What we've done

 We've turned joy into a virtue to strive for instead of allowing it to be the natural response to a revelation of the love of Christ.

                                                    - Me

I know others have said it before and probably said it better. I know it's true in my life. I've taken the "fruit" of the Spirit and tried to reproduce it in myself and by myself. All I get is a tasteless sham that doesn't sustain life. I don't want that anymore. I want to live life alive.

An Explanation

I wrote “A Story” because it was a chance to look back at my 3-year struggle with depression from a new perspective. I’m realizing that although my brain is naturally susceptible to the disorder, I also allowed the weight of people’s judgments to negatively influence me. I stopped doing things that were vital to me out of fear and misplaced expectations.

  

There are some wonderful changes happening in my life. I’m realizing a little more of my purpose and I really feel that God is laying the foundation for what’s to come. It’s like building a house. The cement that has been mixing and churning is finally being poured into the trenches.

As you can imagine, the view from within the mixing drum has been anything but tranquil. This summer hasn’t been easy, but it’s been powerful and deeply meaningful to me. Two things stand out to me as major catalysts for the changes inside of me.

I’m doing some good work with the Beloved Community Center and the experience there has caused me to really think hard about what I believe and why. I’ll post on that soon, so I won’t go into detail here.

I’ve also been blessed with a beautiful relationship. It’s not new, but until this point it was too tenuous and fresh to even speak about here. Or maybe I was the one that was too fragile. Either way I’m excited to go on this journey. I know now that what we have is real and worth fighting for.

So I wrote “A Story” in part because I want to understand and advocate for others. I believe that starts with understanding and being able to vocalize my own story. This is where I’m at for now. Tomorrow may be a different story :)

A Story - Day 13

There once was a little girl who loved the sun.  During the winter, she would layer on clothing, grab a good book and sit on the concrete well cover outside in the yard.  She did this for years, until she got to high school.  Her friends there started making fun of her, because she looked really silly all bundled up outside in the winter, especially when all she did was sit and read.  “You can do that in the house, like normal people.”  So the girl who was not so little anymore stopped sitting outside.  For the next few years, the not-so-little girl began to suffer, especially during the winter.  She was very sad and listless and eventually began to draw away from her friends, her work, and herself.  One day things were so bad that she decided to get help.  She was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder and told that things could get better.  Her first line of treatment: sunlight.  The woman (for that’s what she was now) realized that the people who had teased her had nearly taken her life.  She decided that, despite popular opinion on the matter, she would live every day of her life alive.

I thought I was done...

...with this blog but I'm not. Stay tuned for more of my thoughts/randomness/poems and such. I can't wait to start writing again!!!

The courage that my mother had

 Edna St. Vincent Millay

The courage that my mother had
Went with her and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried;
Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh if instead she'd left to me
The thing she took into the grave!-
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.


Beautiful poem. I'm so grateful for a mom who shows me what courage looks like everyday!

Happy [Belated] Mother's Day!

Break the Chains

This song....love it. Misty Edwards is incredibly talented!

Lavish - Day 12

Today a friend was talking about the love of God and how His thoughts about us number more than all of the grains of sand in all the world. When she said that, I could only think of one word: lavish.

Lately I've been reading The Grand Weaver by Ravi Zacharias. It's a densely packed book, full of so many profound lines that I've found it hard to stop underlining and sticky-noting places in it. (yo, 'sticky-noting' is a real word! - well spell-check didn't mark it.) Anyway, he said something on p. 39 that really stuck out to me:

"...at the end of your life one of three things will happen to your heart: it will grow hard, it will be broken, or it will be tender. Nobody escapes. Your heart will become course and desensitized, be crushed under the weight of disappointment, or be made tender by that which makes the heart of God tender as well."

I've always been a person that felt like I had to protect myself. I held back from others out of fear or judgment.Waiting to love someone fully only if they deserved it. And nobody ever did. I lived in a state of grudging or hesitant affection, even towards the people closest to me. I held myself and others to a high standard because I feared pain and rejection more than anything else.I was walking down the path to a hard heart.

God's standard thought, is the only one that matters. I know I've been forgiven and I know I'm made worthy by His blood. But I still struggled to let go of the standard I built.

This semester, God has brought me through so many difficult things, many of which I've never gotten to blog about. My battle with depression, my struggle to trust God for my brother's life, and my recent breakup with a guy I was crazy about all had the potential to leave me in that second category: broken-hearted. Through all of those things, though, God has shown me unwavering, lavish love. Love so big that I don't have to protect myself with false ways of being secure, like my impossible standards. My security is in Christ, and He is a strong tower.

The tough thing about His protection is that it doesn't allow me to remain protected the way I define it- cloistered off from people.

His strength dares me to be vulnerable, because He wants to be my only shield.

His love conquers fear, so I can be truthful and bold.

He asks me to trust beyond my five senses because through it I learn to live faith.

He frees me to take risks because even if I fall flat, He is a healer and I'm never too far gone.

Vibrant. Confident. Fierce. Me?

Yup, that's right!
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“Laugh at yourself, but don't ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don't leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.”
- e.e. cummings