return, heart

i seem to be missing empathy, passion, and peace. my smile, when it appears, is more a pained grimace; i can’t seem to remember to let it reach my eyes. it’s probably for the best, since recently i have realized that smiling requires too much energy. my laugh is no longer living near the surface, eagerly waiting for any excuse to bubble over. the replacement for these lost emotions is the knot of worry that never leaves, but rather flares up throughout the day. i feel as though my heart struggles to beat; it becomes more painful as each day passes. i am quick to anger, prone to jealousy, self-pity, and despair. my emptiness is akin to homesickness, yet going home heals nothing. i have become a malcontent, living in desperate hope of future happiness, consequently finding myself at the end of each day wondering where it has gone. return, heart, and bring me to myself once more.

…

i started to publish this post, but found myself unable to proceed in good conscience. i have asked my heart to return, but my heart has no more power to return to me than a flower has the power to return to its original seed. in reality my heart is not missing; it is not an absence of the organ that causes so much pain. i ache, but not for my home. i ache for a sense of the infinite. somewhere inside me is the Spirit who calls my heart His home. my problem is i have ignored Him, denied Him. in that sense, my pain is self-inflicted. my inward aimed pity is misplaced, wasted.

Father, i acknowledge your Spirit’s home in my heart. please continue building it up until it consumes my whole heart and not just the pitiful allotment i have painstakingly and foolishly walled off. i ask that you not restore myself as i was, but instead continue working in me that i may become who You have intended.

contentment

sometimes i wonder why i am a student. why do i ask my parents to pay for classes that i choose to sleep through half of the time? why do i put myself through the stress of pop quizzes and 8 am classes? i had a conversation with a friend the other day and it was brought up that in the four years that she went to college she only skipped class once. i was astonished and answered with cool nonchalance that barely a week goes by that i don’t skip at least one class. what i mistook for nonchalance, i now recognize with shame as indifference. but there are so many better, higher, worthier things i could be doing with my time! i could be building up the kingdom of heaven! i could, but am i? no. in the time that i should be going to class i am doing nothing more worthy than sleeping. when i told my mom that i had made skipping a regular occurrence, she said that learning what you can get away with is part of being an adult. that may be true, but do i really want to be perceived as the girl whose greatest concern is to get the best possible outcome from the least amount of effort?

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the world of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:15-17

maybe if i were going to class i would be getting a chance to share the gospel with a class mate. if i were on the bus i could be loving those around me. even if i went to every class all week and never got a chance to do either of these things, perhaps i could pursue the opportunity given to me to glorify God by using the abilities he has given me to grow and learn and work hard. no matter what season of life i am in, no matter what mundane tasks i am responsible for doing, i will pray to learn contentment so that i may better glorify God.

If they obey and serve Him, they will spend the rest of their days in prosperity and their years in contentment.
Job 36:11

a modified kiss

in The Ragamuffin Gospel, brennan manning relates an excerpt from the book Mortal Lessons by Richard Selzer, M.D. it reads:

“i stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. a tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. she will be thus from now on. the surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; i promise you that. nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, i had to cut the little nerve.
“her young husband is in the room. he stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. who are they, i ask myself, he and this wry mouth i have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? the woman speaks.
“will my mouth always be like this?” she asks.
“yes,” i say, “it will. it is because the nerve was cut.”
she nods and is silent. but the young man smiles.
“i like it,” he says, “it is kind of cute.”
“all at once i know who he is. i understand and i lower my gaze. one is not bold in an encounter with a god. unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and i am so close i can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”

the garden of eden should have been enough for us. we should have been content to walk with God in the unblemished beauty of His creation. looking at the world around me, i can’t help but curse eve for damning us to this mess. but i know, had i been in the position to make the choice to eat or forego, i would have eaten. the grass is always greener on the other side, right? the mystery of the unknown, the tantalizing idea of a betterment of our situation just around the bend, is enough to tempt us all. in the garden before the fall, God’s grace was in it’s most simple form: He communed with adam and eve and there was no evil. once eve made that fateful decision, God had to execute His contention plan. i don’t mean to say that God was caught by surprise by eve’s choice by mentioning a contention plan; God knew exactly what would happen. i simply mean that God knew all along that our decision would lose us our ability to commune with Him directly, and that He wanted to save us from ourselves.

when God was planning history, he knew we would deny grace, so he had to figure out another way to offer it. just as the man in the story had to modify his kiss to accommodate the ruined face of his wife, so God had to modify the kiss of grace to accommodate the ruin of humanity. He did this by offering up His only Son, who lived a perfect life, to become sin. when Jesus was agonizing on the cross He knew all of the awful things that i would do with my life. He died anyway, in order to offer me a chance to serve Him with my life on earth and to live with Him and His father for all eternity.

“for while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. for one will scarcely die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. for if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”
-Romans 5:6-10

infatuation

i have recently realized something about the way i experience relationships with the opposite sex, specifically when i begin to develop feelings for someone in a romantic sense. in the period of time known as the “crush” stage, i experience butterflies waiting for the next time i get to see or talk to that person; i spend copious amounts of time trying to figure out how a certain word or look makes us soul mates; anytime he shows the least sign of pursuit i experience extreme giddiness that, in a girl my age, is positively embarrassing. don’t even get me started at the opposite end of the spectrum: when a guy that i have been imagining a relationship with shows disinterest my heart sinks into my stomach, i am prone to tears, i seek comfort from my friends, etc., etc. after this realization about the heights of happiness and depths of despair i endure in such a superficial situation, i am left asking myself several questions:

first of all, shouldn’t i feel all of the emotions of infatuation i feel for someone that isn’t even pursuing me for a God that has pursued me since before time began?

secondly, when i find myself stuck in sin, should i not feel as torn up over that as i do over the disappointment of an absence of reciprocated interest in a man that it was plainly not God’s will that i be with?

these are very relevant issues for me right now, and i am currently undergoing a lot of introspection to figure out what the answers to these questions could mean in my life. i’ll try and keep you posted as i try to figure it all out…

simple love

i held a newborn baby today. my emotions poured over as i was confronted with the perfect grace of God while staring in wonder at its perfectly formed ears. i felt the wind caress my face and the sun warm my skin while resting outside, feeling the beauty of the day with the full power of all of my senses. i stared at a tiny flower on a weed growing in my backyard, in awe of its intricacies; that God would take the time to detail a weed so carefully…i was content to eat and drink nothing besides the word of God. i was quiet and still. i felt joy, peace, and contentment flowing through my consciousness as i laughed, childlike in the absence of complexity to my emotions. i lived for others and forgot about myself. i felt my personal plans for my life begin to shift to align with God’s plans for my life. my pleasures were simple and cost me nothing, but were priceless nonetheless.

if i live to be 100 and never experience another day as perfect as this one, i will never stop praising God for revealing Himself to me. i hope and pray that this day will come to the forefront of my thoughts every time satan plagues me with doubt, uncertainty, and fear for the future. His love is strong and beautiful.

too much pride, not enough grace

for my psychology class i’m required to participate in a graduate student’s research. right now i’m participating in a study looking at the effect of friendship on self-confidence. every day for the past 10 days i have filled out a survey about the most positive and negative friendship experience of my day, how it made me feel, and how i feel about myself in general. there is one question that asks if i am feeling guilty for anything. every day i have answered yes.

i never really stopped to think why i answer yes, i just assumed that as a sinner indebted to God for grace, the natural trade-off includes carrying the weight of my sin around for the rest of my life. it’s not as if my guilt is crippling me in any way; it’s more of a nagging voice in the back of my head that causes my heart to sink anytime i think of the things i’ve done, and how i can never repay my debt to God.

i have been a fool.

all my life i have been the broken record, repeating the idea that i am justified through grace by faith. i’ve got the words down. it wasn’t until recently that i realized that living those words, truly believing them and understanding the ideas behind them, are completely different acts from just being able to quote them. so what does it mean to be justified through grace by faith? according to Brennan Manning it means that “i know i am accepted by God just as i am.” it means i am made righteous by an act of God that i have not deserved or earned, simply because i have believed without seeing these things: that Jesus is the son of God; He died for my sins and then conquered death after three days; even now Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God and will someday return.

Ephesians 2:1-10 (The Message) says:

“It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing…”

this passage tells me that God didn’t hold grace over my head, requiring that i jump high enough to attain it. He offered it out of “immense mercy and incredible love.” a God that loves like that does not want us to feel guilty for accepting His freely offered grace. my own pride has gotten in the way of being free from my sin. if you have accepted for truth the idea that your sin is just too big to be absolved then you, like me, have let your pride get in the way of God’s grace. accept the truth that the God who “made the stars [and] drills them like an army” is bigger than your sin (Isaiah 40:26). abandon your pride in favor of grace.

psalm 103, revisited

“bless the Lord, o my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!  bless the Lord, o my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.  

the Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.  he made known his ways to moses, his acts to the people of Israel.  the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  he will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.  he does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.  for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.  as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.  for he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.

as for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more, but the steadfast love of the lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.  the Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.  bless the Lord, o you his angels, the mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word!  

bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will!  bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion, bless the Lord, o my soul!” -103rd Psalm

Daddy, i know that you have blessings to pour on me throughout my life; you have already forgiven me of my endless iniquity and redeemed my life from the pit.  i doubt not your steadfast love.  

now, when i feel my life is once again on the brink of the pit, help me remember that i am finite; i have come from dust and and while you breathe life into me i am made to stand, but i will not stand forever.  neither will my pain.  

for a moment i feel my iniquity cling to me with death’s grip.  i know that you remove it as far from me as the poles of the earth are from each other.  i am weak and easily tempted, but i strive to keep your covenant; help me in my struggle.  

i don’t have the right words, but i will bless your name with all that is in me until the day i die.  you are my savior, my father, my mother, my lover, my friend.  you meet all of my needs in every way, and save me from the pain.

the nature of a broken heart

I’ve neglected this blog for so long that I doubt anyone will even check it to see if I’ve written anything new.  It doesn’t really matter I suppose.  What else am I going to do on a Wednesday night when I’m feeling pensive and melancholy?  Catch up on reading for accounting?  Not so much. 

Being a rather morbid and melodramatic person, I’ve always considered what it would feel like to break my heart.  It turns out that I can feel the fractures.  Splinters dig into various other organs throughout the day.  Sometimes I wonder if they will pierce the skin.  I find myself observing my symptoms with a doctor’s cold detachment.  It doesn’t surprise me that I can no longer listen to certain songs on the radio without a painful, throbbing reminder of my illness.  The fact that I feel as if I’m bleeding internally and it could, should kill me at any moment doesn’t phase me.  There are some symptoms that I expected along with a few that surprise me.  I had an idea that I would lose sleep and feel nauseous.  The amnesia, however, is startling.  To forget how I came to be at a place, or to go to the grocery store and then forget what I came for is making me appear senile.  I have repeatedly sat down to read a book, only to find after a time that I have been making my eyes scan the pages for a time without taking in the meaning of a single word.  Heart break is full of surprises.  

There are so many “church words” that have ceased to have a meaning from overuse.  They have instead become cliches used in any offhand way, instead of standing for the beautiful ideas they were created to represent.  For instance, take the word “fulfill.”  Webster says that it means “to make full.”   Thank you Webster for the awesome insight.  How does that tiny definition encompass all that it means when it says in Psalm 138:8 that “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me”?  God is taking my painful circumstances and using them to develop the full potential of the plans that he made for me before time began.  

Webster also takes power away from the word “sustain” when assigns the definition “to give support to.”  Paul assures the Corinthians in his first letter to the Christians there, saying that the Lord Jesus Christ will “sustain you to the end.”  What a weak assurance that would be if we took poor Webster’s definition into account.  Paul is telling the people of Corinth that there is a man who will meet every one of our needs, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, remaining faithful forever.

God is not merely putting me through the refining fire.  He made the fire and He is making the journey with me.  I know that when I emerge on the other side (and I know I will emerge because there is a cure for even a broken heart) I will be the better for it because I will not have to depend on anything else in this life other than the love of Christ to fulfill or sustain me.  

My heart hurts a little less already.

those who can’t do, teach

i used to give great advice. sound, scripturally based, or at least scripturally conscious, nuggets of gold. this may sound arrogant, but i believe i can say this without a shred of pride because none of the things i said actually came from anything wise within myself. friends and acquaintances would approach me, lay out their situation, i would offer a listening and sympathetic ear, and then if they asked for advice i would have some on hand. it just kinda came naturally.

can you maybe see where i’m going with this from the title of the post and the paragraph you’ve just read?

i don’t know how to live my life. currently, i find myself in situations that i have seen other friends experience in the past. situations that i gave solid advice about how to fix then, recover from, and avoid in the future. yet where is that advice now when i could use it? and where is my self-control or motivation to follow that advice? those who can’t do, teach. those who can’t live their lives, advise others how to live theirs. great.

inspiration

yesterday i had my first alone time with the two girls from youth impact that i’m going to be discipling. i was pretty nervous, to say the least. they have some behavioral issues most of the time, and i was taking them to a friend’s house to bake cookies; i was worried that they would be disrespectful, that they would think baking/decorating cookies was lame, that they wouldn’t want to hang out with me…i was just worried in general. i hope God was more amused than frustrated with my worries, because they were pretty inconsequential and stupid. yesterday ended up being amazing. leondra and mikala were the best behaved i think they have ever been, they respected matt’s house, they loved baking cookies and were beautifully creative with decorating them. we laughed, and played, and all my fears were shown to be a waste of thought. on top of it all, they wanted to hang out later this week, and next week, and the week after, etc.

last week 6 apartments in the complex i pick kids up from for youth impact were completely destroyed by fire, along with all the things in them. 6 more apartments were ruined from smoke. all 12 have to be torn down. the families that live there are left with no where to live, and the 6 families who lost everything are struggling to survive. one of the families who lost everything has three boys in youth impact. the oldest boy saved his parents’ lives by getting them out of the smoking apartment before it burned completely. they are left with only the clothes on their backs, and no where to live. living paycheck to paycheck, trying to make ends meet, and then they’re dealt a blow of unimaginable magnitude. this week i saw members of the community band together to help these families, and it gave me hope that the whole world is not consumed with apathy.

the past few weeks have been a bit of a dry spell for me, as evidenced by the absence of any new thoughts. today i am inspired to write of God’s faithfulness, awe in His creation, both of the world and of two beautiful young girls, the bravery he gives His children, and the compassion he tries to teach us.