I was used to feeling lonely

I was used to feeling pain

But since He’s touched me with His Love

I’ll never be the same

.

I was used to feeling anxious

I was comforted by fear

Encircled by my restless thoughts

And holding worry near

.

Without these I was naked

I needed them to feel

Like the world wasn’t empty

Like there was something real

.

These impulses seduced my soul;

A friend as near as death

They mothered me and smothered me

With every passing breath

.

I didn’t really think

I could be loved, be satisfied

And so I banged at pots and pans

My loneliness to hide

.

Love caught me off guard, I didn’t

Expect to meet his eyes

He caught me in exhaustion

When I had fumbled my disguise

.

His kindness somehow made it past

My walls, and there it found

My desert heart, and with one drop

Of moisture wet the ground

.

As dry, as hard, as mean, as rude

I knew myself to be

That one drop stayed and each day made

Me thirstier for He

.

I pretended that I hadn’t seen

Pretended nothing changed

But inwardly I searched for ways

to taste a drop again

.

So one day, when I thought no one

would see, I went to spy

and meant to steal a secret glance

of Love as He went by

.

I didn’t know that when

I looked at Love, He’d look at me

And see the things

I never wanted anyone to see

.

What great pain and what delight

Came from that single stare

As if the fire of heaven and hell

Both made their  home in there

.

The fire burned me alive—

Or rather burned up all my dead

desires, bones and briers

Leaving me alive instead

.

Amazement, sheer amazement

Only Me and Love remained

And though I didn’t know it then

I’d found my lifelong friend

.

I’d felt a touch that made me feel,

My soul was full and free

I’d met someone who cared enough

To care for me—for me!

.

I was desert, but he watered me

He made my dry earth bloom

He comforted my weary heart

And loved me like a groom

.

And though sometimes I hear the knock

of fear, my frail old friend

I know that I am loved!

And I shall ne’er go back again.

Hello everyone!  I want to share the exciting news with you all that I have been accepted to be a part of MissionYear’s Arts Team in Houston, Texas.

Next September I will be living in Houston for a year in a house along with 4 or 5 other twenty-somethings. We will practice community living and hospitality. We will be living in a poor urban neighborhood, with a large immigrant population. We will be learning how to live out the love of Jesus Christ with one another and with our neighbors. We will be learning how to reach out to the community in practical ways.

My life dream is to be a missionary– someone who brings positive change to both the physical and spiritual landscape of the community. I believe this program is the next step in my journey.

In order to be able to serve as a volunteer next year, I will need to raise $12,000 of support. MissionYear will match up to $2,000 of what I raise in December. Please consider supporting me with any amount that you are able. You can donate online by going to my support page:

https://www.missionyear.org/support/scarletponder

To support me, just fill in my name (Scarlet Ponder) and Support ID Number (12-9006)

EVERY DOLLAR OF SUPPORT YOU GIVE IN DECEMBER WILL BE DOUBLED!

Thank you in advance for your love, encouragement, and generosity!

Join also my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Scarlet-to-serve-with-the-MissionYear-Houston-Arts-Team/316515688359662

Let me know if you would like to be on my email list to recieve the latest news on my journey

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’99 If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience…I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….You’re not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you

Sing

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium.

Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children,maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. Enjoy your body, use it every way you can…don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own..

Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.

Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you’re 40, it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen…

No one can get my oil for me,

I must get my own.

Nobody can dig this well for me,

I must dig my own

No one can pray this prayer for me,

I must pray alone

There is a wellspring deeper in me

Deeper than my most intimate friend can touch

Deeper than my father can reach

Deeper than my mother can know

Their words fall in like pennies

And the water below rises in anticipation

To hear them falling, falling, echoing

A sound that resonates and vibrates in my soul—

But the waters wait untouched

This water wants to live

This water wants to well up

This water wants to swell into a current

Unlike any other

This water wants to be drawn out

of its captivity

To be drawn out of this deep well

This damp dark well

This water wants to be stirred up

To be called Beautiful

This water wants to rise

This virgin wants oil

This woman wants to dig

This spirit wants to pray

Don’t let me die with my waters untouched, unmoved

Don’t let me perish a cripple

Who can never make it to the healing pool

God if I am honest with you, I am tired of being alone. I’m tired of it. I don’t want more sedatives, because when I wake up the demon is back worse than ever. I’m tired of being alone, but when I’m sitting alone, I don’t know where to turn my head to see you. I am too small, I am too smart. It goes beyond a loneliness that any person can occupy. When I reach my home at night, my heart is yet unsatisfied. To say, “the grace is sufficient”—sufficient seems so far away! And every time I pour it in the void it slips away. I have come to a place in my journey when it seems that no one is quite journeying beside me. Many are crossing my path, but few will walk beside me on the road that I must walk. It is a road that still frightens me. I need to find you in the secret place—buy where is that place? It is a secret! Yet you are always with me. Can I bear, when I feel you, near, watching, just beyond my shoulder, to turn and look you in the eyes? Can I bear to stand and look you in the face? I long to seek council from a friend, yet fear they will have none to give. The Councilor is the only who remains, the Friend the only I can ask.

God I am angry at you, because I feel like some of the times when I most desperately cried out to you, I heard no answer, I received no response. And I fell hard in my despair.

How terrifying to be alone with you my God, because there is no hiding place when I am hiding in you. I am naked. I weep for Ichabod and long for your light to cover my disgrace.

The world is too loud

To keep my prayers quiet

Wisdom crying out on sidewalks

Justice begging at the doors of city hall

Anxiety climbing my throat like a slender monster

Pacing my stomach and spinning the thoughts in my head

And my spirit pushing upward, pushing through the stopped up well

My spirit crying out for me to rise

My spirit hungry to slip into the chambers

Of the King of Heaven’s realm

My spirit knowing every day

That whispered prayers

Can tear a nation down or build it up

That spirit words

can turn suicide to hope

deception to sincerity

depression to creative zeal

anger to a well of healing tears

I know that every hour of prayer

Is a coat of oil

On my body

Igniting,

Burning off the old dead skin

I know that every hour of prayer

Makes me shine

A lighthouse reaching out

For shipwrecked souls

I know that every word

That I whisper to the King

And every word he whispers back

Strengthens me

Sustains me to my core

So that no war on earth

Can shake me from this passion,

From this place

Knowing this, how can I help

But seek His face?

A man who will sit at home with me while I work on bills and sorting papers. A man who will ride along with me when I need to run errands.

A man who will kiss me passionately but then stop before it goes too far and totally respect my boundaries

A man who enjoy passing time with me but will be okay with me moving across the country in 10 months.

A man who spends time in prayer and in the presence of God and who loves the word of God

A man who wants to do something bigger than himself and isn’t afraid to take on a challenge

A man who enjoys dancing and who knows how to lead

A man who challenges me and isn’t intimidated by me

A man who takes me on adventures that I would not have imagined (and I have a good imagination…)

A man who won’t think I’m crazy when I speak in tongues and pace when I pray

But then again, I may be expecting too much. Anyone seen a man like this?

April 2011:

Went to visit my Dad in Oakland.

Got a job at Logos Bible Software doing bilingual customer service. (So I get to use my Spanish more! Yay!)

June 2011:

Moved into my first apartment

Went on a trip to the Oregon Coast with the girlfriends

August 2011:

Started dancing salsa again with Rumba Northwest. I’m having a blast taking Salsa Rueda with Antonio and Heather, who are both fantastic dance instructors.

September 2011:

Named employee of the month for customer service at Logos

November 2011:

My beautiful and talented friend, Sarah Furler, officially moved in with me to stay until she goes off to film school. We have talked about being roommates since High School and I’m so blessed to have her!

to put on a face tonight

don’t have the heart to say

that things are black when they are white

You’ve gotta take your season when it comes

If you don’t take it, someone else will—and then it won’t be

your season anymore

now will it?

No more empty

I am full

I dream of a life

So free that its crazy

And then I start to cut the strings

And fall

Its full and fresh

I sink into the rushing air

And sleep like it’s a cushion—hazy

Recovering from hammers on my head

I’m slipping now

As I move like Jesus

Through the padlocked doors

And no one, no one can follow me in

A secret room

A hidden room

I’m safe

And I am free

~Scarlet Ponder

More and more I realize I can’t live without God. I can’t live without his Spirit. I hear his Spirit speak to me. I can’t apologize for that.

I realize that I absolutely love how God changes people’s lives, really changes there lives in a lasting way.

I watch people receiving prayer, drinking the words like a desert sucking up a monsoon. A desert so dry that it sucks monsoon after monsoon, flood after flood, like it has to drink the water down to the core of the earth. I feel the water coming, bringing relief. I feel it to as I start crying, realizing that I can’t be hard anymore, I can’t be sad anymore, I can’t or striving or wrestling no more. I cry and release and give in to all of the breakers and waves crashing over me. There are no words to express how His words release the secrets of my soul, how His words build me and pull out the dearest desires and direst fears.

No one can tell me prayer doesn’t work. Nothing else does. And just as my anger starts to build, just as I accuse myself again of being stubborn, of running from God’s plans—his grace floods me with tears again and I’m laughing hysterically at how much he loves me, like one who just found out that they’re not going to die.

I have no proof except my own heart. Jesus makes me free in a way that nothing else can.

Arise and Shine!

All hopes are new

Within this lovely morning

His winds have blown

His breath of life

To fill us with His Spirit

And His Truth

See His Life

Sun shining through the window

of our gloom

And making it as nothing

For his word has blown

All the dust away

He’s blown the dust away

And all that’s left of mourning

Is the light of gorgeous dawn

The dawn that rises in our eyes

As we lift our heads to see

His face

He is the one, the everlasting

Light-

Today is bright.

~Scarlet Ponder