This city

Yo, LA.

I gotta say: You are a stunning lady. Truly, a piece of work.

Curves and beaches that slide into Sunset, bright city light lips with neon licks. Stubborn chin, hands on your hips, with skinny jeans and hot street kicks.

You are the hub of culture, music, art, drama, fashion, and film. Props. Totally disproportionate in the influence you have on the rest of the world. Totally disinterested in a world outside your addictions.

I walk down your streets and they’re dirtier than TV says. I stand next to a woman of broken dreams and broken promises, dressing like Marilyn Monroe– wondering if she goes home and cracks open a beer, catches her face in the mirror and asks when Hollywood would give her a break. I watch a Korean ajuma with cracked hands that caressed a lover, son, daughter, sister, rummage through the garbage for bottles for change. An unwashed white woman tucks her knees and entire body in a tattered sweatshirt and raises her big sky blues to me to say eff off, spitting poison at my feet. I look at a black brother that waves a CD in my face with yet another “smash hit” that plays the same beats that we’ve all heard in the same place where Rodney King fell, shots rang, voices raise, and blood ran forgotten. I walk down your dirty, gummed, cracked streets and I hear traffic and conversations, sound and fury, signifying nothing. I walk past these black and whites into the between, into the grey: those with nothing and those with Nothing, the addicted and hopeless, the ignorant and the apathetic, the blind and the mute. I walk into your heart and I find that its broken. And I find that I am among your brokenness because… I am.

Jesus. You are.

You are the Strength in the weakness. You are Love to the broken. You are the Joy in the sadness. You are God of this city, of Los Angeles. And there is still great work to be done here.

¹²And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. ¹³Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. ¹⁴For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.  Hebrews 13:12-14

an overview of the year: my lips like suga

Looking back on the year, I can only say: He is so good and so faithful. Wordle says the rest.

Been reading a lot of Oswald Chamber’s lately and I give this a resounding high-five and my own parenthesized commentary:

“Joy means the perfect fulfillment of that for which I was created and regenerated, not the successful doing of a thing… we have all to find our niche in life (word, yo), and spiritually we find it when we receive our ministry from the Lord. (how?) In order to do this we must have companied with Jesus; we must know Him more than a personal Saviour…if you have received a ministry from the Lord Jesus, you will know that the need is never the call: the need is the opportunity. The call is loyalty to the ministry you received.”

I moved all of my belongings to San Francisco this past Wednesday– say whaaat. I left Urbana and my home of 4 years, tempered with unspeakable growth, deep friendships, comfortable relationships, and I am in blindingly sunny California, surrounded by lush foliage, delicious food, and people only over the age of 40. Huh?

True story: My life has been a series of logical, safe “next-steps” with an occasional side adventure.

New story: That’s over. Now, there are many logical next steps and many… next steps. I could skip a step, walk in place, or throw myself down the stairs– all feasible, all not necessarily bad, and all over-metaphored.

But as tempted as I am to flag, stop drop and roll over and sizzle with this step into a very temperate skillet of entertainment/media industry and law school, I hear the call of loyalty to persevere and hope with full assurance. His Word getting pretty dang sweet at the tip of my tongue– encouraged and drinking as much of it as I can.

Stayin’ loyal. Stayin’ joyful. Stayin’ faithful.