And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
(G.K. Chesterton)
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Rational Conversation
You can have all the rational conversations in your head that you want, sometimes it just comes down to waiting for that feeling to go away.
The Process
I feel like such a stronger person these days— a much different person. It’s funny how I always seem to see these shifts and processes in my life.. the past two weeks have been a process.
I believed myself to be a “strong person” growing up. I’d always been independent and able to care for myself at a very young age but looking back now, there was quite a bit of a disguise and acting going on there. There were so many personal demons in my late teenage/ early adult years. Demons I refused to face and I honestly don’t know if I could have faced them then anyway. I wasn’t ready.
Strength means something so different to me now. It’s not about simply making it through the rough moments, it’s about growing from them, finding what it is that I am supposed to take from them… and above all else, it’s about facing them head on without trepidation, without self pity.
It’s easy to fall back on the negative and to use it as a license to feel a certain way or hold a certain belief. It’s way to easy to do that. Early this year, as I began to face all that had happened through my childhood and beyond, all that I could do in the beginning was fall back on this pity because it gave me a reason to try less or to not be all that I should be. I had waited so long to face these demons that when I took down that wall, they met me with such overwhelming force that all I wanted to do in the moment was to crawl back into my small little space somewhere and wall myself in again. It could have been so easy.. and less painful.
But I am here today— unbroken, hope intact and faith unshaken. I am here today, a far stronger person, without the disguise. I can say that the process was a brutal one but the fear of waking up one day having done nothing that I was sent out to do created such a fear in me that the process could not even come close to creating in me. And the process is a constant one. It all comes down to this for me:
“People.. say I’m brave. They tell me I’m strong. They pat me on the back and say, ‘Way to go. Good job.’ But the truth is, I am not really very brave; I am not really very strong; and I am not doing anything spectacular. I am simply doing what God has called me to do as a person who follows Him. He said to feed His sheep and He said to care for ‘the least of these,’ so that’s what I’m doing, with the help of a lot people who make it possible and in the company of those who make my life worth living”
That’s all I want my life to be about.
hope
One of the most beautiful songs, I think :)
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Life is a Life
Okay so.. a little of what’s been on my heart lately.
Gay teen, Jack Reese, commits suicide over high school bullying
I hate reading these stories but it seems that they are cropping up at an alarming rate lately. What kills me mostly is judgement. The hateful looks and words that lead these boys (and girls) to commit suicide.
I grapple sometimes with matters of faith— I feel it’s a good thing, mostly— to be always aware of the basis upon which we make our decisions and life choices. The moment that we stop thinking is the moment our faith dies.
What I don’t understand is how I am supposed to believe that my sin carries any less weight than that of another or how it’s my business to judge anyone’s heart but my own. In the Bible, we are called not to judge (Matthew 7:1) but we ARE told that we will know and judge other believers by their fruits (Matthew 7:15-20). When Christ displayed a righteous indignation, it was in the Temple where the believers had resorted to caring about everything but what truly mattered. That is where the judgement lies.
When I read these stories, I feel within my heart the knowledge that it is a complete transitivity that even one die under a hate-filled watch. When my faith dictates the rights and wrongs of the issues I find most difficult to come to terms with or understand, it also places on my heart this absolute burden of compassion for even a single person lost.. lost in the most terrible of ways and filled with the overwhelming belief that death might somehow be better than the pain of what they’re feeling. And I just can’t live with that.
Every life means something. A life is a life is a life…
“I think God runs the show. Completely. Life proves it every day: He runs the show.”
- Mariska Hargitay
I’d been meaning to pick up this article for weeks. It’s strange just how much God has been speaking to me lately.
When I was a young teenager I decided one thing— that one day I was going to adopt. I didn’t care how many of my own biological children I ended up with, no matter what, I was going to adopt a child one day. But I also came up with something else around that time in my life. For some reason I decided that 24 was the age that I would no longer be without a serious relationship. It was a strange figure, I’m not sure where I got it but somehow I told myself that 24 years old would mean something and that everything would change that year. I truly felt in my heart— 24, it stood out.
Then I grew up some more, went through a number if dark days and it was in the midst of those days that something else settled on my heart— that I might be single for awhile and that my patience with that would be greatly tested. I felt it so strongly on my heart that I told a family member about it. I told myself that the wait didn’t matter — that it would be worth it in the end. But I came to discover that it’s entirely easy to tell yourself that whenever you are locked away from the world in the middle of the darkest moments of your life.
Fast forward to 2011 and I am looking toward turning 24 years old. An old “premonition” takes over but not the burden that should be falling back onto my heart— the one that says “wait.” That is the more difficult burden and I don’t want to think about it or accept that it may have been God telling me that yes, everything would change when I was 24— but not in the way that I thought He’d been telling me. Chalk it up to the old saying “you hear what you want to hear.”
For the past couple of years, I’ve been feeling that old understanding that one day I would adopt a child. The knowledge of it pops up into my life at strange, unpredictable times, always followed by a more obvious moment of clarity. Yes, I will be a mother one day. I am certain of it. And sometimes I feel this sneaking, strange suspicion that I may be one before I am a wife. There are a lot of children in need out there searching for a home, for stability, for love.
There have been moments where His voice has been a quiet whisper in my life and then there have been moments where it pretty much shouts at me. This article was one of those moments.
And I don’t know about any of the timing. That is the greatest thing I have learned at any moment in my life. Nothing is in my timing. “God runs the show.” My job is to make sure that I’m watching and listening.
