It's so easy to be so self condemning...I find myself picking at myself all day long and wondering why I am so bad at relationships...I just want to be able to connect with people on a really deep level and know their hearts--but this world...something about it makes it so difficult. You have to constantly know that person and know their heart, you have to keep it up and it's so easy to lose contact and then you feel like a failure for not having perfect relationships with everyone at all times--oh my gosh, it's so exhausting, even just thinking about it through the day...
I just want love to be seen so much in my relationships and shown through my actions and I feel like I fail so often--like my friend and I had a disconnect tonight over a movie because she cried a lot at it's ending and I didn't. It was a movie that showed how this couple poured all their love into this one crazy dog--and then he died. It showed them moving through the steps that accompany the American Dream--get married, get a good job, have 2.5 (in this case 3) kids and buy a big house in the country. I mean, that's great and I appreciate the accurate portrayl of a crazy dog and how difficult marriage can be--it was very well done--I just...
I just...love Haitians the way those people loved the dog. I want to do more in my life than live comfortably and give up some for a dog...
I've been reading/listening to Shane Claiborne and a lot of what he says makes so much sense to me...people are always moving out of the bad neighborhoods (like in this movie, it was part of the American Dream to get a job which earned more and move his family to a safer, more expensive neighborhood). But Shane has chosen to stay and establish good community in these places and form deep relationships and love people to the point where it probably hurts him every day--because people make bad choices (just like unruly dogs) and their choices have even great consequences, because they aren't these seperate pockets of humanity--we all affect each other deeply. Shane is living out the call of Jesus by staying in these neighborhoods and asking questions about why we got here--what is really going on to make people poor, dependent on welfare and selling drugs to stay alive--such good questions...it just resonates so much with me, because of Haiti...........I'm always wondering how I could possibly live so comfortably here when they have such a desperate struggle over there.........I mean, I ate for fun today and I exercise because it feels good and I get to worship and be clean and chat with friends and watch a dumb movie on this huge screen..........
I just can't think about it too much, maybe, because it just doesn't make sense and I don't have answers...I have to love myself right where I am, you know. I can't live with self loathing, it just doesn't help anyone. I pray, so desperately, that all the prayers I am praying aren't just words...let me truly go where you send, please God, don't let anything stop me--I couldn't stand it!!! It's just too much if I don't spend my life serving them--it's too much guilt? maybe...too much responsibility, to be given such a clear vision of what its like to be a Haitian and given such pure, unrelenting love and then to see none of your dreams come true because I stood in the way and my life ends up with me only loving a dog...oh, God, I am broken before You.
I am Yours and You are mine
My whole life is yours
I give it all surrendured to your name
and forever I will pray
Have your way
Have your way
That's the song playing on my iTunes right now, believe it or not...God knows my heart...move precious Savior. Let these not just be words.
Move precious Savior. Let not these be just words.
Move precious Savior. Let these be more than words...
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