Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Oh Lord My God

Oh Lord my God
The beauty of your majesty is beyond any glorious thing that I could ever imagine
My human significance becomes utterly insignificant when I dwell in the light of your grace
My human rights no longer remain when I consider the beauty of your love and mercy
I am but a creation, an earthen vessel crafted at the hand of a master sculptor, unknown as of yet whether I am destined for a palace or a storage room
Yet I am outraged. Outraged at your protection. Outraged at your love. Outraged at your justice and the people of your choosing.
In my finiteness I cry “I am overwhelmed!” In my insecurity I weep “I have been wronged!” In my human depravity I crouch in a corner, wrapped in a threadbare, unraveling blanket of pride and self-strength.
Yet in my joy, in God’s glorious joy, I scream “I have been redeemed. I am purchased. I am valuable. And I am loved!”
Lord that these words might batter the walls between my head and my heart, so they may lie in powdered rubble as a pathway to the very depths of my tattered soul.
I am barreling headlong to the open gates that lead to fields of pride and rivers of self revulsion. A world in which the clouds rain condemnation and the grass grows with the blood of those who have fallen before me. Yet you Oh Lord BREAK ME. You push me to the ground again and again, until I am so helpless that I am unable to even lift my head to look towards the open gates that beckon me. And as I lay, trembling and terrified, You gather around me and alongside my brothers and sisters, as you lift me and gently carry me back to a world that is filled with nothing less than the human representation of your love. You leave me, for but a little while, with my sisters and brothers, as you go to prepare a place for us where we can spend eternity basking in the warmth of a relationship with the one who is the very definition of love and adoration.
Oh Lord that I may realize the depths of your love. That I may understand that I am beautiful, because YOU are beautiful. That I am valuable, because YOU value me. That I am  longed for, preferred, pursued, because YOU are all of these things, and yet dwell within me.
Lord Jesus, open my heart.   

Monday, October 24, 2011

Unsure.

I sit in my bed, lofted high above the floor, and I listen to the clacking of the keys on my keyboard as I wait for some profound thought to come.
Well. It's not happening.
There are no realizations. No "aha!" moments. No this-is-what-God-wanted-me-to-learn lightbulbs going on above my head. Nothing but a still, rather unsettling sense of quiet both in my thoughts and in the room around me.
I'm not sure I like this very much.
I've gotten so used to constantly thinking about something that it's rather unnerving to have everything suddenly come to a full and complete STOP. I'm not even sure what I'm feeling at the moment really. Besides a rather drugged sense of goodness, i want to go to sleep. Go figure :P
Hence is the life of Impact 360.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Neon Signs and Tiny Whispers.

As I sit in silence I begin to rethink everything that we have experienced. Every touch, every look, every fleeting gesture that we have shared. I am overwhelmed with a sense of longing for your very presence, for the sense of love and protection that I feel simply by being in the same general area as you. Nothing could make the time together more perfect. Not even a storybook soundtrack could counter rival the melodies of the birds, the rushing water, the quiet stillness of the winds blowing through slowly reddening leaves.
What is this longing? What is this absence of happiness I feel when we're apart? Surely I know that soon I will be brought into your presence once again, that we are never truly apart, even when I feel alone. But nothing can rival the joy that I feel when I watch you interact with my friends, with the people that I care about.
I pull out your love letter, written before I was born but so incredibly personal that it almost feels like you wrote it for no one but me. This love, this happiness, this unattainable fulfillment...it's almost impossible to believe that they are all possible through you. That's something I'm sure I will never fully understand...what a blessing that your love doesn't depend on what I can do, or how well I can answer my own questions.
The more I get to know you, the more I see the evidence of your love.

Watching God

So the past 48 hours have been somewhat of a whirlwind. Add that to the overwhelming project of....what, 15 hours?...that we had to do, and you have a pretty crazy week.
One of the huge themes of this week has been honesty. I've always considered myself a pretty honest person, but this was a HUGE leap even for me. Try being sat in a room with 4 other people (that you're...meh, decently good friends with most of them) and being told that you should tell them what you like, what you don't, their strengths and weaknesses, and where they need to change. Oh. And be HONEST.
To be honest, (see what i did there? ;) I had my doubts. I don't like criticizing people. I don't like telling people what they do wrong. I REALLY don't like hurting people's feelings. So I really didn't like this assignment. But by the time the 2 and 1/2 hours that we spent in there were up, it's absolutely incredible looking back and realizing just how much God worked through something as simple as telling someone you don't like the way they talk.
I've never seen God work directly and felt like I was a part of it. At least, not that stands out. But last night (and this morning) I most, DEFINITELY did. And it was absolutely incredible. I loved every minute of it. Was it awkward at times? Sure. Some of it was really hard to hear. And it's hard to have conversations with people when your still trying to work through your feelings for them.
I am so eager to see where God is going to take the relationships that He's developing. There has to be SOMEWHERE He's taking this, and I can't wait to figure out what it is :)

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Overwhelmed

Coming back to school after a luxurious Fall Break I am reminded of a memory from my childhood. Whenever we got a significant amount of rain my best friend and I would set up camp about five feet up the road from a drainpipe outside my house. We would then put a huge amount of effort into picking a suitable leaf, and then proceed to race them down the "stream" leading to the drainpipe.

Right now, I feel a lot like that leaf. Swirling and twirling and being caught up in random currents, all headed for this big overwhelming DROP into the unknown. There's so many feelings, so many thoughts, so many REALIZATIONS that the Lord has brought to mind or shown me this week that I feel like the drop into overwhelming frustration and brokenness is getting closer and closer.

Don't get me wrong, I am so thankful for everything the Lord has shown me. After being raised in a Christian home with little to no challenges, just being able to question something is a blessing in itself. But when question #1 leads to question #2 and suddenly we're all the way at question #25 and I don't know how in the world it progressed this far, THEN I get a little shaky.

I think the most overwhelming part of ALL of this right now is that I really don't know how to go about fixing it. I mean, if I even CAN fix it, to any degree at all. God's going to have to be behind that one. I feel like I'm a prime candidate for what a friend of mine calls, the "8 inch connection." In my head I know all these basic, simple truths about God and when asked to I can even repeat them. But when the bottom line reaches my heart and I'm asked to legitimately trust and act on those beliefs I begin to see holes.

Questioning, questioning, questioning.

How does one even begin to understand the God of the universe? How do I even begin to feel the impact of the huge sacrifice that He made for me? How can I even BEGIN to comprehend that? It simply doesn't register. How can I understand how truly flawed, decrepit and unbelievably unworthy I am? How can I even begin to find value in something that I don't understand? And how can God be enough and fulfill me in this moment when what I'm really searching for is someone to hug me and tell me that I am loved?

I'm not questioning my faith. But I'm beginning to realize that there is SO. MUCH. about what I always thought of as the "simple" faith of Christianity that I don't understand, so much depth to these "simple" beliefs that I haven't even really began to scratch the surface. Here in lies the overwhelming part.

WHAT IS TRUTH? On a slightly lighter note :P And all of this within the first couple of months at Impact. Jesus help us :)

Monday, October 10, 2011

trust. amon. fiducia.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6.

So this has kind of been a theme lately. Actually not so much, but this verse just popped into my head and it pretty much describes what I NEED to be doing right now, even if it's not EXACTLY what's happening yet.

We were sitting in class the other day, and we were talking about....something. Anyhoo, we were talking about...trust? other people? Something to that degree.  And I said that one of the reasons that we feel so hurt when our plans (but relationships SPECIFICALLY) don't work out is because we feel cheated out of what we think we deserve. Then Ed said that basically what was at the heart of that was a dis-trust in God, because basically what it is that we're saying is "I don't trust you enough to bring me someone better."

Well that was a brick to the face.

It's kind of overwhelming to realize that the relationship you THOUGHT you had with God is actually not as deep or as trust-induced as you originally believed. I guess in a good way that's kind of a good thing though, because there's something ot be said for "being back at square 1" when it means that you have somewhere UP to go.

"Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!" :) STILL LEARNING. STILL GROWING.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Feelings are what you make them?

Soo today in class we were talking about feelings. And Basie asked if people could really make other people feel things! So of course, the obvious answer is "duh. If your pushing my buttons, of COURSE I'm gonna get angry at you."

Prepare for a mind blowing moment here....

People CAN'T MAKE YOU FEEL THINGS. Sure, they can make a situation uncomfortable or try and tick you off, but the actual feelings part is LESS about what they're doing in the situation and MORE about how your reacting. For example, why is it that when my friend calls me weird I laugh it off, but when someone else calls me weird I get offended about it? To some degree, it's about how we PERCEIVE the situation.

I just realized that I write a lot of words in caps. EXCITING.

Anyhoo :P

This was just a really cool realization for me, because I've always thought that you couldn't help who made you mad, ticked you off, or who made your stomach feel like it was full of butterflies. Now I find out that in fact, you actually can. Or at least seriously influence it!

Impact 360 is mind blowin' ya'll. Just sayin' :)

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

1 down, 8 to go :)

So we've now officially been at Impact for a grand total of....1 month. It's hard to believe we haven't been here FOREVER.

THAT being said....

This would be so much better if it was a 4 year dealio. There's people already dreading leaving  :P I can't imagine going to school anywhere else after this, or how I'm gonna make new friends, or how I'm EVER going to appreciate worldly guys again after the amazing Christian brothers God has given us this year.

THAT being said....

Fall break is in a week, so it'll be interesting to see how a weekend away from  everybody goes. God has already taught us soooooooo much. Who knows how the REST of the year will end up?