A Goodbye of Sorts

It's strange, how looking back
annual events become lasts.
Unsuspecting in the middle of things -
a family dinner,
a Christmas celebration -
they become
the last family dinner at Grandma's
The last Christmas with Grandpa micro-managing the decorations
The last time I sat on that old
rocker on the porch listening to stories -
old gossip about people long dead.
In my memory they acquire
a melancholy haze.
Remember when?
Remember?
As a child I never thought I would say goodbye
to these haunts,
to the old basement where cousins
played video games,
dressed up, and
punched lights out.
I never thought the family Christmases would end
or change -
Candy homemade by an aunt
nerf wars in the upstairs bedrooms.
I never thought I would have to say goodbye
to my grandparents
as they slowly deteriorated.
To a child, things are as they always have been
and always will be
But I am no longer a child -
I startle at my reflection
when out of the corner of my eye -
my mother, my grandmother
look back at me.
I have seen more things than I imagined as a child,
met more people,
accomplished much.
I stand on my own two feet now,
no longer needing my mother or father.
I am an adult now
and am suddenly confronted with the thought
that my grandparents will probably never see my children,
their great-grandchildren,
that my grandparents' home will be empty and cold,
the rocker on the porch still and silent.
I am confronted with change I never wanted to see,
the way time keeps slipping away ceaselessly into the past.
I am confronted with lasts.

Taken Summer of 2010 at my grandparent's house

You

This is grace.

A free fall, leaping voluntarily from the platform into the unknown.
This is faith.
Burning the faulty bridges before new ones have been built.
This is life.
Falling and soaring, all senses on high alert.
This is wisdom.
Walking day by day with eyes fixed upon your face.
This is trust.
Hoping in good gifts though you, for apart from you they are nothing.
This is love.
Passionate. Pursuit.
This is You.
You are love, and in you I will place my hope.

Fighting. Fighting. Fighting. (For my heart)

I want to turtle so hard right now.  I want to stay in my room, away from all the people who have hurt me this week.  I want to put my hood up and not see the people who have touched the sensitive and raw wounds in my heart.  I want to cry and cry and cry until there are no tears left, and then sleep curled up next to someone I trust.  I want to believe truth, but most everything I've been experiencing lately has been telling me that I am forgotten, deserted, abandoned, not important.  The actions of other people have been saying "I forgot about you. I did not think of how my actions would affect you.  Your feelings, desires, fears, wishes, and hopes do not matter to me.  You do not matter."  With the notable exceptions of my life group (Ria and Lindsay, you rock), and my wonderful Brother in Christ Micah, the majority of my interactions with other people this week have wounded me, or hit me hard in all of my root lies about myself.  And I am waiting for God to come through, to show me that those lies are false and give me truth instead.  But it is so hard to wait, so hard to not retreat back into a little shell where people cannot reach me.

I have a heavy heart today, full of sorrow and tension.  So much pain and suffering in this world.  So much pain in the lives of my friends and family.  Death, divorce, and deep heart desires not being met.  But I will trust in the Lord, that he will redeem each and every one of these situations for His glory and the good of those who trust in Him.

Here I Am

Here we are.  Here I am.  Unfiltered, and unedited (mostly).  This is going to be raw and unpolished and might come out wrong, but that's okay.  Honesty is sometimes much more important than all of that.  And I want to be honest with you.  I want to be messy and vulnerable and unpolished and offer you little pieces of my heart whispering "Please be careful with this."  But I still offer it to you to do with what you will.  It is a gift, and offering out of the hope that you will enjoy, you will resonate, you will understand me, and yourself, perhaps, as well, a little bit better.  And so I begin.

As usual, I hardly know where the beginning of everything is, and will have to try in my imperfect way to find a good starting spot.

Pain.  Let's start here.  I don't like pain.  I don't like feeling hurt, feeling emotional pain, sadness, anger, frustration, rage.  And so I run.  I hide, and tunnel deep into myself, or into other things so I won't have to feel that hurt.  And so I ran, this spring.  From pain.  From my aunt's diagnosis of cancer, from the pain of recognizing and acknowledging my desires and seeing them go unmet day after day after week after week after month after month, from a profound loneliness, from feelings of abandonment, from frustrations with myself for not living up to my own standards of perfection.  From others, and from myself.  I was numb, except for the self-loathing I experienced after I fell, again, and sinned, again in the ways I had sworn to myself I would not do again.  I ran and I ran and I ran.  I hid from God (whom I was angry at, because I felt wounded by him, after I did not receive a thing it seemed like he had promised me, a thing I only kind of wanted, but had put a lot of myself out there for because I believed he wanted me to and that his provision would come through).  I was vulnerable (sometimes) and shared (sometimes) and felt tired and lonely and unwanted (a lot of the time).  I was in battle, and it sure felt like I was losing, with no one fighting for me.  Not God, not my friends, not even me, sometimes.

I was in battle, a mother lioness with no cubs to fight for, no mate to fight for me, nothing and no one except myself and the enemy.  And I was tired.  So very tired.  A lot of pain, a lot of negative things.  This isn't to say that I didn't have good times, didn't feel joy and happiness sometimes, but the underlying emotion was anger and disgust.

And I still feel so very lonely sometimes, all alone with no one to fight for me.  All alone, with no champion on my side.  This was one thing I realized this past week during the LT kickoff retreat.  There was one point, where it was announced that the women were going to pray out loud for the men, and the men were going to pray out loud for the women.  And my heart leapt in my chest, a deep deep wordless longing welling up, fear and hesitation mixed in with it.  "Oh, is this for me?  It can't be for me because I want it so much.  Can it?"  I have felt rejected and abandoned by my sisters in christ, by my brothers in christ.  I have felt so much pain, so much anger, so much hurt, so much indifference from those I have looked to for friendship, for companionship, for affirmation from God flowing through them.  Having men of God praying out loud for me, for my sisters and I, was such an amazing feeling.  There were many, many tears shed by me, by my sisters.  My desire for masculine love runs so deep.  I desire feminine love as well, but I have so much more of that already in my life.  I have so many heart's sisters, women I love and am open with, whom I share my life intensely with.  I have few heart's brothers, few men whom I trust enough to open up my heart and share vulnerably with as a sister.  I have few men whom I trust will fight for me, even a little bit.  I feel alone and vulnerable, and so fight for myself.  I am fierce and protective of myself, of those I love.  And the story plays out again and again in the lives of my sisters, fighting for themselves and their sisters because no brother does.  There are so many tears here, so much longing for how things should be, how God created us to function.  So much desire for heaven, for the way God intended us to interact.

I am not blameless.  I have wounded and hurt others, cut them to the quick.  I have sinned against them, against my brothers and sisters, and I have so much regret for that, so much sorrow for the pain I have caused others.  I have not loved others as I was called to do so, have not loved God with an abandon that made his love overflow into my relationships with others.  I have sinned against others, against God, against myself.  I struggle with pride, with perfectionism, with legalism, with choosing aloneness over connection for fear of greater pain.  I have lied, and stolen, and taken the Lord's name in vain.  I have coveted, and committed adultery in my heart.  I have dishonored my parents, I have been angry and desired death for others in my mind.  I have not kept the Sabbath, I have made idols, and I have put these other "gods" before God.

I have failed.  I fail.  I will fail.  I do not measure up to the standards I set for myself.  I do not measure up to the standards of the Law, no matter how hard I try.  And so, I'm coming back to Grace.  I'm coming back to sitting at Jesus's feet sobbing, saying "forgive me, I need you more than ever, I need you because I have no one left.  I have been adulterous, and all of my false lovers have left me more alone and desolate than ever.  Nothing has any meaning except for you.  Everything is meaningless, empty, and shallow.  I will wait on you.  I will quiet my soul and wait on you, for you have promised redemption, which I eagerly hunger for.  I will wait on you, for the things you have promised, but so much more than that, for you.  Because you are worth it.  You are worth everything my frail broken heart could ever give you.  You are the only thing that matters in this world, in this universe."

And you answer "Here I Am."

This is just a quick note to say that things are kind of crazy/overwhelming right now and I would really love prayers.  Everything is/is going to be great, it's just going to take a little bit of time for me to catch my breath and really write everything that's been happening down for you lovely people.  In the meantime, there's a lot going on emotionally right now, and not a whole lot of time to really deal with it all.