Oh, it’s been a while! I’ve missed this blog so much, but with the holidays comes traveling (and a general lack of motivation). How was your thanksgiving? I know one thing I was thankful for was not eating cafeteria food for a little bit!

This Saturday I got to see my dear friend Molly Joy perform at Roots Cafe in Westbrook. Her 18-song set was all original, amazingly inspirational, and had me tearing up at points. The venue was cozy, and she got to perform for her close friends and family. Something so unique and special to me about MJ’s music is that when she sings with her guitar, my mind goes quiet.

Guys, you know me. Do you think I get to experience that often, if at all???

The wheels stop spinning. All my worst case scenarios quiet, if only for a little bit. I never get to experience this type of stillness in my head except when she sings. It calms me down like nothing can. All of her songs are so raw and real that I thought (famously, as I always do) “I could/should do that…”

If she can be real in front of an audience, then so can I. If she claims, so boldly in music with her FIRE voice I might add, that she is washed by the sea in calmness and serenity and is singing her life as an offering, well my friends…

So will I. 

Featured below is one of the few short stories I’ve written. Poetry is more my speed, but every once and a while God will wheedle one out of me. I wrote this during my first summer at Wind River. I hope it speaks to you. It is a story of denying temptation and killing the beast, the wild woman that lives inside me.

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Recovery

I sit in a room with 4 walls and no door. There is a high window that shines light in a tiny square on the floor. My only company is a hungry chained beast who hates the light and lives in the shadows.

Every night when the light fades from my room, the beast grows hungry and demands to be fed. He growls and pulls me close to him so that his claws rest on my belly. I have a choice, I always have a choice. Almost every time, I go to the locked drawer and get him his food. While he eats, I am safe. When I feed the beast in the night, I am satisfied. But when the light comes in through my window in the morning, I see the horrors of what I’ve done. I hate the nighttime.

This beast and I, we’ve fallen into a routine. He will make me feel good if I continue to feed him. So I do. But one morning, I hear a voice from the window say, “Stop, child. Do not feed the monster anymore. If you can stop, I will bring you out of your dark room and into the light of the wilderness.” The monster is hiding in the corner. He hates the light and snarls at the voice.

I decide to listen to the voice. I stop feeding the beast on that sundown. It is a hard night, but he is so fat, the worst has not yet come. When the light breaks in, the torment begins and lasts almost all day. The beast snarls and tempts me from the darkness and I cover my head with my hands and try to think of anything else. Another night is falling and the beast is getting hungrier.

Night after night, I fight the beast. I scream, “If I could only beg the darkness out of me, then it would pity me and relent!” as I claw my chest and toss and turn and wrestle and cry every night. But I do not quiver. I do not quiver. On the hard nights, I look over to the drawer and am so tempted to feed him. I’ve fed him for so long, and he has grown fat, and now I deal with the pain of starving this sinful monster until he is no more. In the day time, I sit in the square of light and try to be comforted…

The beast is emaciated now, and he whimpers in the corner. This is the hardest part, to hear his pitiful cries. See, I hate to admit it, but I still don’t want to see him go. He made me feel so good in the night. But he must starve, and he must die. One night, he breathes his last breath and in the morning, all that is left are the chains that once held him. The chains that once held me. All of a sudden, the fourth wall begins to shatter and crack, filling my room with so much light my eyes burn. I hear a voice say, “Come.” I leave my prison behind and step into this world where there is no darkness to hide in anymore.

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God is the light that will bring His children home. I pray you have a friend like Molly Joy who can give you peace in your head, and a God who will always supply you with peace in your soul-a blessed assurance that will lead us heavenward.

~J

“When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.” And you forgave the guilt of all my sin.”- Psalm 32:3-5

My heart and I have been doing a lot of reconnecting and talking lately.

I realized after lunch a couple of days ago with my friend Abby that my heart was in bad shape. Like, REALLY BAD. You want to know why?

I would beat my heart up almost every night, then seek God the next few days, where my mind is running fast toward Jesus, and I’m yelling at my poor, bruised, crippled heart hobbling along to catch up with us and run at our pace. Isn’t that hysterical??? I just picture my heart with a black eye and limping on this track, and I’m screaming, Get with the program!!! We’re moving along here!

And Abby told me so lovingly, Be gentle with your heart. 

I’ve been trying ever since. It’s not as easy as it sounds. I’m not going to lie-after 2 decades of suppression, letting all the pain and emotion out is ROUGH. My body is going through hell this season just trying to figure out what to do with these things called FEELINGS and EMOTIONS and CONTROL ISSUES. But in the best way possible, because I know Jesus is teaching me all this for a reason.

So, what does this have to do with pudding, you might ask?

Well, I’ve been realizing that I can’t just say, it’s OK, everything is fine when it’s not. Jesus will literally not allow me to stuff anymore into a bursting heart crying out for relief. So if I can’t stuff, I’ll try to distract or replace. As I just mentioned, control has been a huge problem of mine. And not just recently, but for the majority of my adult life. A lot of people don’t know this, but in addition to living through self-harm in my early teenage years, I am also a recovered/recovering bulimic. That’s not uncommon, though, for self harm to be paired with an eating disorder. At the root of both of these things is a desire to regain control. If everything around you is falling apart and out of your control, and the one thing you can control is your body, that is where you will turn. I think you would be hard-pressed to find a girl who did not struggle with some kind of eating disorder for some period of time in her life. And I say recovering in addition to recovered because although I am free because of Jesus, I suspect that control (especially in these two forms) will always be something that Jesus and I will have to walk through for the rest of my life. These things don’t magically go away.

I got done with Nav Night this past Tuesday, and felt really lonely. I don’t know why, I just did. That tends to happen to me after a lot of Nav Nights. But I sat down at my desk, and started to talk to God about it. I even started to try to convince myself that everything was fine, and to eat a pudding cup my roommate very graciously offered to me when I asked if anybody had any chocolate.

(Point of information-I am going dairy free for a while to see if cutting out dairy will help clear my face from annoying acne. So I am NOT supposed to be eating a pudding cup, and I’ve been doing really good this past week since I’ve started about not eating all the delicious things I so desperately want to eat)

Now here is where things get dicey with me. I really want to be disciplined in this, but me analyzing (quite a lot, I’d say) about what I eat starts to get into some gray area into my heart of if this is Jenna starting to try to regain control in her life again. Not to mention, with food, something I already struggle with.

So I’m kind of at a loss, or a crossroads, if you will, right now. I’m working on talking gently to my heart, and processing things in a healthy way. Self denial is a good thing. Jesus advocates for us to die to ourselves and pick up our cross. But I know myself, and I know that I have a tendency to go way overboard with things until I’m spitting water out of my lungs and begging for someone to throw me a rescue line. I pray that God will lead me through this season, and that I will come out a better person on the other side. I don’t love who I was trying to be these past few years. I want to be better.

And, you ask, did you eat the pudding cup Jenna?

No. I sat down and wrote this post instead.

~J

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid”.-John 14:27

I know it’s daylight savings time, but does it really have to get dark at 5:00 p.m.?! As a morning person (they do exist, you know) the night time is hard for me. I feel like my day is finished when the sun goes down, and there are no more opportunities for fun!

Obligatory rant on how early it gets dark in the winter in Maine over.

I promise I won’t exclusively write about Sundays all the time, but honestly, the rest of my week was kind of boring compared to today. Just LOADS of studying for chemistry and environmental planning midterms that I finally took Thursday and Friday. I even had to stay in during Halloween and continue to study! Not that I wanted to go out and party or trick-or-treat, but it would have been nice to have the option instead of being up to my eyeballs in stereochemistry.

Today was awesome. I got to talk to all of these girls in succession.

1. Rikki!

Rikki is such a living, breathing, walking testimony. I loved getting to sit down with her today for lunch after church and literally hearing the oodles of things that God has done in her life and is continuing to do. We get to talk so openly to each other. I think once our friendship started to really develop after she accepted Christ at Navs Winter Conference last year (a story for another day) we went off the assumption that there was going to be no BS. And I love that, because every time I get the chance to talk to her, I get to be real. That’s something I wish I could do with everybody-I’m working on it.

2. Allison!

Allison is my forever poop scooping buddy.

Allison and I’s first impression of each other was a way-too-intense, over-the-top, game of racquetball together at the Sports Center of Estes Park, CO during staff training week at Wind River Ranch. She is someone who pushed and challenged me all throughout this summer. She is such a strong, on fire follower of Jesus that I was kind of taken aback by her at first. Allison is fluent in Spanish, studying Spanish education, and hopes to do missions one day. But I think the thing that really showed me her heart was when she taught a bunch of us white girls at the ranch a salsa routine she learned from her time abroad in South America.

I think our dancing must have been so offensive to someone who actually knows what they’re doing, I can’t imagine what it was like to watch us. But she laughed with us the whole way through, had incredible patience, and organized the whole thing herself.

3. Gabrielle!

Gabrielle, Rebecca, her sister, and I at a square dance night we hosted at USM last year

This one was a chance meeting, actually! I got locked out of my room while doing my laundry, and on my way down with the RA, I ran into my good friend Gabrielle who likes to hang out in my building and study. She usually has a couch that she sits on, but they moved all of them out of the common areas on the floors, so I invited her to my couch, and we got to hang out and catch up as well. She is such a sweet spirit and a joy. Her laugh is contagious and you cannot help but smile when you talk to Gabrielle.

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I was bemoaning earlier this year how a lot, if not all, of my good christian girl friends had moved off campus and were no longer around. Today, God showed me different in 3 unique encounters with some very beautiful friends.

Go tell someone they matter to you this week, and why. You never know the impact it can have. You know me-I’m a words-of-affirmation kind of girl.

~J

Oh, what a week it has been!

I had a very strong intention of putting an intro/prayer request post up before our annual Navs Fall Conference that was scheduled for October 19th-21st. However, the week before the conference was absolutely CRAZY! So now, I’ll just tell you about it and all the amazing rollercoaster times we had this past weekend!

First off, my best friend in the whole wide world, Lauren, came up once again from New York to hang out with us Maine-ahs for the conference. This is so special to me always because I get to invite a person from an older walk of my life into what is happening now. She stayed until Tuesday for Nav Night as well, and I just finished clearing out the air mattress in my room. It felt amazing to open the door and actually be able to step on the floor! All that being said, I am so amazed at how God moved through her and my friends the whole week-ish that she was here. Be on the lookout for an album of Lauren and all the incredibly talented musicians she has met up here in Maine titled “Buffalo Plaid” that will be coming soon.

I mean, not really, but wouldn’t that be hilarious?!

Lauren and I, circa age 15, at a youth retreat we would attend in high school. We were such babies!

 

The conference itself was amazing, of course. Our main speaker was a fellow from UMass Amherst college, the campus director in fact, named Pierre Willems. I have never met such a funny and engaging speaker before. I’ll admit, I was a little apprehensive because this year, for the first time, it was someone who I had never had any connection with. But Pierre blew it out of the water with real teachings on love, trust, and relationship with God. Thank you dearly, Pierre. You led us students here in Maine well, and we can’t wait to see you for Winter Conference soon.

It’s moments like these that make my heart just burst.

The beautiful camp we stayed at, China Lake Conference Center

Laughing around the fire with Jeff and Jeremy!

The boys love Tucker!

The main hall where we heard from Pierre, laughed at Tucker’s shenanigans, and worshipped the Lord!

The prayer room is a room open 24 hours for all three days of conference. Students sign up for slots in pairs to meet with God, be still in His presence and hear His voice, and journal and draw and wrestle with things in a quiet and peaceful setting. It is always one of the highlights of the conference.

This was just too good not to post!

Maine Navs are strong people on fire of the Lord, and don’t you forget it!

Some big and small highlights of the conference for me personally-

1. Getting to find healing from circumstances in my life, and having the safe space to do so, surrounded by a staff that is so loving and real and willing to get down in the trenches with college students who are absolute shipwrecks, as me and my friend Paula from UMaine Orono put it. I had forgotten the cross, all it stood for, and I have gone very far from the reality of the grace I am supposed to be living in, choosing instead to carry my shame, my sin, my mistakes on my shoulders instead of giving it to Jesus and accepting His overwhelming, reckless love. Boy, did God remind me of His love that night. Here is a video we watched Saturday night that absolutely captivated my heart, because believe me when I tell you, I am Barrabas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwX_EpNR4CA

2. The opportunity to see my friend, Priscilla, Saturday afternoon was probably my favorite part of conference. Although we worked only about 100 miles from each other in Colorado this summer, we have not seen each other in 6 months. But once we were alone, we picked right back up from where we left off. It is crazy how similar we are! I know that when I’m with her and I say “you know?”, that she knows exactly what I’m talking about, and I with her. It is one of the most special things I have ever experienced in my life. We sat on the hill peering over the camp and the lake, looked out on the three crosses that stood there, and just talked about life in the cool of the afternoon. Have you ever had a friend like that? Tell me about it in the comments!

3. Getting to reunion with old friends and meet new friends from Maine Maritime Academy and UMaine Orono, the other two campuses in Maine that have collegiate Navs. Opportunities to see these friends are scarce, as a drive up there is about 2 hours and we all have very busy lives as college students. But getting to hear how they were and how their campuses were doing was a privilege. I look forward to connecting with them again at Winter Conference.

4. I have not laughed like I did on Friday night in a LONG time. A group of us girls from all the campuses were sitting at a table and just laughing our tails off at our worst/most embarrassing injuries and bathroom/intestinal disasters on the various missions trips we have all taken. I felt like I was 10 years old again, making poop jokes with my best friends. But I swear, my sides were splitting by the time the night was over. I will treasure that time when the days seem monotonous and dark and joy is hard to come by.

All of this to say, it was an amazing weekend. I am looking forward to the days and weeks ahead living in the remembered freedom, and hopefully passing this next round of midterms.

Please pray for…

1. New girls to be intentional in starting to form discipleship relationships with me as God has already placed on my heart quite a few young women who seem ready to enter into a new part in the faith walk. Pray that I will hear the will of the Lord and that He is preparing their hearts for a leap of faith into His arms.
2. The USM campus and the other colleges in southern Maine and New England. We have been starting to notice how the enemy works in this time of year, with the weather getting colder and Halloween-time exploits, that he has a sort of reign over students in October and November in the Northeast as many start to explore and play with the occult and the spiritual forces of evil. Many who live on campus have reported feelings of tiredness and overall heaviness/depression recently. However, we know the victory is won, and that the enemy is NOT WELCOME here. Jesus is, and He is ready to make this community His people.

Grace and peace be with you all. Go enjoy a cup of apple cider before all the trees are bare.

~J

Disclaimer! If you are not OK with cringe-y poetry, click away now!

I get to be vulnerable here in this post. Oh boy! Today I’m gonna show one of the first poems I ever wrote, and one of my more recent ones written this summer. We’re gonna compare and contrast and commentate on them! This was inspired because over the weekend I sat down at my computer to transfer all the poetry I had in my journals onto my computer, including all of last year and the summer. It was a 2-hour process, and all throughout I was looking back on my old stuff and truly I tell you I have not stopped cringing. I know my first one is bad. It is taking a lot of my courage to even post it here. But I think it is so important to reflect and see how far you’ve come on things so I’m gonna put my brave hat on today.

I don’t know what I would have done if I did not start writing in high school. It quickly became my biggest creative outlet, even surpassing art. I started referring to myself as a poet first, artist second if you can believe that. An annual poetry slam that my high school did called “Java Jive” was my first inspiration. I saw those poets get up there and perform and thought to myself, “That’s not so hard, I could do that!”

Famous last words from anyone who knows me-“That’s not so hard, I’m gonna try it!”

Needless to say, I was hooked, and haven’t stopped writing since that night freshman year of high school. It’s been a long and ugly but rewarding process. I got many poems and even my college admissions essay published nationally, and performed my poetry at readings and slams all throughout high school. Now that I’m in college, the opportunities to share have slowed down quite a bit. But my writing has only increased. Let’s get to the poetry shall we?! I’ll post both and give a commentary on what I think about them under each.

“exhale”

What’s wrong?

Just breathe out

It’s not that hard

You know what to do

Do what’s right or do what’s wrong

The decisions yours

So you choose wrong even though it’s bad

But is anyone stopping you?

You just have to relax!

But I can’t

Because it’s hard to fall asleep

Asleep is how I feel

Because every word I say to you is pain

Pain is stopping you from exhaling

When are you going to realize that this was your problem all along?

All you have to do is breathe out

It’s not that simple

It’s just not that simple

Simple is holding your breath

Your gonna die

But wasn’t that the point?

Point of what?

Point of a knife?
Or maybe a scissor that cuts through the air when silence fills it

It doesn’t matter

It doesn’t matter

Matter is in everything in the world

The world, your world matters to me

Me? I’m paralyzed by the thought of losing you and the fear of you coming back

Backs are stabbed, shots I will take

Take a deep breath

But don’t forget to let go of it

It matters to me

YIKES! This was written my freshman year of high school, and after a pretty traumatic and defining moment in my life. So you would think it would have a little more direct and passionate of a voice instead of so passive and “ethereal”. UGH! I was so incredibly vague, you can’t even tell what I’m trying to write a poem about. I thought I was so clever using the last word of every stanza as the first word in the next, as well. This was the poem that started the train, and 5 years later, I have not stopped. Here’s one written this summer for comparison.

“6/21/18 (or On the Hitching Rail)”

Four cowgirls kicked their

boots on the hitching rail

what I mean is

The river ran through like conversation

the little stream the cat drank

out of before bed.

And it’s crazy how honey words

can get so lost in a rugged valley

Sink away like the sun behind the mountain does

Oh, these are the days, the cool summer nights.

What I mean is

girls can have a conversation anywhere

In a laundry room

on the barstools

even on the butt-splintered fence line…

Ahhhh, much better. It flows, there is rhythm, there are poetic devices, imagery! Sweet imagery! There is a clear reason for writing this poem, and a style and a proud voice behind it-not one of a scared girl hiding behind poetry. Well, I won’t kid myself, because I hide behind my poetry all the time. At least now I can write well along with it, though. I’m working on being honest with myself. Recently I realized I had been lying to myself about something for quite some time. But when I looked back on the poetry that I had written, and the poetry I chose to listen to, it became clear to me what was really in my heart.

I do not lie on paper. Only to myself in my head. So if I never get out of my own head, I will be stuck in a cycle of lies. That is where poetry comes in.

I hope you at least once in your life try to write poetry or fiction or such. I loved encouraging the girls I worked with this summer to write. Amazing poetry came out of girl’s staff this year at Wind River Ranch. Even if you think poetry isn’t for you, give it a shot! You will be surprised what comes out of it.

And what can come out of it 5 years later…

~J

What is on my mind on this beautiful fall Sunday in Maine? 3 things of course…

1) A place that has absolutely captivated my life-Wind River Ranch.

This place is so special. It is a christian family dude ranch out in Estes Park, Colorado that specializes in family ministry and restoration in the beautiful setting of the Rocky Mountains, as well as inviting veterans, first responders, in-need families, pastors, and missionaries, and sex-trafficking victims to stay at the ranch basically for free. Wouldn’t you know it, but two years ago in my freshman dorm this yankee girl ended up living right next to a real-life cowgirl named Gabrielle who worked there for FOUR YEARS! One night at a potato party (you know you live in Maine when people get together and eat potatoes for fun) I asked her what she did over the summer and she said she worked at a place called Wind River Ranch in Colorado. I thought that was pretty cool, applied after my jaw dropped looking at pictures of the place, and actually got hired to be the videographer and to start in May with ZERO prior videography experience. Ever since, my life has never been the same. The same goes for all the families and young men and women that go to the ranch to vacation or to work on staff. Now, I am a part-time cowgirl and can ride horses, rock cowboy boots, and know what it means to work really really hard.

My boss and summer dad, Aaron, said to me before I left that he wished I could stay for Autumn up in the mountains, and I looked longingly up at Longs Peak shrouded in clouds and said “me too.” My time there was only for the summers, and God blessed me with two of them. Some stay to work into the fall, but alas, school. When school starts, it’s hectic enough where my mind doesn’t wander back to the mountains so much. But once things start to settle down and get cold, it’s like the wind that blows over the ranch comes all the way to Maine just to whisper to my heart how much I love that place and miss it. The fact that I might never see the aspen trees turn golden yellow, or to feel so free on my favorite horse loping through our front meadow in the afternoon, or that I might never see some of the friends I made there over 2 years ever again truly makes my heart hurt. Being on staff was truly a once in a lifetime experience. Where else can I go and eat, sleep, work, play, cry, laugh, and sing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for a whole summer with 35ish individuals who are completely different from me, yet have everything in common like the early church in Acts 2:44. To all my WR friends, I am praying for you, and love you so much more than you will ever know…

My ABSOLUTE favorite picture I have taken at the ranch-thank you Ashley for being a gorgeous sunset model for this picture.

I think the most beautiful girls find their way to work at Wind River.

Julie and I after getting into the lava cake batter as Friday night servers!

Jori and I sitting in the barn loft looking at this beautiful place and savoring it. This was taken on my very last day at the ranch, like literally my shuttle to the airport was coming in 2 hours to get me.

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2) Something that takes up an awful lot of my time and heart-Navigators!

No seriously though. Don’t join Navigators if you’re not ON FIRE for Jesus. We don’t mess around. I’m in the collegiate branch of the Navigators at USM, and boy, am I glad I joined when I got here. This group has been REVOLUTIONARY to me. Here, they taught me what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, of those older than me, and how to disciple and care well for others. I am even going to join Navs staff in 2 years when I graduate to do EDGE ministry. To go back and disciple other girls to Jesus, and to be on fire for Him and incite change in one of the darkest places in America-college campuses. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ anymore, but ‘when’. How God called me to that and what my mentorship relationship is at the moment is a story for another day.

We have started the year and are hitting the ground running at USM. Nav nights are steadily populating and as the craziness of the first few weeks of school start to die down, we are providing a safe place for on-campus christians to find community, as well as inviting our non-christian (yet) friends to come and see who this Jesus person is. Since I am the president of our group and a student leader, expectations for me are held high, as they should be. I not only accept that challenge, but welcome it. I know underclassmen are looking to me to be a solid person in this time of transition for them away from home maybe for the first time and into college on their own. And so I shall be. There will be days when I fail, surely, but it is then I look to my fellow student leaders to lift me up and come alongside me, so that when I leave this campus in 2 years, there will be people who have been made better because they met the Jesus that lives in me. Would you join me in praying for my campus and ones like us all over America? That God will show me the girls who are ready to be discipled, and that more and more will come to know their Savior every semester? More updates and prayer requests on Navs at USM will surely come as we move on into the semester…

Our 3rd week of Navs at USM right now playing “Luke, I Am Your Father”

No explanation necessary…

One of the highlights of my times with Navs so far-the girls retreat weekend of April 2018 where we stayed in tree houses, learned about identity and got real vulnerable with each other, and baptized one of our girls in the hot tub!!!!

Navs Xmas party Dec. 2017!

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3) Benzaldehyde!

Haha, not just benzaldehyde, but all organic molecules. This semester, I am FINALLY finishing up the necessary chemistry classes for a B.S. in Environmental Science. After passing a whole year of General Chemistry, I am now into Organic Chemistry I. DUN DUN DUN!!!!!!

In all seriousness, this is probably the hardest class I will take here at USM. Organic Chemistry is an infamous GPA murderer across the nation. However, I am working very hard so I can pass this class and the 4 hour lab that comes with it, hopefully with grades that will not tank my GPA, and move one step closer to graduating college. The funny thing about chemistry though, is that God has actually on several occasions spoken very clearly to me through it. I did not take chemistry in high school at all, and when I got to college, I was at a huge disadvantage. It was/is the bane of my academic career, but He uses what I learn in the class to illustrate things to me in a way that makes sense. I wish I could explain it better or try to give an example, but I fear I might either be blasphemous or chemically incorrect, so I will refrain. At this point in my life, I don’t know which one is worse. Please keep praying for me as I’m going to need a lot of support to get me through this class!

EW!!

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I’m thinking posts will be at least weekly, but if there’s something really cool going on, we might do two a week or so! Shalom for now!

~J