaching and reaching out to the lost coming to an abrupt halt and then beauty, glorious beauty, being born from the ashes.

Lent was the path that I needed to take to become truly connected to the Easter story. It was the defining moment that made Easter not just another bible story but rather the moment in history that makes everything that I believe in truth.

"If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything stands is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead."  - Tim Keller

Leotards, body image and me.

"Okay Nikki, go grab a leotard and a pair of tights, put them on in the dressing room and meet us in rehearsal room 1."

It was my first day of dance class and very quickly my excitement turned into dread.

"I'm supposed to just wear this, in front of everyone," I thought to myself as I picked up the black leotard and the darkest pair of tights I could find and headed in to the dressing room.

Growing up, I never felt comfortable in my own skin. I wanted to be taller, have straight hair, have a smaller waist and didn't want to be the biggest girl in a leotard in a room filled with ballet dancers.

I started taking dance classes because it was something I had always wanted to do. My best friend was a dancer and if I started taking classes we would be able to do it together. I never really thought about how it would make me feel about my body. Where it should have made me feel strong and capable, it instead led me to thinking that I was the DUFD of the group...the designated, ugly, fat, dancer.

The mind is a powerful place. It can grab hold of your attention, warp your reality and make you to believe that this flesh that you live in, is not just your home but also your worth. That the number on the scale and the size on the dress determines how good you are and how much value you add to the world.

Instead of basking in the joy of being a dancer, I often drowned in the weight of not feeling like I leveled up. Like the dance room was a place I never belonged and dancer was a title that was never meant for me.

Have you ever felt like that? Like your looks disqualified you from fitting in or doing something that you really loved?  A feeling that your mind grabs hold of and instead of replacing it with truth, enforces the lies and cements them as facts.

I haven't taken a dance class in over 5 years but my mind is still often visited by the lies. The lies that I'm not skinny enough, that my body doesn't fit the mold, that I need to work harder and eat less. That I'll never measure up and who I am will never compare to our world's standard of beauty.

The beauty of it all, something that it took me years to learn, is that the world does not determine my worth or what makes me beautiful. The bible says in Psalms 139:14  "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works."

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. When the truth of that statement grabbed a hold of my soul it changed the course of my thoughts. I'm not a dress size or a number on the scale. I'm an educator, a daughter, a writer, a singer, a sister, an aunt and most importantly a fearfully and wonderfully made child of God.

My body is not something that I work against anymore but rather something that I work with. The food I eat is fuel for me to be able to have the energy to impact the lives of student, pour into friendships and relationships and to live a vibrant, Christ focused and joy filled life.

My body doesn't define me. It doesn't determine my worth or the value that I bring to this world and your body doesn't determine your value either. Marvelous are the works of God, every single one of them and that my friend, is truth.

"I will shed all of this skin, down to the very bone beneath it, if that's what it will take for you to come to the realization that appearance is not what makes a human beautiful."