A Leaf Alone

A maple leaf lies in a pile

Midst leaves of many kinds.

Of oak, of birch, of chestnut tree,

Of dogwood, beech, and pine.

"But there is not

Among the lot

Another to be found

Quite like myself." Such thoughts as these

Move her to a frown.

"Now dogwood, beech, and pine are grand.

They each one have their place.

But none of these quite understands

My heart, my hopes, my place."

The sap of rowan

Is not her own.

So though she's pressed around

With hearts most dear, her soul still pines,

"Alone! Amidst a crowd."

For friends they are, each quite unique,

And dear she holds them all.

"Yet tis not Home!" the maple cries.

Then softly comes a call,

"I know you would

Be understood.

And though it pains me too,

Were you content in this pile to sit,

How would I you then woo?"

So speaks the Wind to the lonely leaf

As through the pile He moves.

She starts, she turns, a whispered balm

Her pain begins to soothe.

She lifts again

Held close by Him,

And though her hope is worn,

In her soul the glint of a smile begins.

A thought her shy heart starts to spin.

"Alone. And yet, alone with Him!"

She sighs as she blows toward home.

...and back again. A Johnathan's tale.

I kinda wish I'd keep this blog up regularly. I do a lot better on here than I do in a journal. more experience I guess...

SO, update...."let me explain, no, that will take to long, let me sum up"

God has been doing crazy things in the last month. I don't even know exactly what's going on. I quit smoking, sexual sin basically vanished, I'm moved to tears on a rather frequent basis, I started a prayer breakfast (which is not something I do)...I say that I've done these things, but in reality, God has done these things. There's no way in hell that I'd have been able to do these things...

God has shown himself in answered prayer. I'd have horrific images running through my brain, have someone pray for me, and they'd just go away. We prayed for healing and God started healing that afternoon...craziness.

I'm sure I'm forgetting things, but ah well. I'm more documenting for future me anyway.

So now. I'm sharing my story with my small group this weekend. I feel at a loss. I feel kinda like saying "here's a link, go read this blog and come back with questions." But that won't work...

And the thing is, it's so easy for me to make my story about me. But it's really not. It's about God. How he's showing his beauty in my life. The working title is "Beauty from Pain, or The Boy With the Smiley Face Tatoo". I pray for two things.

1) That my story will be about God, and not about me.

and

2) That I will be able to emotionally engage in my story as opposed to just relaying information.

So, yeah. I hope to be back on here more regularly. I've missed having a place to process in writing. To document what God's been doing so I can remember...

Anyway...at the beginning of the year, at the young adult retreat, I felt like the kid in "The Incredibles" who is asked what he's waiting for. He replies with "I don't know, something AMAzing...I guess..." well, I feel that, to an extent at least, that "something amazing" is going down...It's a new thing, but per usual, it's a good thing.

The Satisfying Life

It just struck me this morning how empty life is when lived for ones own self. I'm coming off of a period of emotional ups and downs. Seeing the future as a glorious adventure followed shortly by seeing the future as bleak and pointless. But the thing is, my future is not horribly important if I'm thinking about how it's going to affect me. My emotional state three days from now will be what it will be. I've got a God who loves me and will take care of me. I need to focus on loving him and the people around me, however I happen to be doing/feeling.

"the greatest commandment is this: love the lord your god with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like it: love your neighbour as yourself. This sums up the law and the prophets."

That's what it's about "whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me".

The thing with God is that he takes us a lot of weird places. So if I'm worried about where I'm going to go in the future, I very likely will not want to go where God would have me go. However, if I trust him, he'll take me where he wants me. And I'll focus on being there, loving him, and loving the people around me. There's really nowhere he might not take his children. "let us go to him outside the camp, and bear the reproach he endured". It's scary outside the camp. At least from a human perspective. But that's where Jesus is. So we've got to follow him there, and forget about our own desires. Cause unless those desires are from God, fulfilling them won't satisfy us.

I know I can't live like this on my own strength. I can't. But with God, who knows? He does crazy stuff :)

Fear

"I live a life with nothing to fear, for I have gained it all".

And yet I'm terrified. A lot of the time. I have some extraordinarily deep-seated fears and insecurities. I'm not really sure how to go about addressing those. They kinda inhibit how well I live, though...and they are rather nebulous at this point...I don't know.

"Fear not, for I am with you. Even to the end of the age".

That's what I need to believe. I need to trust God to expose and deal with my fear. It'll be good.

Fasting and Depression

First off, thoughts on fasting.

Fasting isn't something I've heard much teaching about, but it is something I've done. It's very different than what I would expect. When you're fasting, it generally means that you feel very strongly about something and you want to focus on praying about it.

Let's just say it's effective. Every hunger pain points you back to where you're focusing. Every time you feel like fainting it reminds you where all your strength comes from...

I'm generally a person who discounts the importance of the body. Ones body is just a vessel for ones self...but I don't think that's really the case. My body affects me more than I realize. When it's imbalanced, it affects how I feel, and when it's whole, It does the same. Differently, but still.

Anyway, this is an encouragement to use fasting as a tool if you feel so led. Very effective focusing and grounding.

Second off, thoughts on depression.

I'm about to start an antidepressant. Been thinking of doing this for a few years, and am finally taking action. I've got the pills downstairs. Gonna start in the morning...

Depression has been a defining aspect of my life since I began following Jesus...I don't know how this is going to affect me, but if the medication is effective in alleviating some of my depressive symptoms...I don't know. I don't know what it would be like to live less depressed for an extended period of time. It sounds silly, but when you're used to the darkness, the light is scary. Now, it probably won't fix everything, but if it actually does what it's supposed to do...I don't know.

I don't like unknowns...I need to trust God. I plan to look back on this post in a few years and think "how silly of me to be afraid", but right now, that's where I'm at.

Crosses

Batter my Heart

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.  -John Donne

As I was reading "Love Walked Among Us", I read this one part where the author speaks of Jesus being crucified. He paraphrases a lot of what the people said, and one of his paraphrases is basically, "You trusted God like a little child, and look where it got you."

When I read that, I realized that it was a perfectly rational accusation. It was his perfect, childlike trust that led him to the cross. But what the accusers didn't understand was that this was the best possible outcome.

Then I realized that if I fully trust God, I will be led to my own crosses. It's already happened a couple times...And that's daunting. A cross feels like death. A cross hurts. A cross feels shameful.

But it is, oddly enough, a good thing and a privilege to carry a cross. This very thing that feels most like death is the one path to true freedom and life. That was definitely true for Christ, and will be true for us too.  It's like when Paul says "Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my lord." and a couple verses later interjects "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and my share (fellowship) in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I might obtain the resurrection of the dead." 

Fellowship in his sufferings, become like him in his death, count everything as loss. This is the path we're all called to. It will not be easy, but it will be so worth it. "The surpassing worth of knowing Christ," "the pearl of great price,""the treasure buried in the field"...It's worth the crosses we're called to. I've tasted a bit of the pain I might endure in this life of following Jesus, and it scares me to think that I might endure even worse...but I know it will be worth it. And as Paul says, in going to our cross, we'll be in fellowship with Christ in a way we couldn't have been without that cross, and that IS a happy thought. 

Weakness

Just read a line in "Love walked among us" talking about weakness...it really is when we are weak that we meet God.

I'm feeling incredibly weak right now. These past two days have been a struggle on an hourly basis to rest in God in my weakness. It's never easy to go back to this after a break, but I'm thankful for the break that last week was, and I hope God's strength will get me through this period.

And that's the thing about weakness. When I have a hard time functioning with the necessities (getting up, going to work, going to bed) but do them nonetheless, it's a clear reminder that I am not the source of my strength.

So, I hope to rest in the arms of my God for this next bit, cause I'm gonna need him.

On Remembering

Remembering is a funny thing. For an example, I read a book not too long ago that prompted me to go back through my early childhood and think of all the memories I have from before I was 10. It was an interesting exercise.

I grew up for my first seven years on a mountaintop in Alabama. So I was going through memories. The good and the bad, and everything was tinged a bittersweet. Now, this was weird, cause I have great memories of climbing down to the waterfall on my Grandfathers property, laying in the ferns with my older sister, and many other wonderful childhood memories.

But it was all bittersweet. Then I got to the memory of hearing that we would be moving. And I cried myself to sleep. I had no idea that had affected me that much.

And this is the case with a lot of things in our lives. Unless we actively go back and actively remember our story, from childhood on, we will miss a lot. This reaction to the memory of moving made sense of many things. Why everything before 8 was bittersweet, why I had stress headaches at 10. This was a part of my story that I was missing, and having that piece helped make sense of other pieces that hadn't made sense.

It's not just things like moving either. A lot of what we need to remember is how God has interacted with us in the past. What he's done throughout our lives. I need to remember that day in 2007 where I was at the end of my rope with my headaches, and God held me as I cried. For the first time I knew God was good. If I were to forget that experience, I would be missing a piece of my story, and things would go out of focus.

And it's not just our stories either. We need to remember God's story with his people at large. His story with Israel in the old testament, with the church in the new, with the church throughout history. It's no wonder that God tells Israel to remember so often. If they forget what God has done in their history, they will not live in a way that makes sense. They will not be able to make sense of their part in the story. It'd be like having to act a part in the second act without knowing what had happened in the first. You're not going to get it.

The funny thing about remembering, though, is that in spite of my ability to call up many facts about my past, it's hard to remember the emotion and meaning oftentimes. And that's what shapes our deeply held beliefs, our perception of past experiences...So we desperately need God and others to remind us. Remind us of who God is, what He's doing, who we are, and what we're doing in all of this.

So, I encourage everyone to remind the people in your life. Remind them of the Great Story of which they are living as a part. Remind them of God's work in the past. Remind them of the great goal we have in this life, remind them of who they've been and who God's making them to be.

Remind, remember. Cause once we can't, we're missing the most important thing: What Christ has done for us. So please, remind people when you see them, and remind yourself. We all need help in not forgetting.

Unspoken Longing

"You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of--something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling(but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest--if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself--you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say, 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul,. the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all."-C. S. Lewis The Problem of Pain.

I came across this quote in The Sacred Romance. This is something I have felt very often. It's something that, as he says, is impossible to communicate. You sometimes meet people and you can tell they've had the same experience, but even then you're almost unable to talk about it.

I would posit that this is a description of experiencing God and God's story. Not just the "emotional high" type of experiencing God, but experiencing God as storyteller. As Holy. Holy is an interesting word, but when it comes down to it, it basically means, in reference to God, "like God". It's rather self-referential. So, getting a taste of God as God is, in contrast to who we've conceived God to be.

This evening at care group I was reminded of my experiences with God like this. Reminded of the story that I get glimpses of being played out in my life and the lives of others.

Over the years of pain and beauty, I have many times sensed a deep longing for I-knew-not-what. As I said in a poem I wrote, 

"[This something] is gold! sapphires! diamonds!
But more, and with exquisite flavor, smell, texture.

Yet this something eludes me.
Like a smell I once knew.
Like a memory just out of my grasp.
Like a hint of melody that I cannot place."

I still cannot put it into words at all well, but I know WHO this something comes from, and who can satisfy this "incommunicable and unappeasable want." For that I am very thankful. 

I'm kinda looking forward to the rest of my life searching for, getting tastes of, hearing the echoes of that which will truly satisfy me. The epic poem that is happening all around me. I can name it as "God as God is and God's purpose in reality" but it will take a lifetime and more to learn what that means.

Following Jesus is much more than just being right, or doing the right things, it's about getting to know, being known by, and falling in love with God as God is. And that is a frightfully exciting thought.

The Past and Present

First off, I want to connect my two blogs. I'll post a link to my old Xanga blogs here.

Secondly, after reading through the last 5 years of my blogs, I just want to say how amazing God is. I can see so many instances where God has addressed issues that I brought up. Like my bitterness towards him. I began realizing it in 2010, and God worked on it a lot that next year. My walls, which I have posted about many times, are beginning to fall. I've gotten to know God in a much more intimate manner like I wanted to back in 2008...Yeah. So If you journal or blog, I'd encourage you to go back every once in a while and look for how God's worked over the years.

I had an amazingly relaxing weekend. Lot's of rest and people I love. It was great. I need now to go into this next part of life. I'm kinda excited, kinda scared. I don't want it to be the same as before. I want to be more responsible with my time and money. Make a schedule, make a budget, start exercising. It's not going to be easy, but it needs to happen. I'm not living a very focused life right now, and that needs to change. So, hopefully I'll keep this blogging up again. If for no other reason than so in 5 years I can look back again.