Birthday

Today is my birthday. I typically love birthdays. I'm the one who usually thinks about my birthday a full month in advance. I love having parties but as a December birthday, parties are quite difficult to come by. Well it's that there are just too many parties happening that trying to fit a birthday celebration in the midst of them is never easy. I have had some great celebrations, I loved having friends over last year to eat pizza and watch Fast and the Furious, or when my students took ice skating, or when my college roommate planned me a surprise 21st birthday party.

But this year I wasn't ready to celebrate. I wasn't afraid of turning 28. I've actually been kind of excited to be in my late 20's. I just wasn't in the celebratory mood. A small part of me wanted to skip over my birthday because the last several months have been hard. There were things from this year that I just didn't want to celebrate. But in the midst of the hard things, there were many things worth celebrating - things that have brought me great joy. So on my birthday, as I turn 28 years old, here are 28 different things in which I am grateful for:

1. New friendships. 
2. Friends who sacrificed their time, their energy, and their sleep to be with me.
3. Travel and adventures. 
4. Encouraging text messages and phones calls 
5. Beds that are comfortable and safe 
6. Family and friends that might as well be family
7. Therapy 
8. Students who take risks and are open to Jesus transforming them 
9. Being outside! Hiking and long walks, going to the mountains and the beach 
10. Books and books and more books 
11. Beer 
12. Star Wars! 
13. Sharpie pens and journals 
14. Words that greet you like a friend
15. Donuts 
16. Mentors and supervisors who lead and develop me 
17. Easting, laughing, talking, and staying way too long at restaurants 
18. Running 
19. Thoughtful gifts and gestures 
20. Music 
21. Boba
22. Friends who let you rant, yell, cry, laugh, and sit in silence 
23. Travel and adventures 
24. Cameras for capturing beautiful scenes 
25. Scripture 
26. Watching movies with friends 
27. Hope for the future 
28. Another year of life

Life (30 Days of Gratitude)

November 1.

For the past three years I have done a 30 Days of Gratitude during the month of November. A student of mine got me onto to the idea back in 2012 and I've been doing it ever since.

Today is also Dia de los Muertos otherwise known as the Day of the Dead. This holiday predominately celebrated in Mexico and Latin America is a time where we gather to remember our friends and family who have passed on. I watched the movie the Book of Life (which you should watch if you have not yet) in celebration of this day.

While today may be the day of the dead, I have been reminded so much of life. Worship music songs spoke of God's power over death and promise of life.

"Sick are healed, and the dead are raised, at the sound of your great name." 

"Death could not hold you down. You are the risen king. Seated in majesty. You are the risen king!" 

In a world that has faced so much death lately - where in our country young black men and women are being killed what feels like on the daily, where immigrants and refuges are dying to just cross borders, where Christians in other parts of the world are being killed for their faith, where friends and family get cancer, where loved ones are struck by drunk drivers and killed in senseless accidents - it sometimes just feels like death rules our world. I'm reminded that Jesus promises abundant life.

I'm reminded Jesus is the conqueror of death. I'm reminded while Jesus invites us to die to ourselves, we are then given greater life in return. Even when we face so much death, I know it is not the end. So I'm grateful for a God who is bigger than death. We can have abundant life - both in the here and now and the life to come.

So today I do remember the loved ones that have gone - my grandfather, Rachelle, Senior Cuxil, and the many others. But I also remember that Jesus is the giver of true life and I am grateful.

Gratitude

These past few months have had a lot of unexpected difficulties. Some external, some internal but it's made it difficult for me to sit and write. I had dinner with an old friend today where we talked about writing and the great things it does for us in our lives. And I realized how infrequently I have been blogging lately. And not that I have a large readership that needs to hear every thought (but thanks Mom for still reading this!) but it's good for me. Good to be vulnerable, to be honest, to practice writing and continue to develop this skill, and to just sit down and be still for a moment.

So in this season of difficult moments I feel it's best to just share a few things that I am grateful for in this season:

• I'm grateful for music and an iTunes account full of the music I need to move my soul. 
• I'm grateful for friends who challenge me, who affirm me, who sit with me in moments of silence when I feel too much, who pray for me when I text them, who give me hugs (even when they don't like giving hugs), who listen to me ramble on while I verbal vomit, and who would be there for me whenever I need them. 
• For hard situations that force me to rely on Jesus and challenge me to be a better leader. 
• For a church that worships in such a deep way that I can feel it tangibly every time I go. 
• For a supervisor who since day one was in my corner and on my team. Who told me exactly what I needed to do and was always my advocate. 
• For all my students - every single one of them - who teach me daily to love others as Jesus loved others. 
• For parents who support my ministry and my vocation because I know who rare that can be in my line of work. 
• For a God who is loves me more than I can ever understand - who is crazy about me and wants to spend time with me, who speaks to me and sits with me, and who has never abandoned me. 
• For a car that can take me places where I need to go and for a place of consistent safety for me. 
• For a phone that connects to me friends who live far away or who are far away for the moment. For text messages, voicemails, and phone calls. 
• For books and stories that inspire me and challenge me. For language that speaks to the soul in ways I could never really articulate and for the magic within. 

So for the many people and the many things I am grateful for, I can end this night (or start this morning depending on how you look at it) with a full heart.

Gratitude Snorkel #3 (30 Days of Gratitude)

Today was one of those rough days. Those kind of days that as soon as you wake up, you know they just aren't going to be easy. Started with my car not working and then a lot of discouragement and disappointment followed. Coupled with a hard few days previously and a night previous of poor sleep and the last thing I wanted to do was say what I was thankful for.

But gratitude is a choice. Being joyful is not a feeling or emotion, it's a choice to see the beauty in ugly, to see the whole in the broken. So today I share what I am grateful for, knowing it hasn't been easy but that's ok.

So this week I am also grateful for:

• Yogurtland Adventures with Rachel and the laughter that always comes when are together
• Running 3 miles at a new personal best (under 38 minutes)
• Delicious pho, egg rolls, thai tea, and frozen yogurt. Yum! 
• Listening to rain fall outside my window
• Friends who let me borrow their cars when mine dies
• Seeing the vast sunshine driving from one place to another
• Heaters that use gas instead of electric (because we don't pay for gas at our apartment)
• Dinner and a fun movie to relax to
• Laughter and jokes
• Anything pumpkin related (ice cream, cupcakes, muffins, cookies, etc.) 
• Brainstorming ideas for photoshoots and books 
• Will Smith - enough said 

The Twin (30 Days of Gratitude)

Sol is my best friend. God wanted us to be in each other lives and I often have to revisit the story of how we met to know that is true. We shouldn't have met, it was clearly orchestrated by Jesus. We met at the Fresno Urban Internship back in 2010 - neither of us planning to go to FUI a second time, both of us wanting to be in other places, both having faced some hard rejection and trying to figure out our lives. We became deep friends during the six weeks there.

And since then we haven't lived in the same space since. That is hard. It is hard to have my best friend live 300 miles away from me. I was in SLO when she was still at UCLA. Then I moved to LA and she moved to Fresno. And our lives just get more full instead of less. And this is when the ugly beautiful returns - something that is so hard and difficult but that brings me closer to Jesus. It's hard to be joyful and thankful when seasons aren't easy but that's why it's a discipline to be thankful. Emotions are like the wind, they come and go in gusts and in breezes but thankfulness shouldn't be dependent on emotions.

I ramble. Probably unwise to post so late when I should be asleep. But as I'm in a season that feels full and my best friend lives far away - I want to remind myself why I'm so grateful for our friendship.

She gets me. She understands that when I need a cupcake that my world feels upside down and I really want to cry in a corner. She understands that I get easily excited over little things and joins me when I squeal over sloth socks or inappropriate magnets. She understands that I verbal vomit and talk in circles before I get to what I'm really feeling. She understands that birthdays are super important to me, because they are super important to her. She understands that when I don't speak, I'm not checking out but I'm too emotional for words. She knows what it means to be an InterVarsity staff work and knows what NSO, Myers-Briggs, GIG's, one on ones, MPD, Follow-Up, and all those IV lingo terms mean.

She challenges me. She reminds that the world does not revolve around me. She challenges me to continue to have grace for people, to forgive others and forgive myself. She brings me into her stories and her life so I may learn from another culture, from another perspective. She challenges me to see things outside of my persecutive, to never settle for less than my best, and to open myself to the ways Jesus is continuing to transform me.

She encourages me. She sees when I am hurting and sits with me. She grieves with me and laughs with me. She will talk on the phone about the things we are both looking at on Pinterest or will not hesitate to quote an entire episode of friends. She sees other people. She asks for their stories. She says hi to everyone, whether she knows them or not, if she doesn't know them - she gets to. She teaches me how to see the people around me that I would normally pass by.

She is my inspiration - risking a lot, putting herself out there, sharing her voice with others, and opening herself up to be transformed and used by Jesus in this season of her life. I'm so glad that Jesus brought us together that summer three and a half years ago. You are amazing. I love you girl.

Choosing Joy

I wish I could compartmentalize my life better. I wish I could put stressful or difficult or painful things to the side for the moment and just be present. Just be present in something fun, not to check out or escape, but perhaps for just the moment put it to the side.

During pain, or stress, or difficulty, it's hard to chose joy. It's hard because it's not usually my first instinct.

I'm learning.

One Year

"Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny." - C.S. Lewis

It is difficult to believe one year ago I accepted my position as an InterVarsity Intern at CSUN. Being on IV staff was not in my original plan for my life. I studied journalism but quickly switched to English to become a teacher in an inner-school. I imagined myself as Erin Gruwell, impacting students through the power of the written word and helping them find their own voice. But my first full time teaching job was a disaster, an experience that may have almost caused the death of my soul. When I stepped into this new ministry position, one I never would have imagined choosing, I had absolutely no concept what was in store for me.

Of course I had an idea about the culture of CSUN and IVMCF, enough to know that I wanted to work with these students. I was excited. I was excited to work with students who respected me, excited to work with InterVarsity, excited to wake up in the morning. This was feeling right. The "jump all in" tone was set for my ministry when literally a week after I accepted this internship position I was on a boat to Catalina for their annual Spring Break Camp. I met many of my students for the first time and many had no idea who I even was when I set foot onto the island.

When school started, however, I did not want to admit that I was still limping in pain from my teaching experience. I spent the last several months covering up the bleeding wounds to appear whole and healthy. I falsely believed it was more important to appear "held together" in front of students who experienced their own pain. They had suffered apparent neglect and abandonment. They felt passed over and unseen for such much of their InterVarsity lives because there was so little staff consistency around. When I entered the scene, they were tired and exhausted - just wanting proof that the Lord hear their cries.

I knew God heard them. I could hear their cries for staff, for mentoring, for discipleship, for love. I went in to meet the need that I saw. I stepped onto campus with a beating heart - a miracle after what I had just been through - and longed to see healing on this campus of brokenness and hurt. Jesus had every intention of healing these students but what I didn't fully realize, what I didn't fully see is that Jesus had every intention of fully healing me too.

This past year has not been an easy one. No healing can ever be easy. Those who go through physical therapy would be able to attest to this that after a damaging experience, there must be time to rebuild your body and strength. Jesus needed time to rebuild the strength of my soul. I started out in zealous excitement of my job - knowing how much better I seemed to fit into this role than as a middle school teacher.

Through working with my leadership team and my discipleship relationships - Jesus began to press into my hurt and pain. In October, when I sat with one my students during a moment of healing prayer, and I smiled after the moment was done. I felt a sense of joy that we pressed into the hard parts of her life and that she was wiling to go there. Jesus suddenly spoke to me and whispered: "Your breakdown is coming - and it's going to be bigger." I then braced for single moment of falling tears, snot mixing with sobs, and public humiliation that only red faced crying could bring.

But my "breakdown" wasn't a single moment, it was process of breaking down of my old self and a breaking through of the God-inspired, made in God's image self that I was always supposed to be. As God broke down my old wounded self - every issue of trust I ever had in my life began to rise to the surface as I felt overlooked by supervisors, by students, even by peers in my life. I felt the brokenness of a fallen world where people walk by invisible. God kept bringing himself to the surface - showing his own faithfulness, his own vision, and his own heart for my life as I remained consumed by the people who ignored me.

When stories like this get shared there is usually one climatic moment of change. It's good story telling, (it's what I attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, at one point to teach my 7th graders about plot) - every story has a climax. Truth be told, I don't think I've reached it yet. I've had many moments of small "breakthroughs" where I see the self that God has created me to be but God is still sifting through the shit I piled up from before - the lies I've let myself to believe about myself and about who God is. I look forward to the next year of my internship to see where God brings me then.

Eucharisteo

I find a lot of power in what a name means. I earned the nickname "Monte" back in my freshman year of college while in InterVarsity and it has been my name ever since. I love the name because it was my grandfather's nickname as well. It tied me to a part of my family. It enforced that I was a "Montecuollo", the only one in fact, at my school or in my neighborhood. Interestingly enough I found that the longer I was called "Monte" the more I missed being called "Melissa." Melissa was who I was, it was the name given to me at birth. Whenever I heard my own name used by someone who called frequently called me Monte I felt as if they saw the true person, not the persona I put up.

I'm not going to talk about my first name or my last. Today I'm going to talk about my middle name, Anne. I rarely acknowledge my middle name and I'm not sure why we even have them in the first place. I decided one day to look up what Anne mean and found that it is Hebrew for "full of grace." I was greatly taken aback because it seemed that in my life I was anything but full of grace. Full of energy, full of boldness, full of talking, sometimes even full of myself but rarely full of grace. I'm not quite sure what it is about grace that makes it so hard for me to comprehend or to give out. Perhaps it is because I tend to hold tightly to the deep hurts and wounds of my past. Perhaps I have too high of expectations of people and to little expectations of God. Perhaps it is because extending grace is actually the harder thing to do.

I have been meditating a lot about grace every since picking up the book, One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp. At the beginning, Ann talks about the meaning of the word grace. The word, "eucharisteo" is seen when Jesus, while at the last supper, took the bread and gave thanks. Literally he took the bread and "eucharisteo". Ann describes the word likes this:

"The root word of eucharisteo is charis, meaning 'grace.' Jesus took the bared and saw it as grace and gave thanks. He took the bread and knew it to be a gift and gave thanks. But there is more, and I read it. Eucharisteo, thanksgiving  envelops the Greek word for grace, charis. But it also holds its derivative, the Greek word, chara, meaning 'joy.'"

Grace. Thanksgiving. Joy. That was a lot of meaning for one small word but as soon as I read it knew that it would be my word for a while. How would I live out eucharisteo - grace, thanksgiving, and joy? How would I live a life full of grace rather than a life full of disappointed expectations? This is when I wish I had the answers laid out before me but I'm still journeying. I'm still learning and seeing but one thing Ann challenged me in is to take the One Thousand Gifts challenge - to make a list the one thousand gratitudes I have. It is hard, it is difficult but it just may be necessary to begin to live this life of eucharisteo.