Today is a blue day. I just woke up that way. It happens.
I was looking on facebook and saw that one of my college friends has been redecorating a room in her house to get ready for a baby. My throat catches as I click through pictures of a lovely country house, a real garden, smiling relatives...
Sometimes the pressure of all the millions of things I want to do and ought to be doing pushes down on my chest so hard and all I can do is cry and hope no one else sees how messed up I am.
But who the heck am I to be whining about my stillborn plans when the world is positively falling apart? People's hearts are disintegrating around me, and I'm upset because I want somebody else's white picket fence. I asked God a long time ago to use me however He saw fit.
A little over a year ago, I started following a blog written by a woman whose husband was in a terrible accident. Reading about all the challenges she faces as her husband slowly recovers from a brain injury, I am constantly awed by the strength and the grace and the wisdom that has grown in this woman's heart. But it scares me, because it reminds me how far God is willing to go, how much He will put us through, to grow good things in us. The things we cherish are not always valued in the same way by the One who views things from eternity. I can't cling to anything, anything at all, except Him.
What options do I have, really? I could try to run away, pretend it's not important, bury myself in the prettiest lies I can find--or spin some for myself. I could go watch tv. I suppose I could try to fight God... but that makes just about as much sense as shutting myself in the freezer.
Nope. The only thing to do now is to go ahead and have my little cry, and then take a deep breath and say, "Okay, what's next?"
And trust that this journey is worth the cost.
I have a feeling that the finished product is going to be beautiful.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Somebody has been reading too much poetry.
Sometimes I look up from my toil, sit back on my haunches, fix the Almighty with an exasperated eye, and say...
You know this isn't going to work. I can't do any of it. I am a square peg in a swiss-cheese world, an odd duck, a curious flower too strange to purchase and too alive to be happy on the shelf. And you send me out here like this in my weakness, like a butterfly in a hailstorm, like an ice cube in the Sahara, with no guarantee of success beyond the assurance that you will be with me as I melt. I'm just going to mess things up. Weakling that I am there will be destruction in my wake. Other souls will suffer for my sins.
So why even bother?
What could you possibly be getting at?
And wouldn't it be easier to get there without me?
My beautiful dissonance, my lovely jagged jewel. I put you in that smooth, flat world because some of my children have forgotten how to bleed.
As you hold each other's hearts, you'll find your own are lighter.
I sent you out into the storm, fragile bloom, my winsome butterfly, because I find your weakness beautiful,
and know that dying eyes will glimpse your
soft defiance
and find the will to look for me again.
You know this isn't going to work. I can't do any of it. I am a square peg in a swiss-cheese world, an odd duck, a curious flower too strange to purchase and too alive to be happy on the shelf. And you send me out here like this in my weakness, like a butterfly in a hailstorm, like an ice cube in the Sahara, with no guarantee of success beyond the assurance that you will be with me as I melt. I'm just going to mess things up. Weakling that I am there will be destruction in my wake. Other souls will suffer for my sins.
So why even bother?
What could you possibly be getting at?
And wouldn't it be easier to get there without me?
My beautiful dissonance, my lovely jagged jewel. I put you in that smooth, flat world because some of my children have forgotten how to bleed.
As you hold each other's hearts, you'll find your own are lighter.
I sent you out into the storm, fragile bloom, my winsome butterfly, because I find your weakness beautiful,
and know that dying eyes will glimpse your
soft defiance
and find the will to look for me again.
Friday, July 1, 2011
two things...
Who's that woman putting blog posts all over this 'Thoughtful Spot'? Oh yeah, it's me...
I promise to add more after this weekend (Church Camp-out Yay!), but I needed to write down a thing or two before I forget.
First, after months of not knowing what to expect (and therefore expecting the worst), I received word last week that not only do I still have a job at Conway School, it is going to be a FULL TIME job (hooray for insurance! Now I can make that appointment with my dentist!). I may not be spending all that time teaching music, but it's a good sight better than going into retail to supplement my income. (Although, my brother and sister-in-law very nearly convinced me that a nice little job in a book store would not necessarily be a bad thing. In fact, a small part of my heart is disappointed that things didn't come to that. I could have been like Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail... ah well, c'est la vie.)
And second, this thought occurred to me during community group last night and I wanted to write it down before it slipped out of my brain. This is the thought: the gifts God gives us, things like Grace and Love and Existence, are not free, they are priceless. We are not asked to pay for them because we can not pay enough, not because they have no cost. They do have a cost, a steep one, one that reflects their inestimable value, but we can not pay it. So God pays, and in a sense we kind of help pay for each other*, and these things are given to us as gifts.
*I'm not quite sure where that thought might lead, but it wanted to come, so I let it.
Anyway, I'm off to rough it in the woods for a few days!
Happy Summer!
I promise to add more after this weekend (Church Camp-out Yay!), but I needed to write down a thing or two before I forget.
First, after months of not knowing what to expect (and therefore expecting the worst), I received word last week that not only do I still have a job at Conway School, it is going to be a FULL TIME job (hooray for insurance! Now I can make that appointment with my dentist!). I may not be spending all that time teaching music, but it's a good sight better than going into retail to supplement my income. (Although, my brother and sister-in-law very nearly convinced me that a nice little job in a book store would not necessarily be a bad thing. In fact, a small part of my heart is disappointed that things didn't come to that. I could have been like Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail... ah well, c'est la vie.)
And second, this thought occurred to me during community group last night and I wanted to write it down before it slipped out of my brain. This is the thought: the gifts God gives us, things like Grace and Love and Existence, are not free, they are priceless. We are not asked to pay for them because we can not pay enough, not because they have no cost. They do have a cost, a steep one, one that reflects their inestimable value, but we can not pay it. So God pays, and in a sense we kind of help pay for each other*, and these things are given to us as gifts.
*I'm not quite sure where that thought might lead, but it wanted to come, so I let it.
Anyway, I'm off to rough it in the woods for a few days!
Happy Summer!
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