This Will Get Interesting...

I just posted this on facebook...should be interesting...

"Is our generation starving?

A funny word to use for some of the most well fed people in the world…but what are we feeding ourselves? Hamburgers, fast food, video games, internet (including pornography) and television…tell me that these things satisfy, tell me that they’re enough and that you go to bed after stuffing your face with them feeling accepted and loved and whole. Tell me that these speak life to your soul and shout, “Freedom!” Tell me that you could live your whole life centered around these things, no other longings…

I know it’s not true.

I know you want to be known, loved, valued, cared for. I know you see yourself in a mirror and feel alone, even after hours on facebook, trying to reach out. I know that your life is filled with too many fights, too little connection, too much pain, drama, heart ache…

I know because you are the generation which is trying to feed itself. Some try drugs—just a chance to see life beyond life and feel safe and secure for once. Some bury in video games—you really can be the hero there. Some feed on Internet pornography…

Oh but we fail, we fail, we fail…our society has killed that spiritual part of us, told us its not real and we shouldn’t pursue it. If you do pursue it, you’re weird and here are all the ways…why are we listening?

Why are we putting up with this shit, believing we weren’t created by a God who loves us as His dear children and has plans for us? Why wouldn’t you want that? Why have we not stood up and fought? Why have we not begun railing against the tyranny which claims we aren’t what we’ve always known we are?

Blessed.

Beloved.

Bought with a price.

His own.

Jesus died—that’s a plain fact—Jesus died for our sorry asses. And when we choose to put Him in a box and store that box away…its like the mass murder of souls. We more than starve; we wallow in our desperation, our despair.

WHY HAVE WE LET THIS GO ON!?

Who told us what we could and should believe? Who stole away our rights, our heritage? You were called to be a son or daughter of the Most High God. Jesus paid for you to know God intimately, personally, for all eternity. The waiting stops here: you know Him. You know Jesus, you know the Father. This is not hard and it’s not awful, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. Jesus loves me and you and you and you…look around the room, wherever you’re sitting or standing—see those people? He loves them with every ounce of His being and He knows their story and He wants them to know Him. How crazy is that? You probably don’t even know them very well, why they function the way they do, but He does. He knows you that way too—and He still loves you…

…and He doesn’t want you to starve. That’s not what He made you for. So you can keep eating Big Macs and jumping in and out of relationships and trying to supply all your needs in a way you can control…

…or you can make a decision that feels like jumping out of a moving bus and land SPLAT! into His arms.

It’s your choice…

..and the moment is now."

I couldn't not let what was in my heart leap out--YIKES!!! Haha, I love God and I hope He uses it well.

The Love I Bear

Some days you just have to write...I feel like I'm on the brink of figuring something out and parts of my heart have already been revealed to me today--its wild and good!

My days have been a wild whirl of trying to get everything done and be present (often overwhelmed) and deal with feeling isolated and out of control--it all felt like it was too much and yet I persevered--that's the crazy part. I don't know how I survived the last season of my life, it was literally the hardest season of my life. I have never been so stressed that I couldn't eat and made myself physically sick--until then!

And now...I'm floating in a pool of calm. I'm basically being paid to be a stay at home mom and I love it! My charge just turned three--months that is :) She sleeps, I read, whisper to God, sing, go on walks. These are the moments to just be--and I relish them, because really, I don't know what my life will look like in the next ten years and this might be the only pool of calm I get for a while. So I bask in it!

God's been speaking to me about marriage--again! (I know, its an old joke. I have no prospects and yet its the one thing that keeps coming up in conversation and in art that I have been doing--I am being taught about marriage and what it means to be a bride--even though I may never be one! haha...this seems to be a joke, but I know it isn't cruel--God's not like that. I may never be married, but marriage is one of the thrilling/mundane/original/common/out-of-this-world mysteries of this life--I don't mind learning!) And we're back...anyways, God revealed to me through an awesome Thomas Merton book that I had put my hope in marriage. This was something that I had no conscious idea of--until I read:

"All sin is rooted in the failure of love. All sin is a withdrawal  of love from God, in order to love something else. Sin sets boundaries to our hope, and locks our love in prison. If we place our last end in something limited, we have withdrawn our hearts entirely from the service of the living God. If we continue to love Him as our end, but place our hope in something else together with Him, our love and our hope are not what they should be, for no man can serve two masters." (pg. 18 in No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton)

My "something else together with Him" had been marriage! Weird, I never realized...then I was like, why would I hope in marriage? what's the deal with that? The answer came immeadiately: "If I am married, it means that someone else thinks I have worth. Someone else sees me as valuable." WHOA!!! Criminey! (and I don't use that word) I was trying to answer that question and fend off that lie of "You are worthless" (which by the way, hangs over my whole family) by putting my hope in marriage.

Someday when you are married--you will have worth.
Someday when you are married--you will have a future.
Someday when you are married--you will have someone who sticks by you forever.
Someday when you are married--you won't be lonely.

Isn't it crazy what we believe and where we look for our satisfaction and hope? I was the kid who was terrified of marriage--so why would I have these beliefs about it? Perhaps the reason I was terrified was because if I did get married and it turned out that none of these hopes would be fulfilled, I would have nowhere else to turn. And in my mind, it was better not even to broach the subject--just reject it completely and all that it could offer and stay safe.

Aren't you glad God entered the picture of my life?

He calls me Bride. And He already answers all those questions and fulfills all my hopes completely without my having to persuade Him or make Him see that I'm worth it. What a hope, what a true hope that is...

Maybe I will get married someday. Maybe I'll remain single for the rest of my life. In any case, I know who holds my future. My hope is secure.

I'm reading Elisabeth Elliot's book Passion and Purity again with a new perspective. (In it she writes about the journey of her five? year relationship with Jim Elliot which lead to their eventual marriage.) I'm free to look at relationships and romance and the possibility of marriage without fear. I'm free to dream and wish without being overwhelmed--being married or not is no longer a live or die moment. If it happens, hallelujah!, and if not my hope remains. I am free--in a way I haven't been for years.

From Elisabeth's book:
"The greater the potential for good, the greater the potential for evil. That is what Jim and I found in the force of the love we bore for each other...A system of fixed values and relations held us apart, each holding the other in reverence for the Owner. His we were, all the rights were, all the prerogatives to give or to withhold according to the pattern of His will, which remained as yet a mystery to us...For us, this was the way we had to walk, and we walked it, Jim seeing it his duty to protect me, I seeing it mine to wait quietly, not to attempt to woo or entice..."

Then she goes on to quote Christina Rossetti's poem:

"Trust me, I have not earned your dear rebuke,--

I love, as you would have me, God the most;

Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost,

Nor with Lot's wife cast back a faithless look,

Unready to forego what I forsook;

This say I, having counted up the cost,

This, though I be the feeblest of God's host,

Yet while I love my God the most, I deem

That I can never love you over-much;

I love Him more, so let me love you too;

Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such

I cannot love you if I love not Him,

I cannot love Him, if I love not you."

May I love like that.

This is held firmly in Your hands. Thank You Papa.

In His Arms

Watch this video...if you dare!

I can't stop listening to this song...

For one thing, it's so beautiful. There's such intensity in this song, in their eyes, the whole performance is marked by passion...a passion of a different kind.

But that's not why I can't stop watching it...

There's this deep sorrow in relationship. Sometimes...all I have wanted to do is never have to believe in love...being without hope feels better. You can't get hurt when you don't hope.

But my mom reminded me that I couldn't stop hoping. I almost didn't want to listen that day six months ago...and today I was talking it over with God--asking if I could just give up the hoping--and He told me no. And He told me other things that I won't write down here because its between me and Him. We'll see what happens three years from now...

I have to hope...and I live longing...and there is somebody that I used to know--and loved, as well as I was able--I have to hope...

"Maybe it's for the best", my head says and I know deep in me that all this has been for the best. All the heartache and pain, the longing, the breaking open inside me that I never knew I was capable of, the dying to self that I am learning to live daily...God has good plans for me, perfect plans, but I must wait on His counsel and stand in His will.

God made marriage for more than two people having sex...and we forget that somehow. We, as Christians, put our needs being met before a whole lot of things--but God never meant it that way. I want my marriage--MY LIFE!--to be a testament to God and His goodness. That requires dying to self and longings every day. God told me something today that means a big change in my life--a big change for three years. I want to live so fully given to Him these next three years. I know He has great gifts for me--but this world is so full of heartache and pain, why did I think I would be exempt? I tried my hardest to stay away from everything that would hurt me (I'm a complete baby when it comes to pain) but it found me anyway. It came and tore apart the most vulnerable part of me--my woman's heart. And the strange, sad thing is that he will never know...and that also is best.

But back to the song...we all know that cutting, biting, cruel pain of a heart ripped from its protection and thrown to the mercy of...you fill in that blank. Do we hope again? Do we try again? Do we search for love, even if we know it could just tear us open and cause more damage?

We do. We want love. We long for love. Sometimes we'll do anything to get that love that we desire. It's a cruel world. But I have learned that the love I am searching for could not possibly be found in any man. Sure, they can give some measure of love. They can comfort and create joy and make you feel new. But the love I long for--the deepest part of me cries out for--cannot be ascertained within this world. It is of a different...sort, I guess you could say. It is the love which reaches well beyond what we can fathom and reaches farther still--bottomless, endless, unfathomable and so good.

My Love lifts me beyond my circumstances. He reminds me that He has a plan and what He can see is so beyond me--I must trust Him. My Love searches me out when I would rather be anywhere than in His embrace--He washes me clean and makes my shame fall away in His presence. My Love looks into my eyes--and I'm astonished all over again, because He sees in me His pure white Bride and He delights in me. There is nothing He would like to do more than just to be with me, showing me His love. My Love makes me new, my Love heals my heart and my Love is there for me through every broken part of my past. When I gasp in pain, because the one I used to love turns up around a corner unexpected and just seeing him makes my heart wrench inside my chest, even then, He is there. Pouring His warm healing oil over my heart and making even this a time when we can be drawn closer together.

I am thankful for His grace. I am thankful for His kindness. I am thankful that He caught me when I was a stranger wandering and saved me. I am thankful for the promises and wonderful moments He has ahead and I am thankful that He will be steadfast and see me through even the hardest moments that may lie ahead for me. I don't know where I'm going and I have no plan--only Jesus.

And isn't that how He always wanted it to be.

In His arms.