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Thursday, December 27th, 2007
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I wish your words were like territories, with mapped out lines and borders and streams. And with dancing hills through deep valleys; I wish your words could be seen. If I could walk along the broken tops, of a forgotten paved stone wall, then maybe I could see the rise, that I've been missing all along. The rise of sun and moon; and the rise of angry winds. The rise of every scattered bloom and the ways they seem to twist. I'll watch the hopeless people rise, with dirtied knees and short goodbyes, when the only thing they desire, is the carelessness of time. And with the end of every hour, I'll watch them stand to leave; with suitcases in blistered hands and pictures of the ones they need. They'll step outside from fields of grey and walk with small bare feet; they'll leave to seek a better day but will only find defeat.
And I will watch from this great wall, of fallen stones and hollowed rock, to see each passing minute.
And I will watch from this great wall, one side of gray one side of white, to see the passing difference.
And, at the end of many hours, our eyes will find eachother's, through a broken place in this baricade; on opposite sides of stones that were layed. And I'll whisper what I've seen, on the other side of things; and wait for you to say, you want to be here with me. But with the ticking of the clock, and the movement of their feet, you will turn to leave my gaze and you will join in their deceit.
And one day you will conceive,
with the unfolding of your fingers,
that in the picture of the one you need
it is not my face that lingers.
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Will you, please?
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Tuesday, December 11th, 2007
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I miss my dad so much.
It's been two years and it still feels like it was only months ago. I still don't believe it sometimes. Really .. its the moments when I remember its true, that I really experience pain. Never, in my entire life, did I think I would lose my dad so prematurely. I sometimes feel scared without him; scared that he was the only one who knew who I was ... scared that no one else will love me as much as he did.
I just wasn't ready to lose him. And now I find myself frantically grasping for images of his smile or his hands or his eyes. And I picture his bedroom. And I picture his shirts ... his plaid shirts that were always tucked in. And I remember his red jacket. And his worn sandals. His white tennis shoes that I always said were too white. And I remember the sound of my bedroom door opening every morning when he came to wake me up. And I remember the way he would ask me for a hug .. like it was all he wanted in the entire world. And he would hug me for so long. I've never had anyone hug me that way since and don't know that I ever will again. And I remember his smell. I can never let myself forget his smell. Or his laugh. He laughed with bright eyes.
I wish I could have known him then, the way I know him now.
Everything just feels so heavy tonight. It breaks my heart that I can't take refuge inside my memories of my dad, without also having to sit with the tormenting reality of his absence.
I need the Lord close to me tonight. I need to be carried into tomorrow.
... "all my love, for all my life"
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Will you, please?
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Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
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Oh man! The Lord just impressed such an awesome picture on my heart that I needed to write down. My prayer, for awhile, has just been that the Lord would continue to reveal Himself to me. What it means, in all things, for Him to be a loving God. How that looks. What His character is like. Just WHO He is. And I feel like, in His answers to that prayer, He really has been using the same method. He continues to remind me that we are "created in His image". The core desires of our heart often reflect our God. We are created in His image! But, this morning, I've still been meditating over what I wrote in the previous entry (which I wrote last night) and I realized that ... in my struggle to want to know God more .. it makes such a HUGE difference to know that God WANTS to be known. The Lord began showing me that, in my heart .. deep in Chelsea's heart ... she longs to be known and understood by the people who are important to her. We all do. But think about how HUGE that desire is for us. We want to be known and understood, and LOVED because of it. In fact, we spend much our lives living and striving for this very thing. The enemy has corrupted the pureness of this desire with a lot of lies that result in insecurity, jealousy, etc ... but the core desire still remains. And it is THAT very desire .. to be known and understood; to have another person invest their heart in discovering who we are; and to be loved because of what they find ... it is that very desire, that has been "created in His image".
Our God WANTS to be known. He wants our hearts to long for an understanding of WHO He is. And He wants to be loved because of what we find. He wants to be loved because of who He is. And He is completely worthy of that love. Like the human heart longs to be known by a loved one, so the Lord longs to be known by His bride.
<3
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Will you, please?
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The Lord has definitely delivered me into a season of loving discipline. In all honesty, it was not received well at first (I suspect that is commonly the case). Rather than feeling joy, I've been submitting to guilt, frustration and disappointment ... all feelings that are NEVER from the Lord. I find it really ironic (although, sovereignly intentional) that, for my memorizing scripture class, I randomly chose Hebrews 12:1-13 to memorize ... for no specific reason, at the time, other than "this looks good to me". Oh how wonderful God's secret blessings are! ( I wrote it out at the bottom and would encourage you to read it. Its a pretty amazing reminder and enouragement!)
For the past few months, I've quietly been struggling with relationally connecting with God... feeling Him and receiving Him as my Dad ... Knowing His love as my place of refuge ... Recognizing His voice & convictions as a gentle hand leading me; like a father softly balancing a child as she's first learning to walk. I've understood perfectly, with my head, what a relationship should look like between me and the Lord ... but my heart had not yet reached that understanding.
My discipleship group tonight was such a blessing. I went expecting a fruitful night of vulnerability and learning ... and left with so much more! From the beginning of our time together, I was strangely fighting back tears. I didn't understand why, at first ... I had arrived in such high spirits! But, as the night continued on, the harder it became for me to maintain dry eyes. So many thoughts were rolling through my head; thoughts on my failures, my sin, and the disconnect I've been feeling from the Lord. As I said before, I've had the image in my head of a beautiful relationship with God (and even wrote about it in a blog), but in my life, haven't been experiencing it to the fullest. I've lacked the desire to pray. I've lacked the desire to invest my time in the word and to learn WHO my God is. And I've lacked the desire to fight for more faithfulness in the areas where I am faithless. I've been believing the lie that there are better things to do with my time than connect with the Lord. I've been submitting to the idea that, because there is so much that I still don't know, attempting to learn now is too much of a hassle. I've given in, to the mindset of, giving up.
But ... perhaps bigger than all of these things ... I have forgotten my dependency on the Lord. Somewhere along the line, I forgot that I am TRULY and COMPLETELY dependent on God. For everything. And that includes my need to WANT Him. In our fallen nature, its not natural for us to desire God. Its not. Our desire for God and our love for God, comes FROM God. We can not expect to whip ourselves into shape whenever we lose the desire to pray. And we can't expect to discipline ourselves back into loving His word. But what an amazing thing it is to know that, when we DO lose the desire for those things, we have a Father who continues to see us as blameless ("The God who ... makes my way blameless" Psalm 18:32) and, when called upon with an honest heart, is quick to rescue us. ("In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God for help, He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry for help before Him, came into His ears ..... He sent from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters" Psalm 18:6 & 18:16) For me, it absolutely fills me to the brim to know that I will never be left alone when I fall short. I will never be left alone when I'm caught in sin. I will never be left alone when I've failed. The Lord will never turn His back on me, and, whats more is, HE is the one who will rescue me EVERY TIME from those very things.
He IS reliable and he IS faithful. It is BECAUSE He loves us that He disciplines us. We can find so much rest and comfort in that truth because we know that nothing we endure, is for anything other than His glory (which is always a good thing!).
Hebrews 12:1-13
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run, with perserverance, the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith; who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the thrown of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men so that you do not lose heart and grow weary. For in your own struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood; and you have forgotten that encouraging word that addresses you as sons:
My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you
The Lord disciplines those he loves
and he punishes everyone he accepts sons.
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? And if you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline) then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; But God disciplines us for our good, so that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees; make level paths for your feet so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.
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Will you, please?
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Sunday, November 4th, 2007
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Tell me that the world
isn't made up of these things
and that, what I'm touching now,
has rarely been seen.
And tell me that your heart
doesn't fit into this space,
when you hear desperate demands
to believe this fallen race.
You said its all for fun,
we exist just to be free,
but I've yet to see your eyes shine
the way they did when you were sleeping.
Because the truth, that night, was found
and, in the softest moments of your rest,
when impressions pushed upon your chest,
your shoulders flinched and the light burned out.
But you can't sleep here forever.
The morning always comes
with someone breathing in your doorway.
And you can't keep talking clever,
the light will always bend
to reveal the movements of your sway.
Its an empty field in which we run,
with tall grass to hide aimed arrows and guns.
And when they shoot you down,
they build you up and turn you around
to place a weapon in your hand;
to make you feel needed as a part of their plan.
But you can't fight forever;
the grass always fades
and you'll be deceived by your defender.
And you can't keep requesting war;
your knees will always give
and you won't want this life anymore.
So find that broken gate,
the one that stretches along the street,
and follow it all the way.
Leave these tired antagonists
without a goodbye or gentle wish,
and step across their weakened mass
pushing through the dying grass.
And you'll wake again to find
that upon the morning's rise
your breath has found a smile.
And you'll wake again to find
that inside that bending light
you're eyes began to shine.
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Will you, please?
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Saturday, November 3rd, 2007
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Friday, November 2nd, 2007
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The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion-
to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
(Isaiah 61:1-3)
I know, without a doubt, that the Lord is bringing me into a new chapter of my life. One of surrender, healing, and restoration. And I can feel the fear mounting- the fear of having to face my past, my failures, my hurts, and my losses. I can feel a sense hesitancy, distrust and trepidation, when swallowing the reality of what it is the Lord is calling me to- discovering my fears, insecurities and weaknesses and pushing directly into my wounds with a faith that His plan is perfect. It is these very fears however, that keep me from experiencing the FULLNESS of the life that God has for me. At times, in the midst of my thinking, I pause, shake my head and whisper to myself "Its impossible". The assaults from my life have been too significant, too deep, to severe. And now, my perceptions, my thinking, my ideas, my self .. are all too embedded and established. The chance of change is impossible.
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
(Psalm 42:11)
Often in my life, I forget the promises of God. Even more however, I remember them, and doubt them. I am realizing lately how easily I express my faith in Him verbally, but I am not surrendering anything. I am holding on so tightly to the very things that I have said "I trust you" to. For me, its easy to put my faith in God for the surface issues: Knowing I'm physically safe, financially safe, and healthy. However, up until this point, trusting Him with the very core of me- the heart of me- my hidden self, has not been a concept I truly understood. This will be a journey indeed.
My story is no different from anyone elses. Well, different, but only in the details. We've all been hurt, we've all been lied to and we've all believed the lies at some point or another. But God's promises for His children are unconditional. He has sent His son to bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for the captives, to comfort all who mourn .... and to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes.
I wanted to make a new journal because I really do feel like I'm being led into a whole new place of discovery, surrender, growth and healing. The Lord has already asked me to give up several significant things in my life, and I know there is only more to come. I want to really try and keep up with writing about what God is doing in my life. Some entries may not make sense, especially if they are stemming from personal things ... but, either way, I will do my best to record an honest account of my journey: the failures, frustrations, questions, joys, praises, and awe-filled discoveries. After all, this is my life. :-)
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Will you, please?
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