one long trip...and that was just getting here!

I am sitting here, all alone in the the Project House. A rare treat to be sure! Those of you that know me really know me know much I value my time alone to just mellow out. I love being on Project, but I have to savor these moments when I have them.

So tonight will be my first full night in the house since I didn't actually get to Fort Collins until around 2:30am last night/this morning. Yesterday was a crazy travel day for me and with out getting into all the gory details I'll just say I spent 5 unexpected hours in St. Louis waiting for weather in Denver to clear, finally arrived in Denver 6 hours late and then proceeded to wait another 2 hours to collect another intern from her flight which was also delayed. All total I was traveling from 11am eastern time to 2:30am mountain (4:30 eastern) yesterday. It was a LOOOOONG day!

One of the great things about travel delays (if there is a good thing about a travel delay) it's that it gives a person a lot of opportunity to get things done. While I was sitting for 2 hours in the terminal at St. Louis yesterday I actually wrote a post to put on here. It was all about friendships and how people hurt each other, ya da ya da ya da. Essentially, it was a very self-serving, passive aggressive bit of writing. Since I would have to pay $8 just to get on the Internet in the airport I chose to type what I wanted to say and save it as a word document intending to post it once I got to the house. I will not be posting what I wrote yesterday...at least not what I intended to post....

God has a funny way of working in my heart and mind. After spending 2.5 hours sitting in the terminal, we got to spend another 2 hours sitting on the plane on the runway...more fun. I decided to put that time to good use to read an article that Colby (the Project Director) emailed us. The article is called "Moving from Solitude, to Community, to Ministry" by Henri Nouwen. I have actually skimmed this same article the past 2 summers but this time I read it God really used parts of the Community section to deal in my heart with the post I had written just an hour earlier. After reading the article I wrote a little in my journal and I'm going to share that now:

Nouwen says, "With-in the discipline of community are the disciplines of forgiveness and celebration...What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is to allow the other person to not be God. Forgiveness says," I know you love me, but you don't have to love me unconditionally because no human can do that." To forgive others for being able to give you only a little love--that's a hard discipline. To keep asking others for forgiveness because you can only give them a little love--that's a hard discipline, too"

Hello, shot of humility. Humble pie for sure! I hear you Lord, loud and clear. I can acknowledge that I'm hurt, but I have to forgive imperfect people because we are all imperfect. It is hypocritical of me to call someone to task for behaviors that I myself exhibit. Trying to inflict pain because I hurt, that doesn't lead to community and it can only hurt my ministry. That isn't saying I should go back to being a doormat...but I should understand that imperfect people make messed up decisions. Imperfect people hurt other imperfect people. And since we are all imperfect we have all probably been at both sides of those exchanges at one point or other. It's not for me to judge or intentionally hurt someone. That wont make me feel better, at least not in the long run. All I can do is try to love the way Christ loves, imperfect as I am.