Sunday, July 20, 2014

Arise

So a lot seems to be happening in my life lately -- not of the new job, new man, new life variety, but changes all the same.

You see, I've been actively trying to NOT run to my mom and my girlfriends and food to fix the deep craters a broken world will leave on a heart.
Anyone who truly knows me knows that I am a talker -- vehemently against the silent treatment and avid activist of the 'let's talk it out' variety, I will typically talk any turmoil or possible high in my life to absolute death. I will talk and talk and talk in painful, swirling, over analytical circles to everyone before going to the One who can actually comfort me or heal me or help me.

But something has recently changed... I've been hitting my pen to paper before I hit my finger tips to a phone's touch screen. I have found myself closing a journal and Bible and feeling physical relief for a circumstance or pure, unwavering hope for what may, or may not, come.

I have come to realize that my heart wants and longs and desires and it will beat on in this rugged way with the same intensity I've seemed to have acquired since birth -- and if my heart's desires are fulfilled then glory be to God. & if my heart does not receive its desires then glory be to God, even still.

Because here is what has taken 26 long and longing and anxiety-ridden and love given and laughter inducing years to realize

{He knows what's better for me anyway}

I am a creature of habit and one of 'want it now and want it my way' -- & I've been given the privilege of years in order that I may look back and see that that attitude - had I have gotten this heart's desire now and my way - would have landed me deeper in a valley left wanting.

So these days, I tell Him what I want - because it's good to talk with your Father, but I realize, a little more each grace filled and grace given day, that if I don't receive what I so desperately want --right now-- there will come a day laced with tears and laughter and an 'okay, I see You, I really hear You, too' where I will see why, while every desire is deserving of being whispered in the ear of my Savior, it is not always detrimental to the furthering of my story. {because it all turns out for His glorious way, anyway}

Recently I met with a family to hear of their story and something the momma said has stuck with me:

"Everyone has pits they end up In - sometimes we are pushed into our pits, sometimes we're the ones digging the pit deeper, sometimes we start to decorate the walls of our pit and nestle in - but no matter what the circumstance of how we came to be in the pit, we should all be crying out loudly to be pulled back up."

I have carried the shovel around that founded my pit -- there are days in this life that I wear that shovel like an accessory around my neck for the sin-wrecked world to see; I have decorated the walls of my pit - quick to frame the promises I was too weak to call bluff on and then allowing them to mock me into a puddle of self-pity. I dug the holes so that I might climb deeper down - no one pushed me into the valley I so long called home & there was nothing comfortable about resting in my self -depreciation, yet I always brought my pillow and blanket and a snack.

But there came a day when hitting the snooze button on rising above what i had done and who I'd been was no longer an option. I screamed right out loud -- I'm still crying myself hoarse  --

& and I'm finally starting to see the puzzled fractures of a siren red and wanderlust violet horizon.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Raise Your Glass to Saturday Nights

I have heard before that if you want to make God laugh, you just need to tell Him your plans....

At 21, if you would have asked me what the end of my 26th year would look like, it would certainly not have included Saturday nights on my back porch with sangria and buttered carrots while my wee one of a dog ran around barking at every noise natured conjured up for her. But that is where I am.

In my days of college I remember bargaining with the Almighty, almost attempting to call His bluff on the regular - "Lord, you surely won't allow me to be single past 22." The statement remained the same with the age changing every year. At 25, it became 30; year 30 - that far off land of age where the entire world ends if one has not accomplished x, y, and z. And it's looming closer... And there are still moments where I stand - deer caught in the smoldering headlights - as I mark off all I've not accomplished and take a shaky, anxious breath at what lies before me and is left unknown.

I was never supposed to know what rejection would feel like, what quiet Saturday nights were made of - I was never going to be the sort of person who enjoyed a glass of wine by herself and, at times, craved the silence of a house with only the candlelight dancing; I was going to always be surrounded by people - the reason for laughter and joy and, of course, I would be someone's wife -- because I wasn't ever going to have to wonder why I was not being pursued.

I can hear the belly laughter of my Father from South Park right now. He is not mocking me, of that I'm sure - only wondering when I thought I got the memo that this life of mine was left in my charge. It never was.

I realize, as I sip sangria and let it roll hot down my throat, that if I had been given reigns to guide this life where I thought it should go, I would be a vastly different person than who is sitting here today -- I would have made poor choice after poor choice and found myself deep in a pit, probably asking myself, just where did I take a wrong turn?

You see, my twenties have turned out to be exactly NOTHING like what I had anticipated; I would be lying if I said there weren't stretches of hours, days, weeks of me disliking every moment - but I also have come to realize that the fractured times of crying out, getting pissed, and eventually hitting my knees were all a part of the plan to begin with.

I cannot regret the nights of quiet aloneness and I cannot begrudge my best friends who are a part if a couple and happy and I cannot, for one solitary moment, say that I sit in a state of joylessness.

God is good, gracious, great, and glorious. He is the same Father to me as He was to Ruth. He took care of His kids then and He continues to do it now.

I am ever changing and He is never changing -- Glory be to God.

So, cheers to you, quiet Saturday nights  - for what you've taught me, where you've brought me, and for what is yet to come.