Lessons of New Orleans- My letter to the Pastors

There are events in our life that seem to change the course of our lives. Our life changing moments can be as big as the mountains or as subtle as a soft breeze. As these moments come together through out our lives we can God’s original intent for our lives. New Orleans was one of my life defining experiences.

As I spent two months in New Orleans I went through some of my most difficult challenges with myself. Once again I thought that I had figured God out. I had come to New Orleans thinking that I knew how this internship was going to work. Well I am sure God had a good laugh at that. God had other plans for me. There had been things in my heart that I was just willing to bury deep down and not deal with it, but in order to move on to the next step it was time to deal with my heart.

            Immediately upon arrival I was tested and stretched. I had never thought that I would miss my family as much as I did in the time that I was in New Orleans. Even though I missed them terribly after being home I wonder if the longing I had for them was more about the comfort and familiarity that they brought. I love them and have a deeper appreciation for them now, but in a city of the unknown nothing sounds better than going back to what you know. I knew going through with this trip would be preparing me for something that is yet to come. Being back at home has showed me that with God I really can be anywhere and go through anything because He is the one that carries me through it. At the end of every day my parents weren’t there, nor friends or family that had guided me though other life challenges. It was only me and God on this adventure. When I turned to Him or when I didn’t He was still the only one that was there walking through this journey with me. So even when it hurts, it’s hard and I really have no idea why I am in whatever new place; New Orleans will always be a testimony to myself that God will get me through anything and He is the only one that will never leave me. If that had been the only lesson that I walked away with from this trip it would have all been worth it.

            The amazing thing about God is that that was not the only thing that I learned! Going back through some of my notes I have seen so many more revelations than I thought that I had. I could probably write a book on how much I have learned, but for time and space I will share the things that the Lord emphasized. During my time at Household of Faith the Lord convicted me of forgiveness. He showed me how my forgiveness in the past had been shallow and that I was still holding on to so much pain. I also was shown how I have been a blessing stopper. I had never realized until then that a blessing is about benefiting me for only a moment, while that blessing really is supposed to move toward others that need to be blessed. It is something that I am still learning to live out.

            While being at Cornerstone Christian Center I saw that I need to make sure that who I am in ministry starts with who I am in my family. I cannot go and love other people’s families with out loving my own first. For a while now I believed that my family knew who I was and so it was ok that my attitude would slip more often than not. Now that I have seen that I need to be the same person all the way around. Our lives are not shows to put on for the world.

            At Crossroads I was challenged to find out who I am in Christ. This was probably one of my biggest challenges. It has been hard to accept the person that God created and chose. The truth is that regardless of the person I believe that I am I was chosen with no real explanation except for the fact that I am a mess. God seems to have a sense of humor because He likes to use one mess to clean up another, and even though it seems to make no logical sense to us it has worked every time.

            River of Life taught me to see people with the love of God. It is so easy to see people with our eyes which can cause us to miss great opportunities for God to work. It isn’t until we put God’s glasses on that we can love people the way He does. Unconditional. With out limits or requirements. Just love.

            In one very orchestrated by God afternoon I learned about the importance of relationships as well as the importance of reaching other nations. These are two subjects that I have always held close to my heart, which left me encouraged seeing a working example.

            Working through Kingdom Builders Ministry taught me about discipline. Often times I prefer to let things just happen because our plans never seem to work out anyway. Structure and order bring us closer to God because that is who He is. I have been far too comfortable allowing my life to be lived in chaos which tends to keep me away from God. The more disciplined that I became this summer the closer and deeper I felt toward God. It is definitely something I need to learn to keep practicing instead of letting just anything happen.

            These lessons flowed through each ministry that I worked with, however they came to life at these particular times. It really is hard to believe that the committee didn’t plan the flow and themes I came across this summer, but I guess that is what makes this experience so much more beautiful to me. Thank you each for your time and willingness to invest in my life. This experience will be something that I will be able to hold in my heart for the rest of my life. I love every one of you dearly. I am missing my New Orleans family already! 

Ephesians- In Christ

I am currently wrapping up my time at Crossroads Church with Pastor Jim Woodard. We had V.B.S this week and honestly it has been the easiest transition in since I have been here in New Orleans. It could have been that I have also seen them a few times prior to coming to help at their church, but what ever the reason it has been a good week. Last Sunday I attended church at Crossroads, and Pastor Jim was talking about how if we don't let go of the baggage and feeling of unworthiness we will never see God's will for our lives. This is something that I have greatly struggled with. I feel like I keep taking all the right steps toward this, but somehow I have managed to sneak my luggage in right behind me. When Pastor Jim said that we could miss out on the call of our lives it really got to me. I sat there in my seat as he continued and began a war inside of me. Will I continue to hold on to this baggage? Will I truly let this keep back? Then it switched. Is it really even worth going through? If I begin letting go of this junk it is only going to lead to more hard times. Is this life really worth moving forward and being  in God's will? Do I really want to spend the rest of my life doing this? Because I have already seen that this is a painful road. I could have died in that moment realizing these thoughts were crossing my mind. I knew in that moment I need more help than I thought.
 I went up to Pastor Jim and explained this battle. He told me it needed to be a mental choice and that I can't depend on emotion. Ok I have heard that before I need a little more to go off than that. He went on and told me two things that for the first time sunk in. First, I am not secure in my identity in Christ because then it would not be such a struggle to leave the past behind. Second, it is not about me. I might have heard something along the lines of the first one, but the second one was something that has been said so often that I think I became numb to it.  It is not about me. At first it was like well duh! I wouldn't be here in New Orleans if that were the case, but after we were done talking it began to sink in. All of this really isn't about me. Now I would love to say that this phrase got me out of my comfort box right away, but of course it didn't. Although, it has been a phrase that I continue to tell myself when I am faced in challenging situations.
 Well of course the chat was not the end of it. Pastor Jim gave me a homework assignment for this week. I was to read Ephesians 1-3 everyday and find all the "in Christ" statements that I could so that I could better understand who I am in Christ. Well I started the assignment by taking a chapter a day and pulling it apart. After the third day I saw that a had a few revelations, but I felt like I was still missing the point. So I decided to read it all as one. So I read through it once and didn't get much out of it. It wasn't until last night that I found something that just hit me so hard. Now understand this is the best way for my mind to comprehend it.  And this is what I received.
  Ephesians 1:17-19 was what stopped me but the focus is on verse 18 and a little of 19.
"I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe..."
As I have been going through Ephesians 1-3 this verse really hit me today. As I have been reading I guess I was never sure what I was looking for, but I think tonight I found it. God has put a call on my life, and not as a career path. Rather He has called me to be the daughter that he has created me to be. When I feed into my insecurities and the self-hatred and mutilation I am calling God a liar. I am saying that He doesn't know who I am, and continue to proceed to correct God and put him in His place. It is as if I deny Jesus altogether because if I deny Jesus in one area and am calling Him a liar how can he be God? It would be like degrading Him to human status. When I refuse to receive who He says I am I am refusing the position that He called me to fill. My call is to be God's daughter, to love the temple (body) that He gave me, and to serve Him with my whole heart. If I cannot accept who He has made me how can I accept Him? When I don't accept myself I am telling God " you did a shitty job here let me do it because you obviously don't know what you are doing." Not accepting myself is not accepting Christ because Christ lives inside of me. I am called to be Bianca Vianei Brodbeck and to the fullest extent of that meaning.
I am...
beautiful
kind
gentle
strong
loving
passionate
faithful
caring
compassionate
emotional
encouraging
merciful
forgiving
weak
human.

need a grip on reality

I had the strangest experience last night. Reality has been a little delayed and turned about since I have been here in New Orleans. It took me almost a month to truly realize that I was in New Orleans and that I was states away from being home. Then last night I tried thinking about when I go home, and the idea was almost surreal. I felt like somewhere along the way this became my reality and there was almost no real idea of going home. It was the strangest feeling, and I don't know why or how it happened. I felt a little trapped but not to the point where I would panic.The strangest part to this is that I am dying to be home, but I just can't picture it anymore. I don't know if that is because I have been going through such different experiences that home will never be the same as it once was. I truly don't know where it came from or why, but it really gave me just an odd feeling. Oh but how some days i am counting down until I return home. I must be honest I have been under some great conditions, only there is a longing of my home that i can't get over.
Well I have come across another lesson since this week. I have learned that I do not want to be a Pastor or the wife of one. I already had an idea of that, although this week confirmed it. It was just engraved even deeper that I don't want to do things the typical way. I want to be able to create and do things the way that I was made to. Don't get me wrong I think Pastors are phenomenal people I just don't believe that I am called to do be it. I also learned in this last month that I want to make sure that the person I am when I am ministering is the same person when I get home. I think to often I can just pass it off as if my family knows all of me and have to accept the good, the bad and the ugly. It just shouldn't be that they get the short end of the stick. I want people to be able to come into my home and see the same person they would out on the streets sharing the love of God. Now there will always be those days where it is just one of those days, yet those should not be a regular occurrence. I want to stand for what I believe in all the way around. I think that is all for this lazy morning ramble.

Both sides have arrived for battle this morning

Yesterday I was asked a simple question, "what do you want?" The question was delivered casually and had no hidden message. But as simple as this question was able to come out somehow as it enter in through one ear it became the most complicated question I have ever heard. Now this question was directed toward what kind of neighborhood I would want to live in when I grow up, but somehow this question must have already been on my heart. What do I want? Is the fact that I can't answer this question the reason why I have had such a hard time understanding why I am on this internship? I have no clue of what I want. So many great ideas come into my mind of things that I want to do, but so often they are contradicting.
There is constantly two things that I wan't but somehow they are always at a disagreement with one another. I want to see the world, but I don't want to leave my home. I want to live in nature, but I want to have technology. I want to swim, but I don't want to get my hair wet and have to do it over again! Okay so the last example is silly , but i feel like this is what my heart is constantly have to go through. I feel like I have two little kids inside of me that want completely different things and if I choose one I sacrifice the other. This is a very unhappy game to be playing because someone always gets the short end of the stick, and somehow it still is me that makes looses out on something. I want to live a quiet peaceful life, but i love the thrill of a busy lifestyle. I hate stress and thrive on it at the same time! I feel like I could have multiple desire personalities. (*side note- there are no voices in my head. Just thought that I should be clear on that before I move on.) I just don't know what to do with my life. And I know I am young and everyone says we have the rest of our lives to figure it out, but I greatly believe that your decisions today shape your life tomorrow and the life that you will lead. Yes, there is always those situations where something happens and your whole life gets turned around, but I would rather know what I am working for. The more I get closer to what I think I want the more I begin to realize that it is not really what I wanted. I feel like I keep chasing the illusion of an oasis in the middle of a desert, but every time I reach it the oasis changes and is in a different direction. I feel more lost now than ever. I want to live a simple life, but love the thrill of the city. Lord have mercy on the man that decides to marry me because he will definitely need it to think he can even keep up. There is a darn good reason why guys think that women are crazy and don't know what they want, and I am a perfect example. Every other post I am loving this trip and I am higher than I have ever been, and the ones in between are complete confusion and turmoil. I feel like I take two steps forward and five steps back every time. How the heck can I ever make it out of this? I feel like I am waging war against myself. With both sides hashing out everything they've got. Both sides are winning, yet both sides loose. I don't get it. I just feel like an absolute mess right now.

Dreamer's eyes

When we can't see what we are worth it is hard to imagine that the things we do are of worth. Sometimes it can be hard to see the forest as you are walking among the trees. I do believe that I can make things to be smaller than they seem simply because I can't see how I can be used in a big way. So in order to wrap my mind around it I need to shrink it, but the problem there is that when I make it out to be small to understand it I tend to leave it there. Now there is a danger in that because the smaller I keep the less it is able to grow. It is as if chains have been wrapped around the bud of a flower not allowing it bloom fully. The petals are pushing and fighting but the chain just tightens until finally the petals just give up and stay half developed.

Yesterday I spent time with Marla Jean and I was giving her updates on what I had been experiencing. I was telling her how this thought of not being able to understand why I was here kept haunting me. Now I don't know how the next part was supposed to help my argument, but I told her how I taught the last two days when I was at HOF. One was on worship and the other was on purpose. For what ever reason I began talking about the lesson and how I told the kids that sometimes things happen in our life that we don't seem to understand but that it plays out in our lives later on. As I started that sentence I wished I could take it back because the very point that I was trying to get across to the kids was the same lesson that I needed to learn. I guess I never saw this trip as being that big of  a deal. I never really thought that it was going to change me. I just thought that it was an opportunity to get away from the familiar for a couple of months. I guess I thought that this was going to be more fun and games than to be a real opportunity for God to work in and threw me.

So all of this coming to say that once again I can see why I am here. I had another what would be a bathroom revelation. *note- more and more of my revelations are when i am getting ready in the bathroom.* It was as if a light bulb went off and for the first time I started putting together the different dots that are forming this trip. Yes a huge part of this trip is to grow, but I am being put in front of some amazing people that can give me some fantastic advice for this merging dream that has become clear to me since I have been here. It has also showed me how things that I thought were different dreams have intertwined and are working together as one dream rather than two separate dreams. Seeing this has brought so much comfort this morning. It has also showed me that in this time I have so much to take advantage of because these people that I am here with are the people  that are encouraging and help build on those dreams.

Might be to honest but i needed a release

Tonight I truly want to cry. I just don't see what I am doing here. I don't feel like I am really serving all that much. Yea it's been great for me to learn about myself, but is that really why God brought me out all of this way was to learn more about who I am? Was this really disguised as a serving opportunity to only learn about myself again? If it is I don't like the idea of it. It is hard to see how my presence is making a difference in this place. I haven't done anything grand. I've just been here. How has my being here impacted other people? It is just starting to get frustrating. There is a part of me that never wanted to come, and i feel like it is growing. There are things that I am missing or that I miss about being home, and instead I'm with someone else's family. I just don't understand sometimes. Then Pastor was talking about how this trip was bigger than I could see. Honestly I couldn't see how that could be so. How much bigger can it be than I am here learning lessons that He felt the need to bring me all of the way out here for. I am not trying to be so negative it's just a little frustrating at the present moment. I must have a blindfold on because I don't see what Pastor sees. Since switching Pastors on Saturday I have just been counting the days until it is time to switch again. Just so I can switch again and be getting ready to leave again. Whirlwind comes to mind again. Where I should be so much more confident I am totally lost. It's just a little rough right now. This could be a little to honest so for that forgive me.

One church down, three more to go!

So yesterday I made the switch between Pastor Barriere and Pastor Jimmy. This last week seemed to fly by faster than I could even keep track of. What I realized is that last Sunday after we had the get together at Pastor Barriere's house with some of the members that I knew I started to feel comfortable. I let more of my personality come out with the people around me. But it was in that moment that I felt comfortable that things sped up. I also realized that by the time that I truly felt comfortable with all of my surroundings it was time to get up and leave again. As I thought about it I realized that this is how my life will be. God didn't call me to a life of comfort He called me to a life of obedience. I have a feeling that in my life God is going to put me in different places and the moment that I begin to feel comfortable is when it will be time to move on. As I thought about this the question of school came into mind because by the end of four years how could you not be comfortable, but then I remembered that there are a lot of things that at school that I might never be comfortable with.

Even though these first two weeks were rough they were filled with lessons and realizations that I am grateful for. Although I cannot name every lesson that I have learned there are some key things that stick out.

1. I have learned that I need to be more decisive and less people pleasing. I need to learn how to say what I want and what I don't want. Sometimes it really is more pleasing to others that I have a say rather than me to try and just give them what they want.

2. Learn how to receive a blessing. It has been very hard for me to receive. I love to give, but there was almost  a sense of guilt when I received. I always felt like I would be putting people out even if they were offering. I have been told and have learned that we are blessed to be a blessing, and that God is trying to get blessings to me as well. When ever I feel like I am putting someone out or denying someone the opportunity to bless me I am stopping that blessing that should be going through me, rather than ending right before it gets to me. Me being blessed could be just what someone else needs, but I can't give what I don't have.

3. Don't clam up in new environments. This is something that is a process for me. I have realized that when I am all alone in new environments with out someone that I know well it is hard for me to be me. It is almost as if I shut down and then take all of me and stuff it inside where i can hide. There is a huge danger in that because usually it is my personality that got me in those situations and environments. Also my personality might be just what is needed and could be a blessing. This one I haven't fully worked out yet as I realized today being at Pastor Jimmy's house with all of his family here.

4. Talk to everyone you never know what they are going through. TKim (the T stands for aunt) repeated this over and over to me in the two weeks that I was with her. She told me that where ever she goes she talks to everyone because it could just be what someone needed was to hear a friendly voice. I can be a little selective about when I do this, it usually depends on my mood which i need to break out of.

5. Understand principles. Our talent will fade away but principles will continue to stand. This first started with the WOW Jam and now I understand why they work with the pastors and catering people that they do when they enter different cities. Everywhere around me I have been hearing the word principles, and it is because people have seen that this truly is the only thing that remains standing.

6. Forgive. Now this has been something that I have been working on all year. Every time that I hear someone teach on forgiveness there is always a new understanding to what forgiveness really is. It seems to get deeper yet simpler at the same time. Pastor Barriere helped me to see how easy it is to forgive when we look at our wrong and we see how Christ paid the price for all of our mistakes. Then when we look at the offenses toward us it really doesn't seem that bad. Also when we hold onto that anger we miss out on everything else God is trying to give or work through us. Forgiveness is the key to all other blessings.



8. Nerves are good. It should never be easy to teach God's word. It should continue to bring some nerves before I go up because it keeps me in sensitive to what a big deal it really is as well as an honor.

9. Be patient you don't know all that is going on. To often I am quick to respond and to often it could be an unnecessary reaction. Especially when it comes to people.

10. Have value in yourself. It is ok to value yourself and hold yourself up with out being vain. God has placed a high value on my life so why shouldn't I do the same?

These where the top ten lessons that stuck out at me in these last two weeks. Along with lessons I have realized more of my hearts desires. I have realized that is so hard for me to admit the desires of my heart when it comes to certain things. It is really hard for me to admit that with all of my heart I want to be married and during a Bible study they talked about it and how we are wired with that desire and that it is nothing to be ashamed of.
I have also realized how much I have missed working in the food industry. Oh how I can be beat tired after being up all day at the kids camp, and still make it through a six to eight hour night shift at work.

As I was talking to one of the ladies that I met here she explained that it is my way of serving people. The more I thought about the more I realized the truth in this. It is my way of being able to take care of people and share my love of food with them. So the more I have worked the more I realized that I still do want to open a restaurant or even a catering business at some point in my life. It just brings me so much joy. Along with the idea of the restaurant I have also realized that I want it to be a place that I can help with more than just food. I want to be able to help people who have been in prison and are serious about turning their life around. I would like to partner up with a prison ministry and give people the opportunity to make some money and provide for themselves. The harder they work the more responsibility and hours they would receive. There are just so many people that have made dumb mistakes or were with the wrong crowd at the wrong time and place and are forever marked by it. I want to be able to cut them a break and help them out in that way, and show them that if I can trust them they can learn to trust themselves to turn their lives around. Of course this is all just a working process, but it is in writing now. Oh Lord this is truly a desire of my heart lead me to the place and to the people that I need to meet in order to see this through.

Well six more weeks to  go. Please keep me in prayer and I will continue to write when I can. Missing home.