Love Actually

I have strayed away from talking about love on this blog because I fear, and rightfully so, it will be misconstrued or applied to your situation. What I write on isn’t about another person or relationship, it is a very raw glimpse into my own heart and beliefs. It is where I stand in 30+ years of living, learning, and experiencing. I have had heartache in all kinds of relationships and situations, yet I somehow still forget the model of love in my life.

I have been ruminating (it’s my favorite word, y’all) on the expectations of love and the reality of it recently. Many times I feel like I have looked at love as this large, homogenous emotion that blocks all hurt and stress from life. It eases all things and ultimately comes packaged in a nice box with a bow.

The reality of that is love isn’t at all like that. Love is overwhelming, yes…but it’s intricate and risky. It moves you to question yourself and all your experiences. It leaves you joyful and hurt. It brings pain more often and it does cause stress…but I am reminded of that love, that BIG awesome love of God. How that is the perfect picture of love in my life and what a comfort that is for me.

David Crowder crafts the best picture of this in my mind and my heart with his song “How He Loves.” Ultimately His love is like a hurricane, and I am merely a tree…I bend beneath the weight and magnitude of it.

The Voice

My mom was a transcriptionist for 45+ years. Constantly I would see her grabbing a dictionary to look up words. I watched my dad read books and then pour over an encyclopedia (it was the Google of our time kids) to look at the background of that particular event or topic. From the beginning words have been important to me, and especially how they are used. I can still remember studying the 500 most common words that were on the SAT in middle school, and wondering what good it would do me often.

While it works well for my writing at times, and most especially in my thesis writing throughout grad school, I am prone to use them for bad rather than for good. I have a tendency to use words to criticize, cut down, and mar. I know just what words to use to create the biggest damage and lasting fallout. The bigger issue in all this is that I tend to most frequently use them on myself.

I know exactly what can hurt me most, what line of thinking I can journey down in order to send my emotions in a tailspin. I am hyper critical and incredibly negative of myself.

Lately I have been digging deeper into my insecurities in order to really see where much of them are based. It has been a slow, grinding process with much tension and uneasiness. I do know that this is bigger than me and that God is addressing me directly in many ways in relation to my insecurities. Currently I am reading A Confident Heart by Renee Swope, and I will gladly post a review once I complete it. (In all honesty, I would love to do a small group study on this, so if you’re interested let me know)

One of the areas Renee speaks to is failure. This is something that doesn’t sit well with me, and I often feel like my failures are never forgotten. Work in progress here. She asks a vital question I had never thought to stop and consider. I wanted to share it today because you may be struggling too, with your own voice being the loudest of the critics in your head.

We need to stop the habit of beating ourselves up with so much critical thinking. What are we doing talking to a child of God the way we talk to ourselves?

I think that’s where I land. I speak to myself like I would never speak to another human, or living thing. The voice is ugly and nasty, and it is mine. Having the faith and knowledge that I am a child of God and He says I am cherished, beautiful, and forgiven should trump any words I have for myself. In those moments when my voice gets loud, it’s no longer about me. It’s about believing who God says I am…lets begin together to hear His voice over our own today.

 

I also wanted to share this song, as it’s been resounding in my head and heart over the last two weeks.

My Dip In The Ocean

As I was looking through Instagram yesterday I saw a picture my friend Chris had posted of being in PCB for Big Stuf camp. The view of the parking lot and another hotel flooded me with memories from when I went to church camp there 14 years ago. As I started thinking about that particular camp, as it was my last in the youth group at my hometown church, I suddenly realized it was the exact day 14 years ago that asked Christ into my life.

This picture was taken 14 days ago this morning as my youth leader baptized me in the Gulf of Mexico as I could not wait to obey and follow my salvation with it. These moments have changed me, who I am, forever. I sit here now as a teenage Christian of sorts, reminiscing on those first moments of my coming to life in Christ.

I held a very defiant attitude about life for most of my childhood. Many say that’s a product of being the youngest child, but I definitely chose my reactions and actions purposefully for many years. I often call this the “You’re not the boss of me” mindset. Let’s be honest, I still wrestle with that from time to time. Now though, it’s a conversation I have with God.

For some of those teenage years I thought I did know Christ, having grown up in the church. Yet deep down, on that Friday night in a hotel in Panama City my heart told me otherwise. I had been having a conversation with one of my friends in the room about feeling some tug on my heart that I couldn’t explain. I remember seeing others in worship time and not feeling the same draw to worship, at all. (Many can debate this topic but I know my heart and how it is drawn to music. I knew something wasn’t right.)

I am thankful for youth leaders and their families because our minister’s wife took time to talk specifically with me about my heart in relationship with Christ. There was no shame in coming to question where my life was in the salvation story because head knowledge isn’t the same as heart knowledge. Just because one grows up in a church does not mean one simply is a believer. I had to come to terms with that to recognize my eternity was hinging on pride and what others would think of me.

Fourteen years later looks very different in a life following Christ, loving the way He does, and still at times battling the flesh that wants to be its own person. I will never regret that choice, because life is far greater knowing Him than being alone in this world. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. Don’t be surprised if I get excited about church camps because for me, they changed my eternity. They are worth it. I pray every teenager has that opportunity. Investing in the lives of teenagers is vital and I am so thankful for each and every person who works in that ministry.

The Pieces of Me

Last week I was on vacation with my family. One of my most favorite things about family vacation is the luxury of walking on the beach each morning around sunrise. It gives me time to think and process without a distraction really. It also provides some good God time where He can speak to my heart and I will give Him my full attention.

Last week I posted on how our pasts are like zombies sometimes, when we’ve not dealt with issues they seem to rise from the dead. Someone took offense to that and I felt the need to remove the post. It is now back up because the very thing I was writing on was coming to life and I was choosing to hit delete. One morning as I was walking I noticed a shell in the sand and it got me to thinking more on the topic of our past.

At first glance the shell is ugly, misshapen, and cluttered up. Then as I began to look further at it, I thought it resembled how my heart and life had taken shape over the last few years. I had collected pieces onto myself from relationships, interactions, and situations. I carried them on the outside of me much like an armor. They provided protection and safety, so I could hide underneath and avoid the elements, avoid eyes and being chosen in any given situation.

Those pieces of me latched on and became part of who I was, who I am. They defined me and soon I became proud to wear the mess on my exterior. It was a badge of honor, to be seen as my circumstances because I feared what I looked like underneath. I doubted anyone would want to know the real me, the one full of insecurity and fear. The one who hadn’t had a successful relationship and struggled often with her weight.

It’s an amazing thing when God starts using people to pull away the pieces, or when He pulls them away Himself. It’s painful to have your armor, which has embedded itself into your own skin get stripped away. It shows you who you truly are. I don’t like some of the parts of me, and that people can actually see that. However I am seeing that people embrace you with love, kindness, and caring when you remove pieces of yourself you thought would bring that by keeping them on.

Zombies are similar to my past…

For a chunk of time I didn’t date, I simply just found no one that interested me. There was a small part of me that thought I might even be the non-Catholic equivalent to a nun…and no I am not meaning a spinster. Or a cat lady. (That’s just rude to call any single female that, FYI)

But then this guy came waltzing into my life very unexpectedly and challenged me in every facet of my life. We became closer than I should have allowed looking back because there was a pattern for him in engaging in female relationships. He had been up front about that, but in a “I’m not sure why they act this way” manner. Things happened and feelings grew. Ultimately it turned out badly, as anyone who was on the outside of this situation could have said would happen.

Over and over again I commented that I had forgiven him and let the situation have its fair share of my time and thoughts after the fact. Fast forward years later to a situation occurring that caused that part of my past to come rearing back from where I thought I had put it, buried in a grave. Funny thing about burying something that’s alive, it often resurrects itself in your present. I kept seeing flashes of hurt and pain that I hadn’t let go of, hadn’t dealt with. I wanted to put the wall up, dig the grave, and put it to rest again.

Something was different this time though. I wanted to face it, I wanted to talk through the situation and give forgiveness and healing. I wanted the both of us to move forward….together. But I had to face my past and how it had defined my present, continuously for years. I needed to give both him and myself forgiveness in how we both acted and masked a lot of our feelings for the sake of posture.

And that’s when I likened mine to a zombie (cause obviously I would make that reference), needing to be faced head on or it’ll keep turning up around the next corner.

This morning as I read through a new devotion on having a confident heart, this verse struck out at me in perfect application to what has been occurring and the conversations I have been having:
“Do not remember the past events, pay no attention to things of old. Look, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed I will make a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.”-Isaiah 43:18-19

Today God may be wanting to use your past to heal, to restore you. He wants you to deal with your past, but not dwell in it. First you have to face it like a zombie, head on and with courage that Someone’s right there with you.

Questioning a Life

Why do you date?

That question was a bit of a shock to see in a devotion I was thinking of doing over the next several days. I had been looking at options after just completing a 90-day devotion on the life of Paul and stumbled upon a whole slew of relationships and dating. To be honest, I may write about dating from time to time but I shy away from doing studies on them in that way.

The question has been rattling around now in my head since I saw it. I think for a while I dated just to stop being lonely, and I truly believe that’s the case for many people. They just don’t want to be alone, they are tired of that sense of loneliness that comes at a certain hour of the night.

For years I dated to just date, to have the experience and understanding of just dating….or that’s what I told myself when I consistently dated every wrong guy in the greater Knoxville area. I wasted a lot of that time not being comfortable with who I am, so instead I chased guys who could make me forget that I wasn’t truly content with who I was.

With age comes wisdom they say…somehow I don’t think that’s true as I’ve met some very wise people younger than me and some not so smart people older than me. I began to see that why I dated was about me and what ultimately shouted out at me in those relationships (or lack thereof). I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin, with who I was and what God was giving me in the moment.

Dating for me was more about masking who I was and how not okay I was with it, instead of the other person. For me to see the real me, I had to get my heart broken by someone I thought was the absolute best for me. When you aren’t sure of who you are, it’s hard to let someone else love that part of you.

The answer to the question has now changed for me in such a way that I can look back and see the loneliness with gladness. The broken heart with compassion and empathy, knowing that it brought bigger change, acceptance, and contentment. I only wish I had seen that question many years ago.

If you are dating/single, why do you date?

What A Girl Wants…

For years I was the girl who was friends with a bunch of guys. I thrived on staying out of friendships with women. I found them catty, vindictive and deceitful. Truth be told, I had been crushed by a friendship with two other girls in high school. As high school girls are prone to do, we upped the drama and lessened the reality. Throughout college I flocked to my guy friends, who are some of the best guys in the world to be friends with honestly. I had one or two females I counted as deep friendships but always at arm’s length.

Last evening, as I sat around a table eating Mexican food with three strong, single, faith-filled women I realized how my world had changed in 14 years. I had opened up room in walled-up heart to female friendships. I suddenly realized the why of these relationships. It wasn’t something selfish that I could get from them, but that God had purposed us to have connections that are deeper than friendships with men. We can commiserate on the various trials of being a woman in this era…and what being single looks like now.

I laughed harder last night than I have in ages, and grew rather fond of holding onto that memory on the drive home as I crave more moments such as those. Women need each other. We uplift, pray and feel with one another. I feel so often we would rather cut down, berate, and destroy one another in order to make ourselves look better to the world…I am guilty of it as well. We were given to support, to encourage…what would our lives look like with circles of women friendships that reflected that? Instead of viewing the women in your life as hassles, headaches, competition I challenge us all to look at them as support, as our cheerleaders and prayer warriors.

We as women can be our own worst enemy or the vessel God wants to use in another woman’s life, if we’ll let Him do His work. We desire more from our relationships than we give women credit for. We are sisters in the faith, and sisters of the heart that often goes overlooked in pursuit of selfish gains. I pray today that if there are women out there who are hurting from a marred female friendship that healing would commence and truth be spoken into each woman today to encourage and support each other.