11/28/13
Jesus's love is incredible. It's not the "warm-fuzzies" kind of love but rather it was in what He did. He actually gave up His life so that I could live and be in relationship with the Father. The gravity of what He did is shown in the reason and the circumstances under which He did it. He chose to die for me while I was still a sinner in rebellion against Him. He did not choose to save me because of anything I could give Him in return or because of something I could contribute to the world; I had nothing to offer. Father God decided that I was valuable to Him. His love for me has no beginning, no end, no measurement, and no reason known to man. He loved me, therefore He decided that it was worth it for His Son to die so that I could be saved. This is the love that is referred to in Ephesians 3:16-19, not the warm-fuzzies. This is messy, painful, give-all kind of love, and it is the same love we are called to live in with God and with the people He has made. He is to be our first love. All of my love is for Him. As I give all my love to Him, I am able to experience (not just know about) the abundant fullness of His love toward me. Out of the vast overflow of that love, I am able to love the people around me- including family, friends, and significant others. If I don't give my love first to Him and experience the outpouring of His love to me, I am only left to love others with my own love which will always be flawed and never be enough. But when I elevate Father God above all others and all else, He fills me in turn with His love which is more than enough to share with the people in my life. If I truly want to love others the way I say I do, the best thing I can do is to make them second to God in my life so that out of the fullness of Him, I have something to offer them.

5/23
It feels like my life is falling apart into shambles all around me. I feel such an absence of hope, so little reason to believe I will ever be happy. Everything and everyone that means anything to me is slowly drifting away and little by little I'm finding I have little for which to live. And yet, no reason to die. I don't want to die. I realize that's not the answer. It wouldn't be an escape but rather an expedited journey to judgement. I believe that wholeheartedly and so it acts as an invisible tether keeping me from going too far down the path of self destruction. But that doesn't change where I am now. Maybe it should. Maybe if I believe in the God who judges in death, it should color my belief in the same God who saves and restores in life. But, for some reason, all of what I know is really hard to see when I'm in this place. This place is dark and it feels empty and lonely. The truth sounds far off and echo-y while all kinds of lies start to permeate my thinking space. All day long my mind replays the things that feel wrong or sad or overwhelming.

Sometimes i just want to give up on everything. Sometimes it's hard to remember why to keep going. Sometimes i just really want all this to be over.

"I've been restless on the inside 
Wondering about this heart of mine 
I've been desperately trying to find 
A way to prove that I'm still alive 

Has the love I speak so loudly of quietly grown cold 
Has my life been an empty voice? 
What I say needs to be seen 
I need to step out and make the choice 
To let go of everything 
Would You reignite this heart spark here in the dark? 

Bring Your love to life inside of me 
Why don't You break my heart 'til it moves my hands and feet 
For the hopeless and the broken 
For the ones that don't know that You love them 
Bring Your love to life inside of me" 

Sometimes it's really hard to be the "ugly friend."

Sometimes I want to hide under my covers and never come out...perhaps just disappear altogether. Sometimes I wish I didn't exist. Sometimes I don't want to keep living. But that's not my choice to make. So I do keep living. I keep getting up everyday. Sometimes it seems like its getting harder and harder. Sometimes I wonder what's happening to me, who I'm becoming. Because I don't really recognize it. It feels like I'm losing myself. Losing a grip on reality. Every now and then I look around and realize that this is real life. This is all really happening. I really am alive. And then I become afraid. I become afraid and want to hide and want to not be alive. It feels like so much pressure. This is the only life I get and I have to make something out of it. I have to do it right or it's wasted. And if it's wasted, it's not like that doesn't matter. It means I've let God down, and I don't want to do that. But everyday I live like I'm living now, I feel like I'm letting Him down anyway. And that's when I want to quit again. Call me a loser, call me a punk, but that's how I feel. I feel like life is too hard and I just want to hide. Hide away and disappear. But I can't. So I keep going, but I don't enjoy it. Sometimes I'm sad. Sometimes I'm very sad. And discouraged. Sometimes I want to cry. Other times I don't feel anything at all. Just empty. But I'm a Christian. I'm not supposed to feel empty...or sad. If I do, that means I'm doing something wrong. I'm probably not praying enough. Or something. It's not that I don't take it seriously. I just honestly don't know what to do anymore. The things people tell me almost seem to mean nothing at all. Everything feels dark and empty and sad. Everywhere I look in my life, I see pain and bad memories. I'm sure it's not as ugly as I'm seeing it to be. I'm sure there's some sort of filter that all my vision is passing through right now. But that's what I see, and so that is how I feel.

I just had the very comforting thought that "I am not a mystery" to God. Even if I don't know what's going on with me, He does. I'm not lost. I'm very much found and seen.

(Was listening to the song "Mended" by Watermark)

I think I may have realized what's been wrong with me. I'm searching for God and don't feel like I've found Him. I keep searching in the quiet places- in the woods, on walks, etc. I do believe we can learn about God from being in nature, but if we want to see His face, to know Him, I believe I can find it in the faces of the poor, the sick, the widow, the orphan, the prisoner, the hungry, and the thirsty. I've been so discouraged because I feel like I can't find God. But maybe I've been looking in the wrong places.

I guess it makes sense that we should only expect to receive those things we ask from God that He has already promised us. At first, that sounds weird to me, like why? But when I think about it, if He is good and every good thing comes from Him, then the only way to ask for something that is good is to ask for something He's promised. There's nothing He's promised that isn't good. And nothing that's good that He hasn't promised....I think? That does at least help it make more sense. Sometimes I think it will build my faith if I get the things I ask Him for, but many of those things aren't things He's promised (directly or indirectly) or that are in His Will. When I don't get those things, it challenges my faith. But maybe the problem really is that I'm not asking for the things I'm supposed to be asking for or that I am asking things I shouldn't. I have heard something like that before. Maybe I need to change what I'm asking.

Sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead...

My heart is heavy tonight. I'm thinking about the events that transpired now almost 4 months ago when I lost one friendship and worked really hard to save another. I'm thinking about the pain and disappointment that led up to that point and about the process that followed. I'm thinking of how my heart ached then and remarking at how little that ache has subsided over these few months. I'm also thinking of how she hurts and how this situation really isn't behind us yet. Basically, I'm thinking of heartbreak.

I'm wondering if and when these wounds will finally heal. I'm wondering if that process has begun at all for him. I'm wondering if he still thinks of us- still thinks of me- or if I've faded into the background of his very full life. I wonder, I hope, I wish. I wish it could all just go away, somehow miraculously cure itself. I almost wish we'd never met- not because I don't value his friendship, but because it's hard for me to believe that we're all better off having been left with this much pain.

This post is somewhat a response to an encouragement to write tonight. I thought about it. If I did, I wasn't planning to write about this. I was planning to write about my latest spiritual wrestlings and what God may or may not be teaching me. I was planning to process "aloud" and try to find some clarity. But then, the conversation shifted and, for the first time in months, we talked about this. We revisited the heartbreak and I felt the pain almost as poignantly as I did months ago. Her face a window to her heart, I looked and knew she was feeling it too. Pondering over it tonight and reviewing those last couple of weeks, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I had something to write about.

I guess it is getting better. I don't cry about it anymore. But every time I think of it, my heart cringes and it feels like someone is twisting some invisible knife inside me. It still brings up feelings of inadequacy and other things I'll choose not to mention. It makes me sad, but it doesn't completely shut me down. It used to shut me down. For the two months or so leading up to the final decision, the pain was pretty much all I could think about. In the weeks and first couple of months following, I tried not to think about it much at all. But lately I've been revisiting the situation as if immersing myself in the feelings again will somehow help the healing process. I don't know, maybe it will. In a strange way, it feels good to go there again- the same way it feels good to clean a wound or remove a splinter. Not pleasant, but good. I think I never really processed the emotion following the final decision; I was so focused on wanting to move on in my friendship with her. But it never went away, and I'm reminded of what's been left unprocessed every time I feel that knife twist. I think the "good" I feel is me finally letting myself express emotion about this whole thing. For so long, I felt like I wasn't supposed to do that.

I do hope eventually to write about everything else that's going on- all the stuff I was planning to write about before the last part of that conversation happened. However, this is what was heaviest on my heart tonight, so this is what I shared. I just hope it doesn't continue to take center stage because no matter how it feels, it's not the most important part of my life. There's only One who can heal this and all other wounds. He's the One I really need.

I miss writing. I miss being me. It seems like everything I think and say recently is a lyric from a song. I feel like I'm losing myself. I'm becoming engrossed with the work that I do to make a living and I feel like I'm losing the work that I do because I care about it. I think maybe I had identified myself by it, but now I feel like it's not really mine anymore. I guess it never was.

As my false identities continue to be taken away, I'm faced once again with that timeless question: Who am I?

"And now, I miss everything about you
Can't believe that I still want you
After all the things we've been through
I miss everything about you"

"Here in town you can see he's been down for awhile
But my [gosh] it's so beautiful when the boy smiles
Wanna hold him.
Maybe I'll just sing about it."

Jump without jumping

I have no clue what that means. But that's what he told me I should ask God to help me do. And every time I start trying to make sense of it, he stops me and tells me not to apply "world" rules to God. I don't think I've ever been challenged to think quite so far outside the box about God. But it's not unbiblical or heretical what he's telling me. It's just different. It's as if he truly knows God and doesn't really understand how some people might not. It's beautiful.

We talked tonight for about three and a half hours. That was not intentional. I made cookies for him and his roommate and took them over to their apartment. He invited me inside. At first I declined 1) because I legitimately need to be up in the morning for my interview and 2) because I didn't want him to think that I was wanting to come up and talk for awhile. We talked for a minute with me standing outside before I decided to step into the lobby. After I stepped in, he said "Yeah, you should come up." So I considered myself officially genuinely invited and decided to come up. But I told him, "Don't let me stay long. I have an interview tomorrow." I guess neither of us was paying attention to that request.

We talked and talked and talked and talked some more. He's broken. That much I can see. He's about as insecure as I am as it concerns people. And he overthinks and is maybe a little too sensitive. In the first part of our conversation, I was thinking maybe he wouldn't be a very good match for me. Brokenness is only attractive to a certain extent. I enjoy taking care of people, but I don't want to need to fix them. I'd rather let God take care of that. However, the conversation shifted to matters of faith and I probably felt more attracted to him than I ever had before.

We talked about what it means to know God. To him, it all comes down to love. You love God and trust Him. "Keep it simple," he says. "Don't think too much." He tells me to just jump and trust God no matter what the outcome is. Maybe He'll give me wings, maybe I'll crash, maybe He'll give me extra strength in my legs or arms. Just trust Him. He tells me I can hear God speak but that I just need to pay attention. He tells me to be driven by the Holy Spirit. He says if I don't understand, then just to ask God. We talked a lot about Jesus' command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. This part of the conversation started with him asking me what was my gift. I told him in uncertain terms that I think maybe connecting with people and "knowing things." The part about knowing things is what really sparked it. I wasn't confident that that's what it was, but he challenged me and  said it was and that I knew it was. Let go. Trust. These were the major themes of this part of the conversation.

He also ruined the word "interesting" for me :p

I'm still not behaving like I really think he'll be gone in a couple of months :(                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

I don't know him extraordinarily well. I just know that it's really easy to talk to him and that we connect so well. We have common views on uncommon ideas, and I've never known anyone quite like him before. In him I see lots of opportunity to love and finally the possibility of receiving that love in return. But I don't know him extraordinarily well. And he's leaving in eight weeks. Is it pathetic that I can already feel my heart starting to drop? :(

Is two months long enough to fall in love?

I may or may not be smiling from ear to ear and carrying butterflies in my stomach :) :)

Sharing Life

Could it be that we are called to share the riches of friendship that we have been blessed with in the same way we are called to share monetary wealth? I've just been realizing more lately how many people in this world are lonely and how incredibly blessed I am with friendship and social activity. The latter part sounds a little weird, but it's true. I'm realizing the life I lead isn't normal. I know a LOT of people and I do a LOT of things. I think I've taken it for granted. But the truth is, those things are blessings. And as I meet people who lack relationship and personal connection, I feel moved to invite them to enjoy the blessings I've received.

Wondering where my joy has gone.

I was remembering this morning that feeling of being excited about life, feeling such hope and overflow of joy. Where has that gone. Most days just drag out for me, and very little seems to truly excite me. What's wrong? So much to understand, I don't know where to start.

So, I've decided that I have to learn how to swim.

Because I'm terrified of the water, because it will force me to trust myself and others, because there's so much life to be enjoyed on the other side of the shallow end. I have to learn.

It's weird because I think that it will cause a deep and significant bond between the person who teaches me and myself. While I'm in the beginning stages, I'll have to trust them a lot, especially since water frightens me so much. The last person who tried, I clung to him desperately every time I felt afraid. By the time I'd actually learned something, I trusted him a lot. And the person will have to be patient with me because even small steps in this area take a long time for me. As they learn to deal with my lack of confidence and I learn to trust them and myself, I think a good relationship will form.

I'm looking forward to this :)