Jealousy Demanding as the Grave

 

I’ve been thinking this morning about the jealousy of God.  Trying to fit it all in my head is just pointless, but He wants to be gazed upon, even with my feeble and incapable eyes and mind and heart.  So here I am, blogging.

 

 ⁶ Place me like a seal over your heart,
       like a seal on your arm;
       for love is as strong as death,
       its jealousy unyielding as the grave.
       It burns like blazing fire,
       like a mighty flame.  

 ⁷ Many waters cannot quench love;
       rivers cannot wash it away.
       If one were to give
       all the wealth of his house for love,
       it would be utterly scorned.

Song of Solomon 8:6-7

God is jealous for me.  He’s jealous for you.  He wants us, and He won’t stop wanting us.  How ridiculous.  Little old me.  Holy Jehovah.

He wants all of me and is unwilling to settle for less.  We wonder why He takes things away from us or asks us to wait.  Duh.  He wants us to be dependent on Him and knows that in no other state will we be happy.  Thin, worn out versions of happy are all around us, and they cost us far less than intimacy with a holy God.  But who else loves like He does?

I can’t contain it!  Unlike earthly lovers, He doesn’t express His jealousy by defensiveness or sarcasm or withholding His own love.  He takes His hurt heart, seeing our prostitution and rebellion and obstinacy, and decides instead of wrath to again and again give us more of Himself and pour out His love and mercy on us.  I have no choice but to return in the wake of the flood.  And there’s wrath, yes, but even that is love, for He knows nothing else.  What kind of uncaring, apathetic God would allow us to remain in our denial?  Not the Sacrificial Lamb, that’s for sure.

I just, I wish sometimes, in my fleshiest moments, that He didn’t want me so badly.  Or maybe if He could want me just as badly, but only desire part of me. 

Really, I am grateful for every last, painful-to-me attribute of God because after all, He IS perfection.  But this dying to self is hard to bear.  I’m crushed so often under the weight of His desire for me.  It presses me down and is my unlying mirror.  It’s the flood that “washes my house away but also makes me clean”. 

I want to love like that.  Toward Him and toward everyone.  How would the world (we) be changed if our days were a constant pouring out of oneself and that self really was wrapped around the Almighty?

I am just blown away.

Vacation with Mom Part Deux

Things i learned this trip:

• I AM STILL A BIG JERK. Seriously, i think i've progressed so much, more patient with people at work and friends and such, more laid back, not as demanding, and then BAM. In steps mother of jerk for not even a week and i'm impatient, demanding, claustrophobic, insisent on getting my way (even if only in my head), and downright bitchy when woken at unexpected or unwanted times.
• My husband, whoever he may be, will have his manly guitar playing hands full with me. I'm no treat to live with. Mess with my routine, space, or sleep, and all qualities worth loving in me burrow deep. He'll have to dig.
• There's nothing like your mom. Two decades plus a few years down, and she still just makes me feel wanted.
• Kissing parents on the lips is just weird ::shudder::
• I'm not old enough to know all the details of my parents' divorce.
• I never will be.
• I may have gotten my hippieishness from my mom. She's conservative in every sense of the word, but she finds little ways to rebel like always wearing more than one necklace and loves bold floral patterns and shirt dresses.
• I appeared depressed to my parents for my last few years of high school. Funny thing was, i was SO happy. I spent most of my time in my room, watching tv, hanging out with my mathlete and drama club/choir friends, and talking to my awesome then-boyfriend, Kyle :)
• I need my sister.

Vacation with Mom

 

I dropped Mom off at the airport this morning before heading to work, where I am now.  I should be working, but obviously I’m doing this instead.  Ate my CLIF bar on the way to work and just finished cantaloupe flavored yogurt.  (Remember, cantaloupes can’t but antelopes can.)  I hope it doesn’t smell up my trashcan later.  There’s nothing quite so identifiable and yucky as yogurt trash.  Bleh. 

 

I think I’ll make this an all day or most of the day draft, keeping it open and un “published” until I think I’ve gotten it all out.

 

The most commonly used adjective when people have asked me how the visit went is simply “good”.  It’s true.  It was very relaxing and laid back but still pretty full.  Mom was more than content to watch movies most nights (mostly ones I had at home already, which both saved me money and guaranteed they were movies I liked enough to buy).  We also went and saw two movies in the theater.  David (my step dad) isn’t too keen on the movie going scene (ha, it rhymed!), so it was a departure from the norm for her. 

 

We saw “Julie & Julia” and “Inglourious Basterds”.  The first was ok.  I’m glad I saw it but wish I would’ve waited for the dollar theater or to RedBox it.  Now the second, Inglourious Basterds, it was GOOD.  I’m not a huge Quentin Tarantino fan.  To be honest, blood for the sake of blood is just not my thing.  I don’t dislike his stuff.  I’d just prefer it sans gore.  But this movie was pretty awesome.  I enjoyed the mix of setting and style, that it was set in WWII France but still had classic Tarantino music and did the thing where you meet a new character and his name pops up in big, bold, comic book-esque writing.  Also, he always tries to make death look pretty.  And then he’ll go and show someone’s head getting beaten in.  It’s so strange.  Anyway, I liked the movie.  I liked that it ended in a way that’s NOT historically correct.  After all, movies are entertainment, and who says you have to be historically correct!  Sometimes it’s just not as interesting, and unfortunately I’m 100% American when it comes to my desire to be entertained. 

 

It was pretty cool and pretty weird having someone DO things for me and even weirder having someone BUY things for me!  I’ve lived alone for about 2 and a half years now, and even before that I dated this guy who was always broke.  I haven’t lived with my parents for any length of time in about 5 years.  So I’m kind of used to buying my own things.  It’s how it should be.  It was just really hard to walk through a grocery store where my mom said “let’s go shopping.  Get whatever you’d normally get for groceries” and actually do what she wanted me to do.  Good thing I normally shop the sales and was able to get out of there for cheaper than I normally would’ve if I were by myself.  Mom bought me a patchwork quilt at the flea market.  I’ve always loved them, not the old woman floral kind, though they have their place, but the different colors and patterns cool kind!  We got it home, and she mended a few tears that were in the quilt.  So now it’s kind of store bought AND hand stitched by my momma!  Cool! 

 

We got to hang out with Emily’s mom, Sue, who not only bought us delicious cake (white, chocolate, and carrot) but showed us hilarious baby pictures of EmiFace and drove us up into the mountains to see the gorgeous canyon.  I’d wanted so badly to drive her up there myself, but with the recently unreliability of my vehicle, it seemed more prudent not to do so.  I shared the backseat (kind of shared, kind of got trampled on but whatever) with Braylee and nearly got carsick but didn’t tell anyone.  It was so beautiful nevertheless.  I’m not a huge pine tree fan.  Give me a big leafy shade tree and a book any day.  But when you get up above the city and you can just look down on everything, it’s just so peaceful.  It reminds you in a really tangible way of how small you are, how BIG God is, and how He’s created everything to glorify and partially reflect Himself.  And He thinks I’M beautiful.  Crazy.  Crazy wonderful huge God.

 

“We’re all born into magic, but as we get older it’s taken from us.” ~The Mentalist

 

Childlike.  Not Childish.

 

Anyway, there was a serious side to this trip, too.  Mostly it was fun and light and happy.  But a few months back, after talking to Mom on the phone, I really felt like God was telling me I had to talk to her about something serious, something not fun and not easy to bring up:  forgiving my dad.  The divorce happened a long time ago, almost twenty years ago now.  But it’s become apparent to me recently that she hasn’t forgiven him.  It’s not that she talks bad about him or is openly angry or bitter.  It’s the little things.   It’s the tone and undercurrent to what she’s said a few times recently.  I guess I’ve known it all along, but God just now told me to bring it up.  Maybe I just now have ears to hear or a heart that’s able to communicate all this in love and empathy but also in truth.  Who knows.  But I’ve been nervous for a while about the actual doing of this thing.  First of all, I’ve never been in her situation.  Yes, I was affected by the divorce, but to be honest, I was so young that I don’t remember the vast majority of it.  My mom was obviously hardest hit, followed by my sister who was just old enough to grasp the concept of abandonment and betrayal.  To this day I thank God for whatever protective bubble was put around me and my heart.  I think every child of a divorce has some sort of abandonment issues.  Something that’s meant to be permanent is proven disposable, and that’s enough to make anyone nervous.  I’ve also been cheated on.  The person I kind of sacrificed everything for was cheating on me the whole time.  I didn’t find out until long after we’d already broken up.  But still, I have to forgive him all the time, re-forgive… yikes.  That’s the closest I get to understanding her pain, and it’s not really even close.  So there was that.  Also, it’s hard to explain to someone who loves God but seems to have little understanding about the Holy Spirit how you just “feel” like you’re supposed to tell her something.  There’s a fine line between speaking out in power and boldness and sounding like a super religious quack! 

 

So anyway, mom and I were having this conversation (I’m not sure how it started.) that turned out being about my step dad and how he just is unwilling or unable to change.  We talked about how I kind of retreated within myself after my sister left for college and how much it worried my mom.  It’s kind of funny, because I remember those years being so good.  I’d finally figured out that if I just avoided talking to my step dad and went straight to my room after I got home that I could also avoid the conflict that came with him.  Unfortunately it meant avoiding my mom, too, but at the time it seemed worth it to alleviate the strain and constant arguments in the household.  Even now I think to myself “I wish I’d have figured that out sooner.  I could’ve avoided so much heartache.”  I never knew my mother was worried for me then.  Knowing that, I’m still not sure I would’ve done anything different.  I just don’t think I had the emotional/spiritual capacity then to “be the bigger person” and surely not repeatedly.  It was self preservation.  I know we’re not supposed to fight our own battles.  God is the lifter of our heads and our defense.  With the hurt that’d built up to that point, though, it was fight or flight.  Fighting never got me anywhere but more angry and more hurt, so flight seemed the rational option.  So anyway, we were talking about this, and I got around to how I have to forgive David every time I think of him, how it’s difficult and a process and only God that will allow forgiveness to happen because I don’t know how to let go of the offense.  It just seemed the right time to present the idea of forgiveness to Mom.

 

And I did.  I told her that I’d felt for a few months now that God had been telling me to tell her something, but that I wanted to do it in person.  And I just laid it out there:  You have to forgive dad.  I told her that it wasn’t about him, whether he deserves it or not, whether he’s changed or not.  (in my opinion, he’s SO changed, changed by the Holy Spirit, changed by time and love and life, but mostly Jesus, but claiming all this would’ve been irrelevant and beside the point).  I told her she needed to let go because it’s the only way she’d ever heal, that it’s only hurting her, but more importantly it puts a barrier up between her and God.  But then the HARD part came.  She cried.  My mom has a huge heart, it’s easy to see, but I’ve very rarely seen her cry for any reason, much less the biggest hurt of her life.  She cried and said she hasn’t forgiven him and doesn’t know how.  She said it’s not fair that the one who does the abandoning always seems to move on just fine.  She said she loves David, my step dad, loves him so much and would do anything for him, would never leave him, is so glad he was brought into her life.  But she said it.  The thing that keeps pushing itself back into my mind since this conversation, the thing I don’t know what to do with.  This one thing makes me feel like a child again because I feel like I can’t handle it, like I shouldn’t be privy to this information, like I have to do something but can’t do anything.  It breaks my heart.  She said “But I still love your dad.  I know he’s happy now and he and kim have a great relationship, but WE could’ve been great.”

 

If you’re reading this, please please keep this information here.  You’re all my closest friends, and I need to get this out of me, if only by typing it in this entry.  This is my mother’s innermost thing, and I’m only sharing it now because the few of you that read this are the ones I share everything with anyway.  No one else even knows this exists.  I know I kind of always make everything about me, and this is a good example, taking something that’s my mom’s hurt and making it about myself.  I guess I just don’t know what to do with this.  I feel like my heart has weighed hundreds of pounds in my chest since hearing this.  I guess all along I’d thought she was angry, hurt, bitter, resentful, and I think those things are there too.  it’s just that I never considered this a case of unrequited love, of one person’s heart still loving and the other’s simply ceasing to love.  Looking now it’s so obvious.  I’ve been there.  I wish I would’ve been the one who broke it off with RC.  I was mistreated, beat down (don’t worry, not physically), and taken advantage of, and still I didn’t have the wherewithall to end it.  and I kept loving him long after the relationship ended.  It didn’t end for me, not then at least.  I never thought of my mom and dad’s marriage the same way. 

 

So I’ve been walking around bearing this weight, and I don’t know how to get rid of it. 

 

I think I have more to say.  However, this is such a long post that I don’t think I’ll write more.  If you read it, please throw up a prayer for me and for sure one for mom.  I think I’ve done what God wanted me to do, but it’s nothing if she doesn’t let Him do the work.  And He SO wants to.

 

Jonathan and David

So i had an epiphany last night. i guess i should've realized this a long time ago. but should've and reality are often crazy far apart for me.

i started to tell emily about his on facebook chat, but she had to go. i was supposed to email it to her, but i decided to put it on here so it's open to the world. partly because i'm lazy and don't want to type it twice, but mostly because i'd intended to put it on here anyway. but let it be known that Emily has first dibs. (whatever that means) ha.

okay, so i've always been kind of scared of how i love people. i feel like maybe i love people too fervently or too much or too wholly. not everyone. i have issues with judging and hating and being biased and snotty just like anyone. but i mean the people who are close to me. my family and my friends that pretty much are family.

i get nervous that maybe i shouldn't give myself so fully to others for a couple of reasons:

A) there's no guarantee they'll love me the same way back or with the same intensity. in fact, it's guaranteed that people will always disappoint.

**I know this all probably sounds a little proud, like i love better than anyone. really it's not that. i'm aware of a few of my shortcomings, some of which are selfishness, hurtful words, and judging others. all of these, plus the sheer separation from Love Himself caused by all sin, detract from my ability to love and communicate love in ways people understand and recognize. however, i can only know my own love, how it throbs within me for my loved ones, and i can only measure others' love imperfectly, in how they express it and how it's communicated, knowing all along that they are also flawed, expressing their love and its intensity inadequately.

B) as a Christian, i get nervous that my heart should be given solely to the Lord, that by letting others hold a place in my life and heart like this, that i'm sinning against Him, again prostituting myself "on every threshing floor". i know He's all i need and should be all i want every second but find myself unable to limit the relationships in this world that mean the most to me to a minor fraction of my heart.


But last night i was reading in 1Samuel. i've read about David before. i've heard about him as far back as i can remember. but it never occured to me, this thing that's kind of freed me.

Jonathan's and David's souls were KNIT to one another. They loved each other's soul as they loved their own. Jonathan gave his kingdom, and when they parted, they both wept, "but David more so".

and it was SUPPOSED to be this way! GOD did it! it didn't just happen and wasn't made possible by human action or chance. from the moment they met, their souls were entwined. even now i'm overcome. i feel like my heart's in my throat with the joy and freedom of this!

no wonder kyle and ashliegh were my friends from the moment i met them! no wonder i'm so swayed by their pain! it feels like my heart breaks when theirs do! no wonder when aaron got cancer or amanda lost the baby that i felt as if a part of me could die or had died! i never felt unbelief like i felt when aaron was diagnosed. i prayed for the first time in my life, weeping "Lord, i believe. please help my unbelief." when Jesse calls and is upset or confused, my mind doesn't rest until God's given ME peace, as if it were my problem to begin with! and even now, the heart i'm becoming more and more protective of, Emily, i get upset at the devil so fiercely when he won't leave her alone!


Ashliegh wrote recently, in a message that broke my heart again in love for the Lord and her, "I have all i need in Him alone, but i want our friendship in my life in a way that the alternative seems dark and dreary."

sheesh.

there are answers to both my points. A and B.

Yes, people DO love me back that fiercely.
and NO, it's not wrong. it's purposed and beautiful and what i was created for.

God is so good. so good. He is all IN all.

A Glimpse of How Emily Must've Felt

So i got food poisoning this weekend. i'm still not sure if that's what it was or if it's a stomach bug, as i still feel kind of weird today, a day and a half after the fact.

Emily was all alone in Ireland and sick for weeks. I was all alone in my house for a night, and it was horrible. You are one strong chicka, Emi!

Things I realized this Saturday night-Sunday morning that i'd never truly realized before:

• Nasal passages must be much larger than i'd thought. Turkey chunks CAN come out your nose.
• When your mom's not around to hold your hair, it really sucks.
• If you have any other option, puking in a sink is NOT ideal. Drano saved my life... and my pipes.
• Don't ever think, when attempting to hold in vomit from BOTH ENDS that it's ok to not go to the toilet. Don't tell yourself "it's ok, just tense up your rear and go #2 when you're done throwing up". there's no guarantee that you CAN hold it.

Shove Chapel

Last night I went with a friend of mine, Sarah, and her boyfriend Kurt to pick up dinner at Pita Pit and then to Shove Chapel (pronounced with a long O) to eat said pita (greek chicken, spinach, mushrooms, tomato, olives, pickles, sprouts, feta cheese & taziki sauce) and to play/enjoy worship music.  I wish everyone I love could experience Shove Chapel.  Sarah says she doesn’t feel the same about this, but I think the place just feels holy.  I know it’s the décor.  Our Christian God is just as welcome there as Allah or Buddha.  They call it a chapel, and it has all the markings and symbols of a cathedral.  However, it hosts whatever group wants to meet there for any reason:  meditation, higher learning, yoga, anything really.  So I know it’s the stone floors,  long pews, domed ceiling, rosette windows, communion table, and massive decorative/functional pipe organ that cause this effect in me.  Still, I walk in and want to whisper and kneel.

 

So anyway, at the front of this place, up on the platform behind the communion table and between two sets of green velour padded altar boy seats is a black grand piano.  That’s where we sat.  We scooted and angled the altar boys seats in where we wanted them, and I found they encourage some seriously correct posture!  Sarah played piano.  Kurt played guitar, and I mostly sat there listening to the beauty created.  I feel so inept sometimes, no instrument in my hands.  But mostly I just enjoyed.  I got to look at the high painted ceiling and try to figure out the patterns that were obviously there but had no apparent meaning to me.  I got to occasionally add in a different line of harmony than was already being used, but most of the time Sarah was already singing the only harmony part I could hear. 

 

I prayed for a long time that God would gift me with being able to hear harmony because I couldn’t.  Now I can (thank you, Abba!) but can rarely hear two different harmony parts.  Good for me that I don’t mind listening to Sarah’s beautiful, different, woodwind-sounding voice.  I don’t know who WOULD mind.  Blows me away.

 

Anyway, I don’t have much else to say about it other than how great it was just to sit down with like-minded (hearted) people and love the Lord in my favorite way, through music.  It brought me back to evenings at the UKC house in Cape Coral when Zach would pull out his guitar and people just worshipped in whatever way they wanted:  on their face, pacing and praying, journaling, sleeping in His presence.  This was a little more choreographed, as some of the songs were just being learned and worked on, but still, it felt like an old friend come to visit.  How great.

 

 

it's weird being a new person

so... i realized recently, while my friends were visiting from florida, that i'm a different person now than i was when i lived there. i mean, figuratively we're all different each moment than the moment before, but i don't mean it in that philosophical way. i mean that i don't even know who that person was!

looking back, i'm surprised anyone even hung out with me! i'm still goofy and clumsy and moody at times. but oh man was i a snot. and SO selfish.

i'm still selfish, but i must've cut down some, because i don't annoy MYSELF as much.

i still like to go to the movies. i still have 2 or 3 tv shows i keep track of (LOST, american idol, so you think you can dance, the office (that's four, but they don't all air at the same time)). but for the most part, i feel like God's shown me who He wants me to be, and it's simply SO different than my previous existence.

i've no clearcut purpose as far as a career goes. i don't know where i'll live over the course of my life or with whom i'll live it.

but i feel like air and sunlight and good books make so much more sense to fill my life with than entertainment and craziness. they just feel closer to what God must love. quiet seems so much healthier than noise. music so much better than chatter. two or three good friends better than a passle of so and sos.

i'm so thankful He's made me new. IS making me new. i can't imagine what i'll look like a few more years down the road. but in this moment and stage in my life, i feel like i'm where i'm supposed to be doing what i'm supposed to be doing: soaking in as much beauty and life as possible! and being grown.

last night i thanked God for all He's been doing in me. the breaking and the humbling. i told Him that it's not fun, that it hurts but that "it's...... good". it's the only word i can think of to describe it. not fun, not a good time or what i would've chosen for myself. just good.

MehWedge... mehwedge is what bwings us togevah today...

I've been thinking lately about what it means to share in Christ's sufferings.

He's been challenging me more and more to be like Him, and i'll admit, most of the time i feel the weight of that unreachable goal. He keeps saying to all my excuses, "so?". when i think i deserve something, anything, i'm met with "what DO you really deserve?" and i have to answer "imprisonment, fire, and shame". and i'm humbled and needy again. when i want to stand up for myself in almost any situation, right or wrong, He reminds me that He said nothing while facing crucifixion.

but recently He's begun to show me, from an outside perspective, although i'm nowhere near the actual act of marriage, that being married is truly to try and be Christ toward another person daily. and frankly i'm scared.

i'm just a whiner by nature (and birth order). i whine seriously. i whine jokingly. i whine without realizing it and on purpose. and i whine about my singleness in all of these ways and surely more.

there are moments (sometimes days) when i feel my singleness tangibly. it feels like a sheet wrapped around me or a thread that's wound through my very being. but the majority of the time i'm SO thankful for this freedom. i love what God's doing in me, and really i'm too easily distracted to think i'd be able to hear Him were i not set apart. i love my own time, the fact that it's not anyone's but God's. but still, it's my desire to not be alone. i want a family, that best friend that you never have to be without. something permanent.

i've been thinking, though, how bad of a job i do in my attempt to become like Christ. i fail the VAST majority of the time. but it's ok because my weakness proves Him strong.

but in a marriage, you're supposed to love that person like Christ loves His Church. i know that the verses technically say that the husband is supposed to love his bride this way and we're to submit like the church does. but it's a two way street, especially when we're supposed to try and love EVERY person like God does. and they're yours forever.

so it's a lifetime of humbling. a lifetime of offense and hurt and rebellion forgiven. i know divorce is supposedly justified by abuse or adultery, but i'm not sure it would be for me. i mean, i abuse and cheat on my God all the time, every moment practically, and He takes me back, waits like a father to run to me before i even get close. so i just don't see how legally ending something that can't be ended (a covenant) will solve anything or grow anyone in Love.

now of course it's also a lifetime of joy and adventure and growth and passion.

i guess just in this season, i feel more readily the weight of my imperfection, the constance of it. and it's so hard to offer my sad self back up to God, being made whole by Him and glorified as i glorify. i feel unworthy. i am. i feel sorry but can't make up for it. i feel completely needy but also completely full of joy at my closing proximity to His heart.

but all of this is shared between me and God and sometimes the people i choose to let in. and no one else. a marriage is in the open and impacts families. you can't keep that darkness hidden because your darkness is being brought out into the open by your one and only.

i still want to be married. it's just in me.
but i just feel so... nervous, at this moment. i love so imperfectly.

Quick Heart Update

So, for those of you with whom i'm not in semi-constant contact, this will be a post to generally catch you up on what God's been doing in my heart. It will be lengthy, and it will probably be wordier than is necessary. What do you expect!? that's how i roll.

The past two and a half years i've lived in Colorado, a state completely foreign to me upon having first moved here.

First let me say that by the time this fall rolls around, i will have lived here longer than i lived in Florida. that is SO odd. it doesn't seem that way. i think i spent the first 9 months i lived here simply mourning the past and the passing of an era. i didn't have many friends, and to be honest, just recently over the past year developed friendships that are growing me and setting me free to be myself. So i'm not sure i count that first year in any way but time-wise. still it's very odd to think i've been here longer. so much more seemed to have happened in my Florida years, a lot of bad and a LOT of good.

i just renewed my apartment's lease for another year. i had a mini panic attack. i realized i'd never lived in a place longer than a year. ransom house, beach house, hertha house, bella springs house, all for one year. so when this lease came up i started thinking "signing this will tie me down for another year. oh no. i don't want to HAVE to stay here. but i'm not going anywhere and i really love this place. it's so me. but what if..." and the inner battle raged on. so i simply psyched myself up and said "sign it Sam", signed my name in a flurry of pen, paper, and panic and put the lease in the office up front. ::sigh:: still kind of freaked out.

i think i'm much more of a free spirit in my head than i actually am

so anyway, the past year or so has been very growing.

God started by showing me that i relied on my friends in Florida for pretty much my whole spiritual identity. I'd wanted to be as patient and grace-giving as Ashliegh, as much of an intercessor as Kyle, and genuine as Lisa, and unwilling to put up with fluff as Zach. now let me just say that if i HAD to base my identity on certain people, these are probably the best people i could ever pick. honestly, i can't express how these people have aided in saving me. they've been Jesus at times, taking me back in when all i'd done is spit in their faces. they've tolerated my tears. tears that were really only caused by me and my disobedience. they tolerated and forgave my pride and biting words and flat out annoyingness, not to mention my constant forgetfulness when it comes to doing dishes. i feel like all these things add up to having saved me, the me who's anything good.

but regardless of all that, i am only a child of God. that's the only thing that remains, and i'd been prostituting myself all along by aligning myself with a group identity. it was me taking Pharaoh's second to last offer: "ill let you go, but don't go far", instead of the one He'd intended. So... like a jealous God, He's took away what stood between us. i've been living alone for 2 years now. i have my two cats, my 600 (or less) square foot apartment, have started reading a ton, and stay in far more than i go out. i was lonely, lonelier than i've ever been before, and i cried out to God for friends, for anyone to occupy my time. for months, over a year probably. i didn't know what to do with the silence. and He said to me (in way not exact words) "why are you trying so hard to fill your life with things that are meaningless. i'm all you need. i'm right here." He had to out stubborn me.

i was broken. he's still fixing.

then He decided that since i'd finally seen the ugly truth about myself, that i'd seen myself completely wrong. and the beautiful truth, that i'm HIS favorite, that He'd start showing me my darkness.

things He's shown me that i didn't even know were there, and certainly not in the crazy portions they're in: pride, defensiveness that really IS pride, judgementalness toward snooty Christians (which is just another way of being snooty), complete lack of discipline, more pride, lust, covetousness, complete lack of patience, entitlement, total inability to guard my heart.

and the list keeps growing and repeating.

i'm so glad, and sometimes i'm so angry! i asked to be closer to my Lord, and the only way is to lessen the sin between us. but in that process is tearing and flailing and dying. sometimes i'm overcome with my depravity and i feel like asking for the scales to be put back on my eyes, but i don't dare. my God and Master finally is my Lover. i finally get that. and i've wanted it my whole life. i dare not turn away, especially to salvage this self.

so anyway, long long long way of telling you what's been going on in my heart over the past years. but feel relieved knowing it could've been WAY longer.

Alright, this is a test to see if the email thing for my blog is working.  Love you all!

 

Samantha Taylor

"For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation." Rilke

 

Welcome!!!

I've started this blog because i can't decide if i want one or not. seriously, it's become this huge moral dilemma to me. Amanda was (is still, because of flight craziness) in town and said she wanted a blog specifically to blog about the crazy vacation we've had over the past week. it immediately sent me into a frenzy thinking about the potential outcomes/consequences of having a blog:

• people think i'm crazy/depressed/bipolar because i most often write when i'm feeling extreme emotions, one way or the other
• people get angry with me for referencing them in posts
• people get bored with my lack of posting and don't read it anyway
• i end up being really known by people i'm not sure i want to know me

All of these reasons, i decided about an hour ago, are stupid and completely rooted in fear.

There's no fear in love.

So blog i shall.

If you're here, know that you're invited specifically, that not everyone is, and that i'm trusting you with my head's and heart's thoughts.

I'll pour them out, just as they are, and hopefully you'll love me even more because they're flawed, because i'm working through them, because none of us are holy.

Love you!