Ever have those times when you just are so unsure of what God is doing? I find myself in that place once again. To be frank, I've been so apathetic in all of my relationships, and most especially with my relationship with the Lord. Quite honestly, I'm sick of it. I'm tired of being lukewarm, I look around at my heart and I just wish I could shake myself! I ask myself, "Where is the passion?" or "Where is the love?" and I answer myself with stammering and incomplete thoughts.
I think God has cast me into the throws of desolation to wake me up. If anything these past few months have showed me how weak and fragile I truly am. Yet, in my stubbornness and pride I refuse to be real and vulnerable with the One Who knows all of my weaknesses already. Where in the world does that make sense?
Today Rita told me that Ashley asked her to teach confirmation classes next year. I'm simply dumbfounded at this news and as I'm reflecting on it tonight, this song was the closest thing I could find to express my feelings. I find a few lines especially relatable:
If you were right and I was wrong,
Why are you the one who's gone?
And I'm still here
Am I still entertaining ideas of us getting together? No. Does my heart still hurt a little inside whenever I see her? Absolutely. I think what's especially frustrating is that this is a back-door attempt to get into the ministry through other avenues instead of approaching me head-on knowing our difficulties of the past. Knowing how much she screwed me over. I am probably reading into things too much, but, if the ministry really meant that much to her, why the hell did she ever leave in the first place? She backed out long before things with us exploded. I never went anywhere, she was the one who simply faded away from ministry and parish life in general. I may be acting and thinking petty, but honestly, it frustrates me that she just walked away, myself and volunteers have had to overcome a lot of obstacles to stay in ministry, in order to put the ministry as a priority, not taking a back-seat to anything else. This whole situation frustrates me to no end and I don't know how to eloquently express my feelings without sounding childish and petty.
There's this inherent desire that we all yearn for. We want to be wanted, we want to be desired, we want to be loved and sought after. It's funny isn't it? The games we play to prove some imaginary point, some fabricated "test" of true love. We run and hope that someone will be looking for us. Who can blame us? Everyone bears scars, everyone hurts, everyone has been burned in their lives. We run and pretend to not turn around, but in the depths of our souls we simply desire more than anything else that we're being sought after, desired.
I stumbled on this David Crowder song today, after having listened through the album several times, there's just something that today clicked. This hidden drive, this hidden force in our souls is far more potent and powerful than many of us could probably fathom. Where do the wounds come from? Parents? Failed romances? Broken friendships? Interior insecurities? It doesn't matter, because ultimately in one way or another we all do the same thing: run and secretly hope that someone, anyone will be seeking us.
I look at my own life and like everyone else on the face of this planet, I've been broken in one way or another. I wouldn't say that my life has been overbearingly hard, but, crosses, trials and heartache has followed me throughout my existence. I run, I will admit it. When things get hard, when trials come, when life just gets too heavy for me to deal with I will run and try to escape, whether it be to sin, to depression, to a hundred million different avenues. I run to these things, in hope that they will provide something, even if it's just simple numbness, as if any of these empty things can slake the thirst to be desired seated in our hearts. Within the deepest part of my soul, I simply desire this: to be sought after unashamedly.
What I love about this song is that Crowder hits on this underlying point, we wander far from where God intended. I mean, who can blame anyone who wants to run from where He intends us? He always wants what's best for us, even if it means breaking our hearts to make them a little bigger. We look at the pains, the hurts, the sufferings of life and we simply want to run away from them all, but we deeply desire that He'll seeks us, that He'll come after us. You know the craziest thing about our God? He does. We stray, we fail, we run like the wind from these wounds that inhabit the deep recesses of our souls. He meets us in those places, but then He always takes us back, takes us deeper. With every step in the path of perfection, we come to one unwavering reality: heartache is inevitable. We are always, always, led back to the cross. Slowly, painstakingly, suffering makes us more alive because it makes us die to those superficial, passing parts of us. We're insecure, we hurt and we want someone to love us, and He does. His love comes after us, and it unites us to His cross, where he can look over to our pain and say simply in overwhelming understanding, "Me too."
I promise that this post has nothing to do with valentine's day coming up. I came across this song a little over a month ago, and I was immediately drawn to it. I think Jason Mraz, when he keeps things appropriate, has this way of being able to speak to the soul. Some of the things that this song really hits on just clicks deep within my very being.
Maybe I'm being selfish, I'll admit it. The thing is though that there is this deep aching, this yearning to have someone specifically for me to love, and to love me the same way. I want to have a woman that I can just stop and be entranced by her gaze, someone to hold, someone to take my breath away, someone to lift me up and, ultimately, someone worth fighting for.
I know that this song seems to be more towards being interpreted as a relationship on rocks, wanting to be fought for, but I think it points to an even deeper reality within the masculine soul. There is a big part of my heart that just wants someone to be able to fight, indeed, to die for if possible. I quite simply want someone to be able to offer myself up for, to lay down my heart for someone that no matter what, I won't give up on. Someday, maybe someday.
Last week I went up to Denver to visit Andrew and to go and see MUTEMATH live. Going to see this band is one of the greatest things I could ever do with time off. The trip was phenomenal, Nate tagged along with me, we went to go to New Belgium, we saw MUTEMATH, enjoyed adult beverages, just a fantastic trip all around.
There's something about this song that always seems to just hit me hard, square in the chest. I'm coming down with a cold again and throughout the course of the night I have consistently woken up after an hour and a half of sleep. I'm feeling tired, groggy, sick and overwhelmed. There is so much that I have to accomplish and I feel like I'm nowhere near close enough to be able to accomplish it. My heart is heavy, lonely and tired. I look around at my life and I am forced to conclude that I'm breaking, and I'm letting myself slip further and further away from the person I wish to be. I just want to be back home, I want to be surrounded by love again and, dare I say it, I want to find someone to love. I'm in a weird place spiritually, I feel like a true battle is taking place deep within my soul. This struggle between the old and the new man. This indescribable primal fight between the flesh in the spirit is waging within me in a more powerful and tangible way than I've ever experienced more in my life. I feel constantly on the verge of tears.
Maybe that's why this song seems so powerful to me. Only tears know how to remind us we all break the same. I consider the rest of those around me and there's a temptation to think, "They've got it all together, God is really bringing it together for them." A simple teardrop is all that's needed to remind me otherwise. I guess it's important to think: everyone may seem invincible, but it's just pretend. What's even more powerful is that even Christ, God Himself, experienced this same breaking. In the death of Lazarus, in His agony, He was not above this breaking that tears make manifest. I'm sure there were times He felt overwhelmed too, I'm sure there were occurrences that pushed Him to His breaking point, but the essential difference between He and I is that He continually turned to the Father. He continually brought everything, including the "breakings" to His Heavenly Father.
We all break the same, but we don't all mend the same. An infinite number of routes people can take to get some semblance of "healing." Some turn to self-medication, some to fantasies and escapes from reality, others in relationships. There is only one true way that we are mended though, and that is through God alone. Nothing else counts. We all break the same, and He alone can mend us.
I stumbled upon this Rihanna song by happenstance and have very quickly fallen in love with it. To cut to the chase, I feel like I'm at a crossroads yet again. My soul hurts here, my co-worker and I got into a spat this week and the words that she used cut me deep and really hurt me, which has sent me into a spiral wondering what is going on in my life, forcing me to take inventory of everything.
I'm in doubt of whether or not I should stay here. Quite frankly, these past few months have seemed to have gotten progressively more taxing and worse for the wear. My soul is restless and when I go to places like Denver or Phoenix there's something there that I know I'm lacking here: true love and acceptance. A lot of times I consider my relationships with my volunteers, my co-worker and people around me and I truly feel like I'm an island and every effort that I've put forth to make things better hasn't brought about a good return, at all. It seems as if my efforts have been discounted, that my motives have been questioned and whether or not I'm truly here for love or not. The two things that I feel like I've been lacking in has truly been brought to the surface this week. Whereas in the past this feeling that I've been having was an intangible, incommunicable dark reality, now I see as a lack of true hope and true love. The phrases that have been inundating my brain-space have been, "Where is God's love?" and "Is there anything to hope for at all any longer?"
This song, even though it is superficial and vague had called to mind a deep reality that I know I've forgotten. Love can be found, even in circumstances and realities that are hopeless. I read through Lamentations 3 and Jeremiah voices extreme and utter turmoil in his soul. When someone can write things like, "He has made my flesh and skin waste away and broken my bones," and "he has put heavy chains on me; though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer; he has blocked my ways with hewn stones, he has made my paths crooked," you know that there's some deep spiritual brokenness within. Yet, despite all of the pain, hurt, confusion and hopelessness the first portion of his treatise in the third chapter embodies, he states further, "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end." Hope, love, those are the true underlying realities of Jeremiah's life. Despite the pain, despite the darkness, those are the things he calls to mind, that God is not done with his life. God is not done showing His love and mercy. God is not done dispensing hope in Him to His beloveds.
The simple fact is that love can be found everywhere despite the circumstances of life. Love even in the ashes, even in the despair, even in the hopelessness and thatis the reason that we, that I, can continue to have hope. If you don't seek His love, how in the world can you expect to find it? Even in the hopeless situations, all that is necessary is to stop sitting and whining, and take a look around at all of the ways God is always trying to win our hearts... my heart.
Love can be found in the hopeless places, and then those hopeless places don't seem so hopeless any longer.
