muscles and loves

Some loves are voluntary, like a step or a wave of my hand. They're deliberate, purposeful. They're  growing and becoming. I love, actively. I learn this love.

Some loves are like a heartbeat - involuntary. I never chose this, it's stronger than I. This love is deep. I can't stop or control it any more than I can direct the blood through my veins. This love is essential, the wood-grain of my being.

But this. This love is an inhale. It's as vital as my heartbeat, but for a moment I can control it. I can hold my breath, stop the rhythm, hungry lungs burning. Against my will it returns, inhale and exhale. It's been with me so long I sometimes hardly notice it. Maybe someday it will change, go one way or the other. It could become a hand wave or a vein, either something I can let go or a piece of my soul. 

But for now, there it is. Balanced, tense, peaceful.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

God knows my heartbeats.

a small, quiet joy has found me.

worth

{I've been writing a bit over the last few weeks but not sharing. Here's something from May.}

I am worthless.

On my own, I'm a naked, ugly human, fallen and broken and full of bad things - bad desires, thoughts, urges and impulses.

I have no beauty. I am created by beauty, for beauty, but I fail and fall and screw things up. If I keep striving, trying, relying on myself and my own standards of goodness to make me lovely, I will only decay more.

The only beauty I can convey is His. The only way I can shine is with His light.

Lord, take away the smudges and grime of self-serving, the smears of confused loyalties, the mildew of misplaced expectation. Make me a cloudless glass, undimmed by self and clear enough that only You come through.

To 18-year-old me

First, don't avoid starting second best because you think the best will interrupt it. Second best is better than nothing at all. 

Second, even when God closes door after door, don't stop looking around for windows.

Hope (says the Epistle to the Romans) does not disappoint. So don't lose it.

The last year has held more pain, experienced and witnessed, than most of the years before put together. It's accumulating in my gut, weighing me down, tying me tighter and tighter to the One that keeps me afloat. I'm raw and blistered from hard conversations, shamed by my own constant wordlessness at the moments when others need words the most. It makes me physically ill when someone I love talks about their hurt. I'm a fixer, a doer - God is teaching me to do nothing. Overcoming self, relying completely on Him. I can't make this better. I can't fix the sin, repent for the unrepentant, heal the aches or fill the empty places. God, give me strength to be helpless. 

goodness

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. 

(Romans 12:21)

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Flame of God 

(Amy Carmichael)

From prayer that asks that I may be

Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,

From fearing when I should aspire,

From faltering when I should climb higher

From silken self, O Captain, free

Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From subtle love of softening things,

From easy choices, weakenings,

(Not thus are spirits fortified,

Not this way went the Crucified)

From all that dims Thy Calvary

O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,

The faith that nothing can dismay

The hope no disappointments tire,

The passion that will burn like fire;

Let me not sink to be a clod;

Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God 

---

And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not lose heart.

(Galations 6:9)

---

(What is my job? 

What does my good look like? 

What is my weapon against evil that overwhelms?)

emily dickinson - bits and pieces.

---

this is my letter to the world

that never wrote to me

---

if you were coming in the fall,

i'd brush the summer by

with half a smile and half a spurn,

as housewives do a fly.

if i could see you in a year,

i'd wind the months in balls,

and put them each in separate drawers,

until their time befalls.

if only centuries delayed,

i'd count them on my hand,

subtracting till my fingers dropped

into Van Diemen's land. 

if certain, when this life was out,

that yours and mine would be,

i'd toss it yonder like a rind,

and taste eternity.

but now, all ignorant of the length 

of time's uncertain wing,

it goads me like the goblin bee,

that will not state its sting.

---

heart, we will forget him!

you and i, tonight!

you may forget the warmth he gave,

i will forget the light.

when you have done, pray tell me,

that i my thoughts may dim;

haste! lest while you're lagging.

i may remember him. 

---

(her scattered style and short, choppy thoughts sound like they could be mine. i guess i relate to the way she thinks? maybe it's just the fact that she was a woman. i think she expresses things all of us feel at some point or another.)