Wide awake and dreaming

I had your heart, I healed it, I filled it with hopes and dreams.  Then you took it back.

Because you were breaking it!

You’re breaking mine.

Do you love me Jacob?

I don’t know.

Do you love her?

A pause.  Yes.

Would you give her your heart?

Another pause.  Yes.

Then give it to me.

 

They will call on my name, and I will answer them.  I will say, “These are my people”, and they will say, “The Lord is our God.” – Zechariah 13:9

You have planted much, but harvested little.  You eat but are not satisfied.  You drink but are still thirsty.  You put on clothes but cannot keep warm.  Your wages disappear as though you were putting them in pockets filled with holes! – Haggai 1:6

That is why the Lord says, “Turn to me now, while there is still time.  Give me your hearts.  Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning.  Don’t tear your clothes in your grief, but tear your hearts instead.”  – Joel 2:12-13a

Battling Normal (a series of thoughts)

Act normal.

Look normal.

Be normal.

What is normal?

Conforming to a set of generally accepted standards and ideals.

Am I normal?

I hope not.

What is a normal person supposed to look like, act like, talk like, be like?

Can I run away from the media?

I do not like their concept of normal.  I do not like the woman they wish me to be.

“By narrowing to the extreme at the ankle, they made curvy women look like upside down gourds. Hideous. Instead, opt for pants with a straight leg from the thighs to the feet or a slight flair at the bottom. This will actually balance your hips and make you look sexy and normal.”¹

sexy and normal != gourd?

Poor gourd.  Hurt feelings.

Sex sells, but it doesn’t have to.

Normal.  I am not normal.

Hideous.  Yes.  Hideous I am.

Unloved and unlovely.

Yes.

No.

No.

No.

No.

Look again.

Look beyond the world.

Look into the eyes of the mirror.

You do not define me.

You do not define me.

You do not define me.

You do not define me.

Beautiful.

Yes.

Beautiful.

If I told you I spent the first eighteen years of my life believing that I was unlovely and unlovable, what would you think, how would you respond?

Eighteen years is a long time.

What if it had been thirty?

Or forty?

What if I had lived my whole life believing it?

Conform to this image, to this ideal, and you will be beautiful.

No.

It is merely another mask.

There is no easy fix.  No quick solution.

How I wish there was.

Everyone deserves to know how precious and how beautiful they are.  Everyone deserves to be loved and to know that they are loved.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.”  (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

“You make everything glorious… What does that make me?”  (Everything Glorious – David Crowder Band)

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¹Shine (emphasis mine)

Weird

When did my love life become so interesting?  Heck, when did I even get a love life?  I was never even asked out until I was eighteen.  That relationship lasted two years, ending just this past May (in reality, my half of it ended almost a year before that).  Now he wants me to make the promise that if he’ll do his best to change, I’ll give him a second chance come Christmas.  A compromise.  I don’t compromise issues of the heart.  I’m happier and healthier without him.  I started my job the last week of May, where I became friends with a co-worker who offered to set me up on a blind double date with one of his friends.  The friend is a wrestler and Texan, with all of the manners and charm one would expect.  To say that there is chemistry and a mutual interest would be to put it lightly.  A week and a half ago I received an e-mail from a young man with whom I have done some theatre work.  Out of the blue.  Or, as he put it, out of left field.  He wants to hang out and get to know me better.  And is rather determined.  He may well be interested in nothing more than friendship, but that’s not been the truth of my experience.

May I have my old “buddy and study help” status back please?

Now I Become Myself

So the following is something I wrote first semester of my freshman year and posted on Facebook. Since then, a couple of my friends have read it and left comments expressing great confusion over what I was saying.

What do you think?

Well, call me a traitor if that you will, but I have found a reading from the Intersections book that I like and that makes sense. It’s “Now I Become Myself” by Parker J. Palmer. And so I muse upon it:

That is quite a bit to chew on. Yet it makes perfect sense. It makes sense that we were not created to become, but that we were created as we are to be. If God is outside of time, then he can see the entire continuum of human existence. We are contained in time; therefore, we see things as past, present, and future. What we see as broken by time, God sees as one large present. I AM. It is all happening now. It is difficult for our time-constrained minds to grasp this, but I think it is true. To God, we do not become, we are. To use Palmer’s example, one is not created to become a writer, one is a writer. The fact that we are contained by time makes it seem as though we are becoming. Therefore, we spend so much time focusing on what we will be, that we neglect who we are. We are so buried under the will and needs of the world, allowing the world to dictate to us who we “are” and who the world wants us to be, that we lose sight of who we truly are, and indeed, whose we are.

“Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces…”

Worn other people’s faces….. I can identify with that. How many times do I feel like I am wearing a mask, someone else’s face? Take a good look. Is that really me, or someone that I am trying to be? And yet that mask is so hard to peel away. Peel away like an orange to reveal the fragile center. Or perhaps an onion, to reveal one more layer of the world that I’ve clung to. When you’ve finished, will there be anything left? Perhaps, perhaps like a peach, peeled away to reveal the hard seed at the core of its being. The seed that must die to live. The seed that must die to the notion that it is a seed and become what it is. A tree.

NOW I become myself.

Maybe I shall muse upon it some and attempt to write a rationale of my thought process. I admit, I only know what it means because I know what I’m trying to say. So now my challenge is to put it into words that others can follow and understand. A great challenge indeed.

Pure and Blameless Lives : Question Answered

If you are a follower of Christ Jesus, it makes no difference whether you are circumcised or not. All that matters is your faith that makes you love others.

- Galatians 5:6 CEV

After having done some study, my question is answered.  Faith is what matters.  Moreover, faith expressing itself through love (NLT).  And really, that’s what it’s going to come down to : Did you put your faith and trust in Jesus?

 

The Eyedropper

Church doesn’t often make me think. Not because the Pastor (Brad) doesn’t say things worth thinking about, I just don’t take the time. Half the time I’m not even really listening. It’s so easy to just watch his mouth move or watch his son in the front row (who also happens to be my boyfriend). Point being that church != thinking for me. However, today made me think a bit. We were talking about heaven, and he spoke about it in a different way. First off, the scripture was from Luke 12:13-21:

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?”
Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ‘
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be with those who store up things for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Not the typical verse to associate with heaven.  But he used it to point out the rich man’s view of things.  He saw wealth and earthly happiness as something to be attained over a close relationship with God.  As Brad put it, he was more concerned with the eyedropper than the ocean; more concerned with his mortal life than his eternal one.  And that’s what Brad said heaven is – That rich, no-holds-barred relationship with God.  To know God completely, just as we are now known (1 Cor. 13:12b), that’s heaven.  So think about it.  How many years are you planning for?  The eyedropper or the ocean?  Now, or eternity?

As Children

Your presence is everything I need to be the child that you’ve created me to be.

- Lay Down My Pride – Jeremy Camp

I tell you the truth anyone who doesn’t receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.

- Luke 18:17

For you are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

- Galatians 3:26

 

Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to find God in my “grown-up” college life. I forget how to be a child at times and allow myself to be overburdened with the cares of this world. I forget to run to him with every scrape and scratch and pretend that I can bandage my own wounds. Children are dependent on their parents. He’s teaching me to depend on him. It’s a painfully slow process, but we’re getting there. It’s one step at a time. Day by day.