thoughts – Thoughts from Blue Eyes

To all the boys who haven’t yet loved

Like many who love a good relationship drama, I adored watching Netflix’s To All The Boys I Loved Before. Armed with snacks and my best friend, I indulged in the sweet and quirky tale of high school romance between Lara Jean and Peter complete with a bubblegum color palette, fun music, and loveable supporting characters. I couldn’t wait for the sequel, and then, finally, the final chapter in this story which came out a few months ago right around Valentine’s Day.

It’s senior year, and Lara Jean is in a tough position. She didn’t get accepted into Stanford, her dream school that she and Peter had planned on both attending together, and now she has to figure out what to do. Attend college across the country at NYU, or choose a “safe” option and a college closer to home (and Stanford, and Peter). The ending of the movie was slightly predictable, but

To all the boys who haven’t yet lovedKaitlyn2021-05-23T00:03:19+00:00

valleys of shadow

It’s a quiet day at the desk here. I’m minding the phones but my mind is in a faraway place, pondering great human suffering and the broken, dismal bleakness of our world. I made the mistake this morning of reading a book I found in a pile our receptionist left behind. It is a fiction-ish narrative about a Holocaust survivor and I knew that it would be dangerous, one of those can’t-put-it-down novels that will leave me thinking down a hole and feeling heavy sadness for a while.

My heart shuts down at the brutality of human beings and the atrocious horrors experienced by real people in real time, fellow image-bearers who all had names and faces and favorite colors and loves and special talents and unique laughter. All I can say is, “Lord…?” There really aren’t words for such things.

In the darkest events of human history, it’s easy to shove

valleys of shadowKaitlyn2020-08-17T15:20:44+00:00

What I’m Learning from my High-Church Friends

[Note: This post begins a new shift in writing. During my time in Bible college, this blog served the wonderful purpose of assisting me in processing my musings about the Lord working in my life. I will still seek to honor him in all my writing, but now that I’ve graduated, I’d like to make my posts more structured and topic-focused.]

I am hardly a high-church type of person, although I spent the first seven years of my life in a place full of chant-y rituals, clerical robes, and passing the communion cup. That church, sadly, was a dead and cold place, and my parents left seeking Christ’s face in a church elsewhere. From then on, I have been fed and nourished in a series of Bible-based denominational and non-denominational Bodies.

In Bible College, I met my first Anglican friend. In a curious pendulum swing from our parents and pastors of our youth,

What I’m Learning from my High-Church FriendsKaitlyn2019-10-08T02:29:18+00:00

They held feasts in their homes on their birthdays

Tragedy comes in different packages.

It’s a suicide bomber at a Parisian concert hall. It’s a phone call that dad has brain damage from a slip on the linoleum. It’s a cursory glance at the Bible instead of a long drink. It’s an alcoholic beverage or a frosted sugar cookie or one more click on the computer even though you vowed to stop and “just do today” in God’s grace. It’s realizing that you got something really, really wrong.

For Job, tragedy was a gaggle of breathless messengers who delivered the worst news of his life. I wouldn’t ever be able to hear running feet the same way again if I had been him.

His life had been idyllic, blessed by the hand of God for being obedient. And yet, in his sovereignty, God destroyed his life: his children, his material wealth, his personal wellness.

Friends came, sat in silence for an eternal seven

They held feasts in their homes on their birthdaysKaitlyn2019-10-08T02:29:19+00:00

Travesty

Sometimes I read something and have to blink back tears.

Tonight I was scanning the news and saw an article about mass illegal immigration from Serbia and beyond through the Hungarian border to reach Western Europe. This has probably been happening for a long time, and I don’t ever pretend to be on top of things. But, tonight, the article was highlighted because of Hungary’s recent decision to seal the border with massive barbed wire and walls.

Accompanying this article was a brutal description of deaths: refugees found floating to shore from capsized boats in the Mediterranean, photos of little girls with hair tangled up in barbed wire, a freezer truck dumped at the border oozing decomposed bodies of Syrians who were trapped inside. They found a baby in there, by the way.

What is this dark world? Why? Sin? Evil? Travesty after travesty?

I can’t call it tragic because it’s expected. Sin has infected

TravestyKaitlyn2019-10-08T02:29:19+00:00

The cross is an instrument of torture. It’s the symbol of who we are in Christ, God’s love, his sacrifice, his awesome grace and cleansing blood. We wear it around our necks, paste it to our walls, build wooden versions of it on our church steeples. We see it so much….have we forgotten what it means?

Bible studies, sermons, small groups, fellowship, even communion and baptism….we have become desensitized to their significance and purpose. Our society has gripped the church and turned it into a selfish, experience-driven buffet that seeks to stuff us with bloated, boring, banal.

We are tired. We refuse to admit it. We are hungry. We don’t know why.

Oh, how the American church has lost its focus! Who can ascend the holy hill of the Lord anymore, as the Psalmist cried out?

Do we pray for Paul’s words to be true in our lives, that we might count everything as loss compared

TrendingKaitlyn2015-08-27T03:12:47+00:00

Brink

Sitting in the campus coffee shop with Corbin the Class President and studying for final exams is a strange deal. As I reflect on the ending of Year 2 and rain flops into the plaza, I’m reminded again of how time always flies too fast.

You blink, and it’s gone.

I’ve got several topics swirling around my mind: how we systematize too much, beauty as gift, intercessory prayer, motivations, grad school, frappuccinos. I’m thinking how adult I don’t feel even though I’m halfway done with Bible college and taking on more responsibility every moment. I’m memorizing the facial expressions and vocal inflections of those who are moving on. I’m praying that I may know Christ more each day.

Sometimes, I feel like this is a joke, or like I’m still 10 years old and will wake up in my pink Barbie nightgown one of these days to my dad making cinnamon raisin toast. There are

BrinkKaitlyn2015-05-09T00:34:18+00:00