A Few Confessions
I am being attacked by answers I haven't been asking for.
By attacked, I mean pursued, hunted down. Chased.
Here I stand in the road, only remotely considering turning my feet toward home, and He has collided with me already. I forgot how fast He can run to meet me in the road. How instantaneously He sometimes responds. If I shed one more tear this week, I'm pretty sure my eyes will never stop swelling.
In the past three days, I've been to a different church, re-understood the definition, validity, and size of the Body, cleaned up after a film crew, had several epiphanies, shed many tears and had hard talks, and in all this, concepts are being dumped in my lap -- answers I haven't been looking for in my despondency. Answers I already know because I know so much, but I hardly know anything. Brimming with head knowledge, living on a limb of experiences, wandering a forest floor, ignoring all resources. Guh.
I've just been rolling over in bed (literally), and hoping that the avalanche of horrible situations I've managed to create around myself and everyone I love would just stop at the edges of my consciousness and leave me alone.
Avoidance is my coping mechanism. Hi.
I avoid people. I avoid conversations that are out of my control. I avoid responsibilities that might help me. I avoid being vulnerable with the Lord and try to avoid exposing my heart to the Word because it's full of hard things and when I'm down, I skirt hard things.
When the fog rolls in, I don't want help, I don't want answers. I just want to make it all stop. I need a minute for everything to stop caving in so I can just be unconscious. I'll come back to life when I'm ready. It'll pass on its own eventually.
I know me better than the folk I love so much. The Lord knows me even better than that.
What would you do if you could see me like I do?
Forgive my incoherence for a moment if you don't know me; these things have to be put down before I forget them.
At a glance, the concepts that are causing me to wake up are: The Fruit of the Spirit is self-control. God will absolutely give us more than we can handle to reveal Himself as the strong one in the relationship. This whole thing is a relationship, remember? Any daily task or people in my immediate sphere of influence is my ministry, my work. My work is to be my worship. Cast your cares -- literally throw them away. You can start over every morning; that's what mercy is for. I'm reminded that the Gospel is this simple and this difficult and this worth it. Circles. Always clasping back together, the jewel being that if Job could sit on a pile of ashes, with only a broken shard of a pot to his name, and still praise the Lord, so can I in even less dire circumstances.
And then, of course, I found glass in a parking lot. Again. Just one piece, and I left it lying there... I'm fairly certain glass was never supposed to mean so much to me spiritually, but it follows me, reminds me, humbles me.
Also, I think I've just sat with the Creator of the Universe in my car, listening to the song we practised for church on repeat. Something my mom [Brandy] told me last night is that in my attempts to meet with God daily again, don't spend that time with him and that time only. Don't cordon off that time; leave the whole day open to opportunities for Him to have interaction with me. Don't put Him in a box: "Okay, Lord, I've spent time with you, all done." I was thinking about that all day today, and then tonight, practicing this new song, "You Promised," His presence was just quietly, loudly there... like, "Hello, yes, I'm always in you, beside you, above you, that's how this works, that's how it's always worked." And I'm so small, unfaithful, untrusting, withholding intimacy and vulnerability, passively damaging our relationship. And He sees all this and yet the moment I ask, "Am I allowed to just throw myself on You? Am I saved, can I do that? I need You," there He is.
Like a child, weeping and lifting his arms to be picked up because he fell down and needs holding. "You promised!"
"I did."
In closing, I am so grateful to be surrounded by my church family and the Body in general. Seeing their faith serves to reawaken mine. They are a safety net when I get like this. They listen, they tell stories, play games, they laugh, they let you cry, they hold you and hold you... And I'm thankful that God speaks so much through music. Music is... so necessary, and God knows how powerful it is. It reaches deep inside... but that's a post for another day. ;)
Come along, heart, we have some simple work to do...
By attacked, I mean pursued, hunted down. Chased.
Here I stand in the road, only remotely considering turning my feet toward home, and He has collided with me already. I forgot how fast He can run to meet me in the road. How instantaneously He sometimes responds. If I shed one more tear this week, I'm pretty sure my eyes will never stop swelling.
In the past three days, I've been to a different church, re-understood the definition, validity, and size of the Body, cleaned up after a film crew, had several epiphanies, shed many tears and had hard talks, and in all this, concepts are being dumped in my lap -- answers I haven't been looking for in my despondency. Answers I already know because I know so much, but I hardly know anything. Brimming with head knowledge, living on a limb of experiences, wandering a forest floor, ignoring all resources. Guh.
I've just been rolling over in bed (literally), and hoping that the avalanche of horrible situations I've managed to create around myself and everyone I love would just stop at the edges of my consciousness and leave me alone.
Avoidance is my coping mechanism. Hi.
I avoid people. I avoid conversations that are out of my control. I avoid responsibilities that might help me. I avoid being vulnerable with the Lord and try to avoid exposing my heart to the Word because it's full of hard things and when I'm down, I skirt hard things.
When the fog rolls in, I don't want help, I don't want answers. I just want to make it all stop. I need a minute for everything to stop caving in so I can just be unconscious. I'll come back to life when I'm ready. It'll pass on its own eventually.
I know me better than the folk I love so much. The Lord knows me even better than that.
What would you do if you could see me like I do?
Forgive my incoherence for a moment if you don't know me; these things have to be put down before I forget them.
At a glance, the concepts that are causing me to wake up are: The Fruit of the Spirit is self-control. God will absolutely give us more than we can handle to reveal Himself as the strong one in the relationship. This whole thing is a relationship, remember? Any daily task or people in my immediate sphere of influence is my ministry, my work. My work is to be my worship. Cast your cares -- literally throw them away. You can start over every morning; that's what mercy is for. I'm reminded that the Gospel is this simple and this difficult and this worth it. Circles. Always clasping back together, the jewel being that if Job could sit on a pile of ashes, with only a broken shard of a pot to his name, and still praise the Lord, so can I in even less dire circumstances.
And then, of course, I found glass in a parking lot. Again. Just one piece, and I left it lying there... I'm fairly certain glass was never supposed to mean so much to me spiritually, but it follows me, reminds me, humbles me.
Also, I think I've just sat with the Creator of the Universe in my car, listening to the song we practised for church on repeat. Something my mom [Brandy] told me last night is that in my attempts to meet with God daily again, don't spend that time with him and that time only. Don't cordon off that time; leave the whole day open to opportunities for Him to have interaction with me. Don't put Him in a box: "Okay, Lord, I've spent time with you, all done." I was thinking about that all day today, and then tonight, practicing this new song, "You Promised," His presence was just quietly, loudly there... like, "Hello, yes, I'm always in you, beside you, above you, that's how this works, that's how it's always worked." And I'm so small, unfaithful, untrusting, withholding intimacy and vulnerability, passively damaging our relationship. And He sees all this and yet the moment I ask, "Am I allowed to just throw myself on You? Am I saved, can I do that? I need You," there He is.
Like a child, weeping and lifting his arms to be picked up because he fell down and needs holding. "You promised!"
"I did."
In closing, I am so grateful to be surrounded by my church family and the Body in general. Seeing their faith serves to reawaken mine. They are a safety net when I get like this. They listen, they tell stories, play games, they laugh, they let you cry, they hold you and hold you... And I'm thankful that God speaks so much through music. Music is... so necessary, and God knows how powerful it is. It reaches deep inside... but that's a post for another day. ;)
Come along, heart, we have some simple work to do...
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