Tag Archives: True Life

One Step Forward Two Steps Back

30 Friday Nov 2012

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lifemanI used to think that I had faith.  I really thought I did.  But when I am challenged my heart reveals that I don’t, that it’s not as engrained in me to trust God as I thought it was.

It’s difficult for me to accept that my anxiety, my freak outs, my mind choosing to believe the worst, my bad habits, are all symptoms of failure at trusting God. 

When I think that I’m doing well with trusting Him I get a new thing thrown at me that proves that I don’t.  Something bad happens and I just know in my heart that for some reason I have to be put in a situation where I’ll want to kill myself, and for some reason I think that will be the challenge, to survive it.  I don’t believe that God will do something good because I feel that I deserve to be miserable.  When I don’t get to have the things that I desire I believe that it’s because I am still too messed up to be able to receive something good from God.  When good things do happen I am afraid to enjoy it because it will be taken away, and missing something is worse than never knowing it. 

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”  – Colossians 3:1-3

I have been trying really halfheartedly to turn my perspective from inside my own head to one from the eyes of Christ.  I have been allowing myself to be run over by the garbage truck of depression and fear, resting uneasily in the lie that my life will never be what I long for it to be.

But the truth is that God is still just and good, that Christ is still my one and only, and that even if this life is never what I long for there will be another life after this one where I will know what it is to be completely full of joy, to be satisfied entirely.  Until then simply to the cross I cling.dirty

Why I hate weddings.

03 Monday Sep 2012

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I hate weddings for a few reasons.

  1. The sheer amount of people I have to play nice with intimidates me.
  2. I have to dress appropriately.
  3. These days the amount of people I know at these weddings has grown exponentially and it’s difficult to play nice with people I barely know or like.
  4. My favorite way to handle 1 and 3 is to drink, sometimes to excess. (At some point soon I will be posting about this drinking thing)
  5. There is dancing, which because of 4 I usually end up doing and being embarrassed about.
  6. There are two kinds of weddings for me, the first being weddings I am invested in and the second being ones I am not.  They each have their own sorts of problems, for instance when I am invested in a wedding in some way, by doing hair or makeup, by being in the wedding party or close to those who are getting married, I feel a certain pressure to make sure to perform well.  This means that I’m putting on a performance, which I am generally not down to do.  With not being invested it feels incredibly stupid to be there.  I don’t know why I have to be at the ceremony or the reception when I don’t know the person particularly well, or why I have to be on good behavior.  I don’t know why I am chastised for being myself when I wasn’t really important to the bridal party in the first place.
  7. I find going to weddings difficult because like most girls that are in my age range and still single I find it difficult to see people getting to have what I cannot at this time.  I get really tired at times of accepting that God has a great big plan for me that includes me being single right now and that excludes me knowing that I will be married at some point.  I am so blessed to see my friends get married and yet I take it as a burden because I am not.  Is this normal?  Perhaps.  Is this right?  No, not according to what I am professing to believe.
  8. Ceremonies are the WORST.  They are so filled with meaning and special things that apply to the couples, and they are so full of reminders of what marriage really is: a reflection of what the church is to Christ.  The church is the bride of Christ, which is implicit in the bible in many places.  To see even a shadow of that played out in life surrounding me is really difficult to handle.  I can’t imagine being loved to the extent of someone pledging their life to be entwined with mine on earth, and I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that Christ has accepted me as a daughter/sister/wife/anything other than scum beneath his shoe.  These are things that are too big for me to handle, and by handle I mean allow myself to understand and cry about in private much less in public.  I am grateful that God knows how slowly I need this pace to go, even when I am impatient and petulant.  He knows the perfect timing for my life and is continuing to pursue my heart and lead me to a place of understanding what this love is really all about, which includes leading me to accept that someone might be able to love me past my flaws and sins for a lifetime, much less all of eternity.

Wait for it, wait for iiiiihhhhhhttttttt…..

13 Monday Aug 2012

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I got a word from God during the first month I moved to the state I am living in. He told me to wait. That’s it. He said “Wait for him.” I decided after a few months that I had waited and now I was done. I got involved with someone, promptly lost my head, bruised our hearts and ruined a friendship. I was disobedient, and have learned a lot in the process about humility and forgiveness. After that calamity ended I found myself thrown into a season of change that left me no room for even thinking about relationships, which has been a blessing.

Recently I started feeling the impatience trying to sneak back in. It feels like the emotional version of when a person has physical nervous tension, always fidgeting, unable to be still. I prayed about it, vacillating between requesting patience and begging for satisfaction. Somehow I managed to keep my mind from running too far ahead of me, but I still couldn’t get it to sit still on the matter. And, of course, there were the dreams.

I had 3 dreams about specific situations. I had 2 a while back, and I couldn’t understand what they meant. I got royally unsure of their meaning, thought my heart was running around while I was asleep and making up plans that would never really happen but would lead me to a great deal of disappointment. I hated having these dreams. I listened to people I trust and processed a fair amount about the way God gives dreams and reasons or meanings behind them. I thoroughly believed that my mind was out of control, processing things behind my back, and unsure of where God was in all of this.

I also, every once in a while, prayed God would give me another dream so that I could see how the story played out.

One day, my first dream became a bit more real. It wasn’t exact, the details were hard to remember from the dreams themselves, but the correlation of the event, people, emotions, and everything was absolutely uncanny. Did I realize that at the time? Yes and no. I still was in a veiled state. Then, the second dream became a bit more real. Again, a large amount of correlation was there. I started to get nervous about the meaning of all this, at the time I couldn’t see the way things were lining up and I didn’t feel secure or stable at all emotionally when it came to the situation. I prayed hard for peace about it and for the people involved.

Last week I had the 3rd dream and the very next day the dam of understanding broke. During a conversation I accidentally processed things and realized I understood what I had understood in the dream. The message of the dreams, the reason I had them and the reason they have been unfolding in a very real way is for God to reiterate his point.

“Wait. Wait for me to show you what I want to show you. Wait for me to walk you through the situation I’ve prepared you for, wait for me to give you understanding of these things. Now that I’ve shown you some of the story, now that you see what I have as a plan unfolding and specifically designed for this part of your life, wait. Be patient. Guard your heart and do what I tell you.”

While I have been able to process these things, the 3rd dream still hasn’t played out yet completely. But I have an overwhelming peace about it happening, or not. If it does play out, I feel prepared, if it doesn’t I still will be able to wait.

Why is this something I feel ok posting about? Because this process of waiting on God is difficult, and it’s tiresome, and I get bored and I think I know better… But I don’t. And God knows how to give me just enough to remain faithful, and just enough to continue following the plans He has for me. And because I want these things to encourage those of you who may feel that God doesn’t speak to them, or doesn’t give them any sort of understanding about the future. Sometimes he speaks to us in strange ways; this is the first time I’ve been able to hear him loud and clear through a dream. Usually it’s different. But my point is that no matter what situation you are in and no matter what you think you know, you have no idea. There is a really powerful God up there that can speak to you in ways you can’t imagine. Just request it, and wait for it.

Slap me thrice and hand me to me mum.

02 Thursday Aug 2012

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I have been struggling with a verse the past few days.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt 6:21)

The verse is explicit. What I value, what I think is important, has the attention of my mind and takes up room in my heart. I’ve always considered myself off the hook with this verse, because I’m an idiot, but I realized while watching Pirates of the Caribbean At World’s End that much like the pirates I am not plagued by a treasure I already possess. My heart is pirate, which may have to do with my lineage and delusions, but that doesn’t change the fact that its desire is for something I don’t have but want. It believes that if I could only have this, things in my life would change. Life would get better; I’d be happier and fulfilled. In my own swashbuckling life I keep one thing in my heart as the ultimate desire, my personal Aztec gold. Once it’s mine the life I want will begin.
But the problem is that my treasure is not Jesus. Jesus acts as a crewmember in this area, another aid to get me to my goal. I have assigned my God to an assisting role in my story, without any consideration for how he might feel on the matter.
How embarrassing! Every day I continue to find more areas of my heart that are festering with sin. It’s annoying, especially when you start the day out thinking that you have your priorities in order. It’s not a new thing, finding idolatry stowing away in my heart like a rat with the black plague trying to wipe out all the work the H Sizzle has been doing in me.
I have found that this is God’s way, bringing to light my weaknesses so I can become more aware of my own shortcomings and know what to pray about. I don’t feel comfortable being like this. I feel like a jerk for being so insolent. I didn’t realize such a mutiny was at hand.
There is good news though. Apparently, for reasons I cannot fathom myself, Christ loves me. And he already knew all of this. He knows the deepest desires of my heart, and he is ready to be more satisfying that they are. And while I’m praying to want him more and my treasure less, the desires I’ve uncovered don’t seem to be going anywhere. But my desire for Him is growing.

A Work of Boredom

22 Sunday Jul 2012

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So how about that list, eh?  Pretty successfully executed, in my opinion.  Thank you to anyone who read it and please remember to comment or like a post if you have a chance, since I have no idea who reads this aside from my mother.  (Hi mom!)

Today’s topic is one that I feel is very important, one that is very close to my heart and a struggle that I’ve been dealing with for a long, long time.  For some people it’s a daily problem, and for some it’s nothing at all.  It has a tendency to bring other issues into your life as well, and I’ll explain what I mean about that. I’ve found that it comes at me in waves, seasons perhaps, and that I have to start actively combating it and speaking the Truth into my own life in order to deal with it.  I am talking about, of course, boredom.

Boredom is defined as the state of being weary and restless through lack of interest, which I like to translate into my own definition as being weary and restless through lack of interest in the fulfillment offered through Christ.  That is how I define this problem, and that is the problem that I have recently come to understand really intimately, probably inside out. 

It nearly ruined my birthday.  I went to the beach with a small group from the church I’ve been going to recently, and it included the absolute perfect mixture of people and everyone was super kind and deep inside I felt like God gave me a chance to have a really good birthday just because He loves me.  So I went for a walk on the beach by myself and the entire time I was praying about the coming year and what it would bring, and praying harder than I’ve prayed for myself in a long time that God would give me the ability to tap into the H. Sizzle’s stores of patience because I feel completely dissatisfied with my life.  I’m let down by the dreams I’ve had to kill at the altar, I’m in the process of perusing a career that I love but it exhausts and isolates me because of my beliefs.  I’m tired of the pattern my life has taken, which has been including drinking far more often than is acceptable and representing a sorry version of Christ to non-believers.  All of these things are hitting me while I’m at the beach, on my 25th birthday, getting showered with sun rays and love, and all I wanted to do was drown myself in the big blue or cry. 

I spent the rest of that weekend attempting unsuccessfully to battle the thoughts I was having, which were all about death.  Even during that time I was finding it to be a very silly dialogue I was having with myself, because I would never do a thing to myself.  I really am far too lazy and as much as I can occasionally be a beast that can take scrapes and such, I don’t like pain.  I also think of everyone else a little too hard to do something stupid like OD on drugs.  (Who will find the body?  My roommate?  I would never do that to her!  And who would pay for the hospital bills if I got my stomach pumped?  My parents?  We’re all broke!  And what would I say for myself?  Would I get institutionalized?  Would I have to tell my school?  How strange would it be at the house after my poor roommate was put through this?   Would she kick me out?)  Not an option, not really.  But I still was finding myself drawn into these fantasies, these silly daydreams of finally getting to put myself into a deep, dark eternal sleep that would make a statement to those I left behind.  And I thought to myself, “Never going to happen.  But it’s nice to think that it could.”

Then I thought about that for a moment and said to myself, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I define a stronghold as a place that you find safety and security, reassurance and peace.  It is at times a physical place, and at times it’s where your mind flees during times of trial.  I had built myself a stronghold out of the idea of death.  I had started to come to this realization on Sunday night after drinking myself into a proper state, and when I went to bed I told God that something was wrong with me and I finally was beginning to understand how off my perspective was, and I would really need a change on my insides tomorrow. 

Monday morning I felt free.  I felt as though I had been through the ringer the past weekend, but that person who had been suffering so badly wasn’t me.  That had to be someone else. 

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)

This boredom had driven me to find excitement, satisfaction, and stimulation through things that were not of God.  It was showing me a mirror of my life and a picture of someone else’s and asking me why I wasn’t trying harder to make my life interesting.  It was reassuring me that I wouldn’t be able to handle the buzz of quiet in my head after a long day unless there was a drink to drown it out.  It was attempting to seduce me down a road that led to darkness, and it almost worked.  I can honestly say that it was only the power of Christ that changed my heart in such a way as to feel free of this after a good night’s sleep, because the sleep wasn’t what fixed anything.  I’m still physically tired from my life, still lacking excitement in my day-to-day, still mourning my lost dreams and struggling to find the willpower to deal with the lessons I’ve been getting on humility (apparently it doesn’t come until after one is forced to deal with humiliation).  But I can see why I went through this, and how Christ has given me a way to repurpose my boredom.  There is so much emphasis in this life put on making every moment exciting and different that it becomes expected to have exciting and different moments all the time.  But the bible doesn’t say that we will get exciting and different moments every moment of our lives!  It says that when we offer our lives as to Christ in order to relay the message of reconciliation to others we receive the eternal reward of being reconciled with God.  It also says that all things are from God, which means that this boredom that I have to combat with a heart of thanksgiving and humility is in my life because God has put it there in order to bring me closer to Him. 

For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.  So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.  For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…(2 Corinthians 4:15-17)

The rest of my days will not be spent being bored, I can assure you of that.  At some point I will not be able to handle all of the excitement and I’ll get to explain all of that somehow.  But right now, I will not let my boredom-suffering-season throw me completely off the path towards Christ.  Every moment may not be filled with excitement and unique differences from every other moment in my life, but they will be filled with the love of a God that is never-ending, a hope that is steadfast and secure, and joy for a life that belongs to Christ.