Milestones

One more week in MN; one more week until the internship begins. I've done everything but pack. "Everything" meaning, in no particular order:

* Marathon shopping expeditions with Mom
* Lunch with Grandma
* Snowboarding lesson with Dad and youngest sis
* Movie with sisters
* Last karate class; studying for belt test; actually testing, which took four days to complete
* Outings with best friend, Wombat1, and with various friends from karate (the Evil Women Of Karate Society -- how about that acronym, folks)
* Christmas with family
* Latkes and dreidel games on first night of Hanukah

I've also enjoyed just hanging out with my family, catching up on my reading, sleeping in, and trying to relax. I was pretty stressed out about my belt test -- I am such a perfectionist that I could have spent four more months at purple belt -- but I passed. That was the last major stressor from pre-internship life.

Now I am in the "oh my gosh, I'm leaving in one week. Panic! Panic! Eat chocolate!" mode. (I am of the firm belief that one should always eat chocolate when panicking. It calms the nerves and soothes the throat.) But I have decided not to start full-force packing yet, not until after New Year's. I will have to clean out my room at that time, as my other sister is planning to move in after I'm gone. She plans to repaint my peaceful, sunny yellow with lime green. (Why?!)

I miss being at the onething conference. I've been to the last two, but I wanted to spend time with my family this year. My brother, Grant, is at a Campus Crusade conference, so it'll just be the five of us on New Year's, plus our two dogs. Not for us the boring pre-ball-drop coverage -- we plan to watch King Kong. We rented the original one with Fay Wray. I've wanted to see it for a while, and I will not go see Peter Jackson's movie without having seen Merian C. Cooper's version.

So that's about it. I'll probably post right before I leave, or maybe I'll post from my cell phone on the way down to KC. Till then.

History

I've been a Christian most of my life, but I've long felt like none of the churches in my area are really alive. Not much of the fire is left from the revival wave in the '90's. I knew my relationship with G-d was lacking something. I knew Who He was intellectually, but I did not know Him the way I needed to know Him. I felt like He put me in a wilderness with nothing to sustain me. (That sounds kind of dramatic, I know, but there's no other way to describe it.) Yet despite my frustration, I did know that G-d was pursuing me. The purpose of a wilderness is to draw us closer to G-d, away from other distractions.

I wanted to have a closer relationship with Him. I kept wishing for something bigger than me and bigger than the same old church services I attended. I wanted something to challenge me and make my life worthwhile. I mean, a relationship with G-d is truly a great adventure. It's also a test, a furnace to refine my character, my faith, and my relationship with my Creator. Relating to G-d can often be difficult, but it's not supposed to be a boring chore. I wanted to learn to enjoy my Creator, just as He enjoys me. I wanted to be challenged to live my life in a way I'd never even considered before.

I didn't find that in my home state of Minnesota. Instead, I found what I was looking for in Missouri, during the 2003 Onething Conference in Kansas City. My best friend had been to a previous conference and convinced me to come to this one. Onething 2003 was put on by an organization called the International House of Prayer. The conference was a days-long conference for young adults with lots of great worship and messages. The speakers talked about topics like "Fuel for Life: Intimacy with G-d" and "Releasing a Generation to Pray and Prophesy." I thought the conference would be a fun road trip and maybe a bit of a spiritual kick in the pants. Instead, I got ruined for G-d. At first it was hard to believe that everything I wanted was all in one place, and plus the awesome worship and challenging speakers were so different from the churches I'd attended back home. After a while, though, I realized that the House of Prayer people were for real. I loosened up and started to enjoy myself. When I went back home, I couldn't stop thinking about how everyone at the conference had been so alive and on fire for G-d. I wanted that for myself so much it was hard to think about other things.

I visited the International House of Prayer (or "IHOP" -- no pancake jokes, please) a few more times after that. My friend did an internship at IHOP during the spring of 2004. I visited her several times and liked the intern life. They spent many hours a week in the prayer room, where worship teams played 24/7, 365 days a year. They had classes on all the topics I wanted to learn about, played on worship teams, and generally seemed to have a great time developing their relationships with G-d. I decided I would do an intership too. I saved my money, finished college, and signed up for the January 2006 internship. It certainly wasn't as quick and easy as that -- I had to wait about two years until I had enough money.

But here I am, almost ready to go. The Onething Internship starts on January 6th. I'll be driving to Missouri on the 5th, so I have a few weeks to spend with my family. I am going to miss them very much, and I'm also going to miss my karate school. I am really looking forward to my internship, though. I think it will equip me spiritually for the rest of my life. If I consecrate six months for the purpose of studying G-d, He will meet with me and change me. I understand that my time at IHOP will not be perfect; I am going to hit walls of my own misconceptions as I realize that the L-rd is so much greater than anything I could imagine. But the journey into greater understanding and intimacy is going to be really, really cool.

More updates later...