midnight musings

It always catches me by surprise, when God manufactures things just for me, it seems. I like how he works in themes, teaches me in waves. As I rise and fall in the current, he always manages to hit me right in the nose with his lessons. All around, in my relationships and mistakes and in the church sermon and the songs, he speaks to me. It brings tears to my eyes. As I sink low, he meets me. And as I rise up, confident in my own strength, he humbles me. Always, God understands. And this truth doesn't only bring comfort. It brings conviction too. He understands, and knows, and doesn't let me go off the hook. He's got a hold on my belt loop, even when I'm resistant.

Right now, it's my struggles with various relationships in my life. And it's not the people with the problems. It's me. And how I relate to these people, how I struggle to forgive. I find myself lashing out, impatience and anger often bubbling to the surface. I'm sure Satan's been pleased by my behavior lately. The Holy Spirit in me has been heartbroken, I feel it. I'm full of shame.

I really didn't want to go to church this weekend. I don't know what it was. I was so tempted to stay home. Internally, I battled unsteadily. Wondering if I was choosing to stay home just because I didn't feel like it, because I wanted to avoid God's voice. I eventually decided to go. And not with a good attitude, I might add. You should have seen my scowl.

But once I slid into the pew, started singing along to the songs,
I found God meeting me. Even though I had tried to avoid him.

It often works like that, doesn't it?

Thank the Lord. Who knows where or who I would be if it weren't for that. I always have a bad attitude and impure motives. This is why I love how Jesus came to heal the sick, not the healthy. It's glorious, and I drink that truth in with gratefulness.

Anyways, when the sermon began, I was knocked off my feet. Figuratively, of course, because I was sitting down. God knew! He knew what was going on inside of me! It really is pathetic how easy it is for me to forget. And yet discovering it again always increases my joy.

That parable, it sure struck home. My incalculable debt is forgiven, and yet I go out and strangle others because they've hurt me a little, or they owe me in our relationship. I seek out this dissension. After all that grace that was lavished upon me. I get what want, my debt wiped clean, then get off my knees, and forget all about it.

He's calling me to have grace on others as he has grace on me. 

It was both hard and sweet to hear what God wanted me to hear. His lessons are inescapable, and sometimes my flesh really hates that. Sometimes I really fear it, too. But it never brings me down the wrong path. Once I see that again, I know there's no where else I want to be but on the road of life.

Despite my flesh

I've just started reading the book Radical. And I'm hardly past the first chapter, but already I'm nervous. Because the words are cutting me deep.

I can tell a strong conviction is coming my way.

You know that feeling you get before God does some work in you? It's going to be big, you can just tell. And you're scared. . . because it will change you. And it will require your complete obedience.

Well, that's what petrifies me. To the core.

This fear does comfort me, in a way, because I know I'm not asleep in my sin. That the Holy Spirit is indeed living inside of me. But it also means that I'm terrified of letting go of my old ways.

My flesh starts shaking, my fear rises up fiercely, and that knowledge that God is asking me to step forward is almost too much.

But not quite.

Because,
always,
there is that quiet, insistent whisper that tells me that things will turn out, in the end. Though the journey forward will be steep, my joy will be multiplied and my faith rekindled.

What's even better is the truth that I know the owner of that whisper. And I how I believe that he has better plans than I can imagine. Different than I think, unexpected compared to my dreams, and startlingly challenging,
but better they remain. 

Okay, God. Turn my world upside down.

Wash away all that isn't yours in the might of the storm. 

save me from myself.

I feel like all I am is one
huge

mass

of regret.

A coil of ropes, impossible to untangle. That's what I am.

I've said so many wrong things. So many careless things. How many times have I blurted out a harsh comment and seen the pain flicker across someone's face? And I try to pretend that I didn't notice. I try to pretend it didn't happen.

For, if I slowed enough,
I would feel sick. Wholly disgusted. I would feel how dirty I am and the bile would rise in my throat.

And I'm always too scared to apologize.

That is the worst kind of coward.
Someone too scared to speak up and admit they were wrong.

But that's me. A coward.

I never stop to think of what I'm doing.

I am recklessly extravagant in my choice of words, my way of living, my
hurry
hurry
hurry
to get by without stopping to feel the extent of the shame buried within me.

I am the worst friend.

The worst.

Sometimes, I hear myself talking and I want to silence that fool I hear speaking. That person's a selfish pig. She doesn't even listen to other people. She goes on and on, stifling others, complaining, scowling, sulking, sitting stubbornly.

She's a coward in denial of who she really is.

Still, this I know:

There's still a small, intense, throbbing part of me

begging

to be saved. 

Set Me Aflame

I was about to eat supper. Dishing up carelessly, living in the day. My food filled the plate and I took my first bite.

Oh yeah. I should pray. Forgot about that.

And with anything but depth, I started to mutter words in my head. What an obligation. What a drag. A bore. A habit that I need to develop. A thing I should do.
To be good.

An airy thought in my head, an itch to be scratched. My emotions blank. My soul numb. Oh yeah. Praying. Let's add that in real fast, like a dash of salt in a recipe.

Then

whoosh

I was shaken awake.

-What am I doing? Oh Lord, what am I doing?
And my heart in the past days? Detached. Empty. Distant. And. . . lost.

And, more than that, I hadn't even realized. 
I hadn't even noticed my state. 

Oh the realizations crashing in upon me, like beating waves, tearing winds,
and my eyelids were opened up like a chest so that I might
see.

And I saw that I was acting just like this was any old religion. An occasional thing in my life to be visited. A meager part of me. A fraction, a slice, not an
all-consuming  
fire,
a blaze transforming every crevice, awakening the deepest love and strongest passion from my depths. 

God, save me from
this
complacency.

Make it my enemy. My dreaded fear. That I may be so on edge, never to stop fighting it, searching for its presence - that if I find a
small hint 
of it, I would leap to snuff it out. May my sword be drawn, senses heightened, mind aflame with the Spirit to never forget.

I want true prayer. Intercession. Communion. A perpetual conversation, a dance of words and love and pouring out. I want this with you, God. I want a remembering heart, an unconformed mind. I don't want to settle. Don't want to sit still. Don't want to lose sight. Don't want to live on my own. Don't want to be like any other person. Don't want to act like you're just another god. Don't want to put you on my mental checklist. Don't want to change our marriage into religion, burden, a pot on the back burner of the stove. You aren't restraint. You are promise. Your grace isn't a perk. It's a pool - that's necessary for me to be saturated in.

Consume me.

Consume me. 

I can't stand my position, my current state. It's not okay. It's muck. And pick me up and 
move me far from here. 
Because I do not want to linger in this complacency, resistance, and lack of 
surrender. 


I need your winds of testing, piercing convictions, life and presence and voice. I need your touch to draw me out of this stupor, out of my death. Raise me from the dead. I need you.

shed this forgetfulness

I have been digging into Proverbs lately. Underlining and highlighting and soaking in
all the practical and deep,
the bundles of steady wisdom.

And in this saturation, I'm hoping some of it will rub off upon me.

Because I need it. Desperately.

How many times have I read about the fool and seen myself leap out?
And how many times have I read about the wise man and longed to find
just a
fragment
of my heart in those lines?

I need to search, really search and stretch like elastic to even
begin
to imagine myself having things in common with this wise, righteous man. This wise one who stays on the path, ponders instead of forgets, leans in the right places, thinks before he speaks, slows, gives with mercy, offers himself with intention.

I'm seeing my foolish feebleness, my folly, my chronic forgetfulness.

Oh my forgetfulness.

And I remember Ezekiel 17's prostitute who did not remember.
She did not remember the days of her youth, when she was naked and bare, wallowing in blood.
She did not remember what He rescued her from.

And that is me.


How the Proverbs plead with me to keep the teaching,
keep the words,
the remembrance,
bound on my fingers,
written on my heart.

Oh Abba, I want to be righteous, a lover of your rebuke, one who remembers your love and work, who walks well, thinks first, ponders always, answers soft.

I know I'm lacking. But
I'm looking back to those days.

How your rescued me from my blood.

And though I'm an adulterer, you have a covenant bound in faithfulness.

So shed this default of mine, of forgetfulness. And let me live
in remembrance of you.

Why I'm never satisfied at the end of the day

My ability to turn whatever I'm dished out into a miserable experience surfaces at many days' ends. I choose that misery. No matter how fine a day was.

I know I have an easy, cushioned life.

And I know that my heart chooses this joylessness. It's this human nature thing. Maybe you've heard of it.

We've been reading The Republic at school, rolling the ideas of justice and motives around in our minds time and time again. And it always boils back down to this flesh issue. Our ability to distort and stain and want more than we have. Endlessly. This ability to be unhappy in every season of our lives. Whether it's cloudy or sunny. To never be satisfied.

To drink from the shallow places and never dive in with all of us.

Skimming the surface. Getting by. But feeding this empty by placing ourselves in place of the Son. Making ourselves the one that our world revolves 'round.

A day is marked by our ability to keep thinking about ourselves. 


And whether a day is good or bad, whether life is like sitting on a cloud or drowning in the sea-

we aren't happy.

I come home, at a day's end, and I am still thirsty internally.

It's this choosing of myself that fails me. Every time.
It is me drinking from the
shallow place
that will never hold enough for me when the deepest, coolest waters are just around the bend. I've just got take the few steps over there. It's available; I've just got to lean down and drink immersed. Then my soul will be satisfied. If I choose to have faith.

Suddenly

I feel like someone just punched my heart.

Convicted.

This blog post, called "Your Picture of Heaven", asks some really good, hard questions.
I admit, it was difficult to read.

But that's good I think.
I believe to feel that gut-wrenching conviction is healthy.
It shows the Holy Spirit is alive within me. 
(Does anyone know if there is a verse that says that?)

So I urge you to read it, and search your heart too.

Why do you look forward to Heaven? Do you, even? 
Do you want most to be with God and to worship him?

Do I love His Word?

Really.

Do I?

(source)

I've said to myself before, when typing the Bible into my favorite books for some profile:
"Of course. Of course it's one of my favorites!
Of course I love it."

But, really, I don't know.
Most of the time, I don't feel a passion for the Bible. There is no overflow of eagerness, delight, and love in reflecting in it.

Soaking it in (or lack thereof) can feel like a burden.

Miss Sweazey (my teacher/mentor)
has told us about one of her friends. How he realized he didn't love God's word.
But then, he asked for it. For a deep love of the Bible.

And she told us that he's so in love with it now. Like no one else she knows.
She encouraged us to ask,
to desire for that love.

Because God is able to give it to us.

So I'm asking God. Really, I am. Because I'm distracted and so often feeding myself with the world.

I'm asking.