Love the People

I believe in God and I love God.
I believe in Jesus and I love Jesus.
I believe in people and I love people.

A little while ago I was perusing Facebook-- as one does when one is bored-- and I was mad. Just mad. I have come to terms with the amount of opinions on Facebook, respectively, because that is what Facebook has turned into and if I don't like it I don't have to have it, simple as that. But I like it so instead I decide to put up with some crazy opinions here and there, deleting and unfollowing the few posts I get sick by. But recently I was at a loss for words. It all started with a comment on a post that read "I have only ever experienced hate from Christians..."

To be clear, I am not at a loss for words at this comment. Because I completely understand where this person is coming from and I'll get to more of that a little later. But I was at a loss for words at the reply and reaction of people defending their faith. In no way or other did anyone apologize for the hate that this person obviously felt. They went into defending their faith by listing off all the places where this person feeling all the hate went wrong. As if to say "well you're only feeling that hate because you"re basically living your life wrong, so do it our way and you'll feel the love".

At reading these comments I just wanted to message this person right away and apologize and hug them for all the ways we have failed in displaying love. The comments attacking this person were full of hate disguised as God's love.

You see, as Christians, we feel a sense of authority over everyone else. We feel as though we've got it all figured out and have to tell everyone else how to live their life in order for them to come to know Jesus. And when we see someone sinning we think "oh pour broken person, let me tell you how to exactly live your life so you don't do stupid things anymore and God can love you". But what we fail to remember is that we as Christians are just as broken, just as insignificant, just as unworthy as we claim everyone else to be. We think we live under an umbrella of favouritism over everyone else because we have been saved. When in truth, that is simply not the case.

Truth is: God loves all His children equally. Full stop. I am not going to go into detail here because there is simply no point. Because that is it. There is nothing more to add to "God loves all His children equally" because that is all there is. There is no one who is loved more or less because of their actions. It's as simple as that. God loves all His children. Equally.

Authority and hierarchy have ruined relationships. We think because we have been saved we have all the power in the world to tell people how to live their lives. I know we are supposed to help a fellow believer when they stumble. But that's just it: a fellow believer. We can't expect someone who doesn't believe in God act as though they are following God. And in any case, God is the one who does the convicting, judging and changing, not us. God changes us from the inside out, not the outside in. You don't have to prepare yourself with a sinless life and pure white gown in order to come to God. It happens from the inside out and all the rest will follow. And if we build relationships with people instead of tear them down, we can walk with them in the process.

If we are preaching hate, we are only furthering people from actually stepping into any sort of openness with God. Through our words and our actions, we have made God into a bully when really it is us who are the bullies. We as Christians are meant to know love so deep, so rich, so full and so extraordinary that we can't help but have it seeping out our pores, flowing from our mouths and soaking every word we speak. But we don't. Instead we preach rules and regulations in order to make people want to change their lives.  But I refuse to go on Facebook-- because Facebook is no place to air out someone else's dirty laundry--hide behind my keyboard and tell everyone what they are doing wrong and why they need to stop.

Because as a Christian, and a human being, I refuse to be another reason why someone feels unloved. 

Instead I choose to love the people around me. I choose to live my life in a way that will bring glory to God. I choose to be the person that someone would want to run to in the middle of hurt and brokenness instead of run away from. Because I am loved just as much as the next person whether or not they live the same way as I do. And just like the next person I am going to screw up and make mistakes, but I would rather someone help me up and tell me to keep moving forward and love me through my mistakes than push me down further telling me all the ways I went wrong. Instead I want people to say "I have experienced nothing but love from Christians..."

But that's just me and my simple mind. 

Buckets of Ice

People are skeptical and that makes me sad. I have been around long enough to see this. Everytime something goes viral-- unless of course it is a funny cat video-- some people criticize the impact of and judge others for jumping on the band wagon. One fairly popular incident in which most of you will remember was the "Kony 2012" movement and you can read my thoughts on that one here.

But this isn't a round two of Kony. This is about my thoughts on the ALS ice bucket challenge.

First I'll start off on saying that I quite like the ice bucket challenge. I think it is a crazy, cool, fun idea to raise awareness and money and everyone is able to put their own spin on it from just the simple `dump and bucket on your head" to "I'll poor myself a scotch with a couple ice blocks and write out a cheque" Cheers, Patrick Stewart. I also quite like it because I know a family who was affected by this disease and I saw their struggle as they went through it and were reminded often that there is no cure. So when I first saw all the hype on the ice bucket challenge I felt some relief in knowing that there might be hope in some research and awareness.

The internet is an incredible way of raising awareness and passing things along because everyone is so connected through the internet. So connected. But there is always another side to everything that happens on the internet. On one hand you notice all the gung ho people involved in the challenge, their screams and their encouragement to keep the awareness going. But then you see the other side. People who are skeptical. "They're doing nothing"... "That's not helping anyone"... "It's just another viral bandwagon"

This makes me so sad. When you look at the facts you see that more and more people are discovering the sadness of ALS. You see that over 50 million dollars has already been raised. And you see that hope is being given to those who are suffering from the disease.

People are annoyed at the self hype and the frequency of seeing the videos. But when it is something funny everyone shares it and has a good laugh. Personally I think it comes back to the old fashioned saying "ignorance is bliss". If we don't know about it, we don't have to do anything about it. If we close our eyes and cover our ears, we don't have to worry about the struggles of this world. If we don't know, we can live in peace.

I was listening to the radio and the guy was talking about how it's just getting more and more people to do the ice bucket challenge and people are jumping in and it's getting out of control. All I could think of was "Isn't that the whole point?" When a campaign starts, don't we want as many people as possible involved? The whole point was to raise awareness and look at how many people are aware now-- even if half those people are annoyed.

Face it, we have no trouble at all whinging about our own lives in a status. We can go all day long updating our statuses about how "we hate being sick", "yay to the single life", "UGH! McDonalds gave me coke instead of pepsi!" But as soon as something goes viral for a cause, there are those people who jump up and say "umm, excuse me, my news feed can't handle you changing the world"

Think about those families affected by ALS. Just think about them for a minute. How do you think they are feeling? I don't know about you, but I don't think they are sitting in their rooms yelling "how dare they shine light on ALS". In fact I almost guarantee it.

The thing about our society now a days is that to make anything known, you need to annoy the heck out of people. When things go viral, things get heard. Even though the ice bucket challenge is taking over our news feeds now, it's still doing something, it's still doing something. And that's the whole point. Isn't it?

Graduation Time

It's come to that time of year. Our Lifeteams year has almost come to a close and it wont be long before we will all be driving down that big driveway and continuing on the journey of our lives.

 It's been a wild adventure these past 8 months. Full of ups and downs and lessons. A lot of lessons. People generally ask me what has been the most significant moment of my year and I don't have an answer for them. To tell you the truth, this year has been filled with so many significant moments it's hard to draw it all down to one big one that defines my whole year. If I were to describe my whole Lifeteams experience down to one sentence, I can't. There aren't enough words to give the perfect description, the perfect sentence, the perfect way of saying Lifeteams changed my life.

You don't know until you know.... You know? 

You don't know the feeling until you've felt it. You don't know the connections until you're connected. You don't know the change until you've been changed. There is no way for you to fully understand what I have gone through in the past 8 months without actually going through it yourself. 

But I can tell you this:

Lifeteams has been the most inspirational, faith shaping year of my entire life. 

God has worked in me and through me despite all of my struggles and short comings. He has shaped me and molded me into becoming a stronger woman of Christ without my even knowing. He has placed people in my life who have become so important to me and given me the acceptance and love I have longed for in such a long time. 

I have been taught a numerous amount of things that I am going to hold on to for the rest of my life. Things that will only shape me for the better and help me to become a great youth worker. There were things that I was taught this year that were hard and not so comfortable but there were also things I was taught that only opened my eyes wider to the love that God has for his people. And trust me, he loves them A LOT! I was given an undivided heart and shown what it looks like to really care for and love the people around me unconditionally. I was pushed further than I had ever been pushed before and that is just the half of it. The lessons I've learned have been incredibly life giving. 

I can't tell you the extreme emotions I am feeling right now (though I think you can probably guess). A plethora of different feelings is floating in and out of me as I look around my room to only see boxes and bags filled with my roommates' stuff. The walls are bare and it makes me sad. But also excited. Because I know that we will be moving on to greater things and continuing on this journey that God has called us to. For a short while our journeys crossed and it was an incredible joy and delight to get to know each one of my housemates individually and together. We were all placed in this house for different reasons but we all learned to grow and live together as a family. I'll admit, very difficult at times but such a blessing.  

I will never forget this year at Lifeteams and the people who came into my life. I have been blessed with one of the best years of my life. Soon I will be leaving this place but I will always remember what a great place it is.

The Lifehouse is starting to look less like a home and more like someone else's great adventure.
And I am so excited for them. 

With love, 

Cassia

No Make Up Challenge

Okay, I was recently nominated for the "no make up challenge" and apart from being annoyed at my newsfeed being filled with constant nominations, I have many thoughts about it. To start it off, I bet you didn't know that the whole start to the challenge was to raise awareness for cancer research and cancer foundations. Yeah, I didn't know that either because somewhere along the way that little tidbit got left out. Funny...

Here is the problem I have with the #nomakeupchallenge thing going around Facebook right now. It is just reinstating the problem that girls have been dealing with and have been taught for our entire lives: we are images to be looked at. We have to be beautiful. We have to show off our beauty. We are constantly having to compare ourselves to one another and the beautifulness of someone else. The pressure, the self esteem crushing and the sinking reality of what our female society is, has been amplified by the use of social media.

The epidemic of the selfie. All our worth comes from people telling us we're beautiful and liking our photos.

STOP.

The truth to this whole matter is that it is destroying the self esteem of other girls. When you post a picture of yourself on display saying "LOOK AT ME! This is what I look like without make up", you are giving permission for another girl to look at it and full on compare themselves to you. "oh I am not as beautiful as them" "they aren't even wearing make up, they don't even have to try" "I wish I could look like that" are all thoughts that girls are having right now looking at your photos.

"Oh I am way prettier than them... let me prove it" is another thought girls have which then starts the cycle all over again.

What happens to the girl who gets no likes? Who gets no comments or horrible comments? Who doesn't think their beautiful so they have to go searching for their beauty and their worth from other people's typed letters in a comment box? What happens to those girls?


Now, I am not saying "HOW DARE YOU TAKE SELFIES!" Selfies are fun. I'll be the first to admit that. Pictures of my face? GREAT! I just want all of you to think of what your objective is of putting these photos up. I am all for promoting natural beauty. But I am also all for promoting wanting to spice it up. But the question still is, what is your objective of putting up a picture of yourself? Are you doing it for the likes? Are you doing it for the comments? Are you doing it to show yourself off? Are you self objectifying? If the reason lies behind getting the comments and getting the likes, then yes you are. When we put our worth in the attention of a selfie, we make ourselves completely vulnerable to crushed emotions and lowered self esteem that can come with it.

Our worth should not be based on what other people think of us. Our worth should be coming from the one person that created us. And he is pretty darn good at what he does. We are all beautiful because we were MADE beautiful. Make up or no make up. Your value is determined by the one who created you. And you were created in the image of God. That's one heck of a value. If our worth lies within, and is thriving on our love for ourselves and through the validation of our Father we are stronger and wont fall to the shame and embarrassment we can get from social media and we can take a selfie without the need to have it validated by our peers.

So go ahead! Show off your beauty but consider this next time you post a picture of yourself or follow up on a "challenge". Be proud of who you are but make sure that someone else's opinion isn't the reason  you are proud of who you are. And ask the questions: How is it affecting you? How is it affecting others? Where is your worth being held?

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. 

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. 

-Franciscan Prayer

The Gleaners

Today our team was able to take a trip to the Gleaners and help out with the work there. The Gleaners is a place where they take all the vegetables farmers cannot sell to markets because they aren't perfect (although they are still very good). They chop them up and dry them out and make soup out of the vegetables. They then send them overseas to help feed people who are in need. Each bag has about 250 servings and each year they make around 12 million bags of soup. Isn't that AMAZING! We were told that 1 hour of work will make about 10 1/2 bags of soup. So each hour we work we are feeding about 2,500 people.

The majority of people who work there are volunteers and seniors. It was actually so amazing to see so many people giving back. It warmed my heart so much!

I worked most of the time cutting up peppers and making sure they weren't rotting or molded. I was working with a man from Holland and he told me all about his family, his kids, his grandkids and his wife. He told me when he moved here and what he used to do for work. He was such a sweet old man and really loved his coffee. When it was coffee break he was up and at it faster than the road runner running away from the coyote.

Nearing the end I spent my time sorting out the chopped, diced and mixed vegetables onto the drying trays. Some of the veggies were frozen and it wasn't long before my nimble fingers had lost all feeling. I kept shaking them out in the few seconds I had between each tray. One of the men working with me noticed and said to me "cold hands but a warm heart". Just that sentence alone made me smile. And it really made me think; that's what it's really all about isn't it? It didn't take long for me to forget about my fingers and focus on all the people who would be receiving food from the trays I was sorting. It doesn't matter what your hands, feet or back feel like, it's all about your heart.

It says in Proverbs 4:23 "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it"

It is easy for us to do these things with a bitter heart and complain all the time. But that's not how we are meant to do things. God also calls us to be cheerful givers. Take joy in the work you are doing. Know it is for God what you are doing and let him warm your heart with that. Let what flows from your heart be cheerful giving.

I quite enjoyed my time at the Gleaners. I enjoyed the little conversations I had about family. I enjoyed talking with one lady who used to work in Tofino and was explaining how much she missed it there. I enjoyed the joy that these seniors had in giving back to their community. I enjoyed forgetting about my frozen fingers and thinking with my heart. I enjoyed knowing where the food that we would normally throw away was going and who it was helping. Above all else, I enjoyed that we were doing work cheerfully for The Lord and his people.

Napping

Here at the Lifehouse, there tends to be a lot of napping on days we have off (or even sometimes on days we have on... whoops.) But it got me thinking; is napping too intimate?

I mean, think about it. You're in a room, it's dark, you know the other person could potentially be asleep, but also is probably not. This thought came to me when I sluggishly went to my room to go take a nap and behold! One of my roommates had already shut off the light and tucked herself in. I got a strange feeling in my stomach (one that usually causes it to sweat, but in this case it did not) and I left the room. Unable to complete my quest to nap. Because, well, it was weird.

But the strange thing is, at "bed time", it isn't as weird. We all fall into bed and sleep on our own accord without really thinking of the other people in the room. So why is it so strange for me to nap in the same room as someone else?

The answer is simply this : it is just too intimate. Full stop. When someone says "come join in the napping party" with the lights off and all tucked in, I feel like I am being invited to a restricted, secret group beyond my understanding of what is right and wrong. However, if the same situation were to arise in a public area such as a park or a living room, I would gladly take my place on the floor or ground and cuddle up and drift off into the unknown abyss of sleep.

I know it is weird and silly but I tend to feel awkward in these situations. It's too intimate without being intimate. It is like we are cuddling without cuddling. I KNOW it's weird! IT'S WEIRD! It's like when you first get a new roommate and have to learn how to sleep in the same room without it being awkward. Good luck those first few nights of "do we say goodnight now? Or do we just leave it? Sweet dreams? AH, I don't know!" And good luck with the next morning "So how'd you sleep? Is this a good time to chat? Are they awake enough to smile? Good morning? BLARG!"

Being a chronic napper myself, I should be okay with this. I can take a nap in almost any situation. This should be no problem. But it is. Get over it. It is too intimate. Especially with the lights off and the door closed.