March 15, 2012

Deut 23:5 However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing, because the Lord your God loves you.

Phil 1:18b-19 Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help given by the spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance.

John 16:20-22 I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you; Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

I do believe Beth Moore is correct when she says anguish is meant to lead to a birth. I was right when I told Jane I have so much hope and my heart is so full that I'm afraid I won't be able to do everything I want to do. I want to be a good, a better, friend by being honest with them and more confident about my feelings about what they're saying to me. I want to listen better to them. I want to study the word of the Lord my God the way I never have so that I can remember it and keep it as a tool instead of reading it all the time and remembering it for a short time just because I think it sounds beautiful. I believe there is a birth coming. And I've even loved Lent so much it doesn't need to happen extra soon, but I know it will anyway.

March 3, 2012

Indiana is beautiful and restorative for me. Every conversation and interaction with Jay and Jenny is exactly the same as 9 years ago this time, they're still together, it's still the sweet mutually appreciative thing where we love each other and now they have 3 children and the children are smart and wild boys and one baby who loves me and Jenny calls me her BFF. We drink tea and catch up and cook meals and today we went to Amish country and ate fried chicken and now we're home and Jenny's working on her dissertation and Jay's playing words with friends and I'm journaling. This used to be my life. It seems as though at least one thing I thought was gone had never disappeared.

I feel as though I'm entering into a place of rest. I mean, maybe I am. Who knows. I always feel like I want to declare some place I'm 'entering into' because I'm so excited about living. There's growth, where I want to grow things and be diligent about some outside of myself hobby and so I am growing roses. There's the part that wants to share my gifts and so I am teaching. But because the Lord wants so badly to teach me to let him intervene, I opened myself up to whatever and now I am playing an integral art in the life of a friend and I'm teaching her how to cook, along with teaching someone new how to play the piano. I'm going to be a 'satellite' teacher for Holly Evans, I can't wait. I feel so much more normal than I thought I would, getting things taken care of. It's both beautiful and gratifying.

March 12, 2012

So sweet. I felt in the beauty and sanctity of mass today the presence of God's promise that we are indeed together and that the desires for my life, all of them, and the goals and loves of my life, all of them, are safe within his recesses and that my path is safe and carved out for the two of us and that I've been given the Word and the wisdom to follow its guidance and that there is so much that is being figured out right now. Jenny and I walked around the Basilica and I took pictures and at the Grotto which commemorates the sighting of the Virgin Mary in France somewhere I lit a candle to bless the Lord and help me remember this sweet time between us, and tive me a physical action to be a reminder of God's promise to me on Earth. And Jenny and I talked about relics in the House of the Lord and them being necessary for reminding us of the physical coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. And I'm watching my friends love their sweet brilliant children more than life. And I'm letting God bless me amidst my sin and my attempts at goodness and my regrets and my gratefulness.

February 27, 2012

I have to write because I'm going to fall asleep. I am so exhausted in nearly every way. I went to counseling today and it was not the usual light and happiness it has become. I just had too much on my heart. I feel like what joy I had at the beginning of last week has been stolen and now instead of gaining it back and being shown mercy I'm being called into a place where I have to reconcile a lot of things. For instance, I have always hated the type of person who uses their anger and other emotions to manipulate and control the emotions and actions of others. I hate that person so much that I have an automated response system that quickly shoots up a wall that separates me and keeps me safe from that person and their manipulative emotions and actions. Then just yesterday I had to own, not even just owning, that's one whole other thing. I had to come into a place where I confronted the possibility that I was that person sometimes. Now I'm owning it and it really hurts. I don't want to be that person and now I have to, or I get to be, "not" that. Use my words and control my response and ask questions I guess.

I just came into knowing about this woman named LaRae Quy who was an FBI agent for 25 years or something and she has a blog and she loves the Lord and she makes all these bullet points and has a plan to help you be more positive and proactive and therefore successful in whatever it is you choose to do, which hopefully for you is to "live your life on purpose" or something. She says you can't control what happens to you sometimes but you can control your response by moving toward the challenge and "leaning into it," and there are these other bullet points but the idea is that you can learn mastery of the unknown and that's supposed to help you overcome your fear. You can predict how you're going to respond. I imagine that advice would work for me, for undercover intelligence agents, for snipers, and really anyone who leaves their house for any reason and so I've decided I like this LeRae Quy and her blog, which is called Your Best Adventure, a title I also like.

Today just doesn't feel right. I feel like I'm indeed living in a tension. It's funny to think that what I keep hearing about Lent not being a comfortable time and how it's dark and how God wants us to be revealed as people might be actually happening. And it's actually uncomfortable. god isn't completely silent right now and I'm moving towards my challenges and observing my disciplines but that definitely does not necessarily bring comfortability like it usually does. It turns out life is hard even when you're doing everything you can to turn your face toward the light. I'm a little fearful of how God plans on making me realize I'm going to die someday.

February 20, 2012

I Cor 1:8-9

He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

It is really and truly lonely, sad and conflicting to be a codependent person and it feels like at times I'm literally going to explode and all of this sad mush is going to come out of my body. Really it feels like a cycle. I don't put myself around certain people I get the vibe from that they are feeling "encroached upon" by me. But they're the people I love and want to be around. They're not going to be around me because they don't want to be encroached upon. I am lonely. I am lonely because of that chain of events and because a codependent is always lonely regardless of who's around because there's this huge pit that no one can fill up, certainly not the codependent because she's under a constant state of chronic self-neglect. So one turns to the Lord, who has promised to heal our wounds and that He is with us to the end because He has created a work and is faithful to see it to completion. This is true, I know it.

It is a process that does not happen overnight. And because I'm a codependent I resent people who feel encroached upon by me and I want to turn them down when they do muster the wherewithal to be my friend but I don't and I take what I can get because I'm again, codependent. Another cycle. Another lonely day of trying to get on with it, in the presence of a God who also told us we would have trouble.

And I mean, I'm doing it. I'm doing everything in my power to live in the light of a gracious and forgiving and all mighty Creator and King. I love that love and I live in it, am quitting my job for it and turning from every opposition to it. The life of a christian is in the valleys sometimes. If you're codependent and depressive and an alcoholic, those valleys look a lot bigger and more numerous than other people's, all I'm sayin.

You push yourself a lot harder at times than you're used to, and you get tired of pushing and you look up and you just say "Really? Is this how it's gonna be? You are ridiculous for bringing me to this. I can't, I'm over this shit." But you aren't going anywhere, and you trudge your feet through three feet of cold thick black mud, eventually pushing with all your might until you're running as fast as you can in a few inches and the sun comes out and you can rest.

February 11, 2012

Today Oswald Chambers said,

"Your mind is the greatest gift God has given you, and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him. This will be one of the greatest assets of your faith when a time of trial comes because then your faith and the Spirit of God will work together. You will begin to see that your thoughts are from god as well, and your mind will no longer be at the mercy of your impulsive thinking but will always be used in service to God."

Isaiah 26:3

You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.

It really is like God is comforting me, telling me, "I am with you. You screwed up, I have your shame now, I am giving you practical tools to know what to do when your mind runs out of control and wants to do whatever it wants to do to calm itself down. There is nothing to fear because I am telling you I know all the good and bad your mind is capable of and I'm here to keep your path straight."

thank you sweet Jesus. And dang Oswald Chambers, get on my level.

worship and prayer night

February 2, 2012

My soul desires to be one with the Spirit of my Lord. I see myself standing and looking at the world. In front of me are all the roads I could take, all the people in my life, my family, and I'm looking at essentially a vast and complicated but abundant future.

I could go in any direction and the Lord is beside me, there is nothing behind me, just emptiness and the Lord has erased every decision, every past memory, all the broken places are gone and forgotten. With me is my Father and my Lord telling me in my ear that the choice is mine to go where I will but that He is with me to acknowledge my pain and to heal my heart.

Just now I had the sensation that I was completely immersed into cool blue water that refreshed my head and face and arms and legs and feet and hands. Then an even more overwhelming image of being lifted, carried and set down upon a rock.

I am overwhelmed with gratitude and the knowledge that I am so loved by such a mighty advocate, counselor and comforter and protector.

January 30, 2012

Counseling today was transformative. We prayed for and talked about breaking the tough image I really want to have so that I don't get hurt or have to experience any pain, becoming who God wants for me personality and trait-wise, the abuse I was under in my childhood in a very specific way, and the last thing we talked about was how I mentally dissociate and live in my own world so that I don't have to have a real life. I think that desire to do that has affected how I do everything, especially relationships with guys, people in general, my friends and especially my family. At worst, I consciously put myself at the bottom of a vast and dark ocean where I am completely alone and there is no way I can hear, see or understand what is happening miles and miles above me. I am only surrounded by the kind of living organisms only I know about who can't think or talk about or understand me at all and even if I died down there no one would see me. I am that determined to escape reality.

So much of that desire came out today. I actually said to Jane today, "The real world doesn't even seem real, it seems like an illusion sometimes." Then I feel instant guilt for the people in my life who are experiencing a very real heartbreak with the loss of their dear friend Michelle Trojanowski. My heart is so heavy for the people in my life who are really going through it right now. Yesterday I got the image in my mind of a quilt as I was praying about Michelle's loved ones and I knew to make a blanket specifically for Mary Beth Cowan but I didn't know why a blanket and then Kris started talking at the end of his sermon about Christ being sent to be our comforter, and the translation of that being one who endows us with a courage beyond our ability. That image is so dear and real to me. I overheard him say to someone that Michelle's parents feel a strength beyond their ability right now, and I want that to be true for the other people in her life, and I have a very real sense that it is. I just texted my dear friend Stephen to invite him and Julie over for dinner this week and I plan on calling later.

I am literally amazed at God's hand working in my life right now. I hope allowing God to parent me and bring me out of seclusion and into who He is intending me to be for Him and the Kingdom is someone who will show God's love to his children and remind them they have a good and capable and might to save Shepherd.

Hebrews 1:3

The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

2 Peter 1:3

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Breaking Free, Beth Moore

"The filling only He can give does not automatically accompany our salvation. I was in my early thirties before I understood the huge difference between salvation from sin and satisfaction of soul. Salvation secures our lives for all eternity. Soul satisfaction ensures abundant life on earth."