Picture Me

I picture your eyes
wishing they could stare into mine,
while secretly catching a glance
of my hair blowing in the wind.
I picture your smile
as you think of my laugh,
and those times we stayed up
all night talking about nothing.
I picture you--
not knowing what to do,
not knowing what's okay,
only knowing that you love me.
I see you running because it's too much,
and there's too much risk.
Cuz we have so much love...
and it's just too scary.
But then I picture me--
telling you that there's so much to lose
if we don't live out our love story
that God has given us.
And even though you have to win the trust
that you lost when you left again,
it's worth it.
You know we're worth it.
I picture me grabbing your hand,
I say, “Baby, what we have is real. Don't give up.”
And you smile and say, “I'm all in.
Please just give me one last chance.”
But all I see is the back of your head,
as you walk the other direction
trying not to picture how you'd grab my hand,
how you'd say you love me in 50 languages,
how you'd fight for my heart...
if only you thought it was okay.

Seeing Things Differently

I was thinking the other day about my elementary school. I've been back there since I've been an adult, and it is the weirdest thing that the playground seems so small, and even the bathrooms are so low to the ground. Obviously, they are made for children, but the thing is, I have been this same height since I was in 5th grade. So the playground shouldn't seem small and the sinks shouldn't seem so low to the ground. Why is it that I see things differently now?
It's the same thing with situations that I used to be faced with. How childish it seems that I used to think I would marry Travis back when I was in middle school, how weird that I dated Andy Reynolds, the guy who said "bros before hos" to me. Seriously, he said that, and I continued dating him. That just seems ridiculous now, but I didn't see that at the time. I don't mean for both of those examples to be about boys cuz that isn't the point I'm trying to make. It's just that as time goes by, you have such a different frame of mind that shapes how you look at things.
I always believed that you could only fall in love once. I believed it would only happen to me once. What that means to me is that, well in middle school, I thought I loved Travis. And in my own right, I did. But I was not truly in love with him.
Travis is the only guy I ever said I loved other than Ryan. But future experience has taught me that I didn't know what love was back then. I moved forward with what I had at that time, a working definition of love.
It just makes me think, will I someday move on and get married and think that I was not truly in love with Ryan? I guess it kind of scares me to think that I might not think that someday. I guess it would be a good thing because it would mean something better came along. But you see, I have volumes of poetry written from these past two years. I regret nothing I have said or felt or done. When I look at the poetry, that is where God has taken me for the past two years of my life. It has been quite the journey. It's something that is like, WOW God! To experience something that powerful, that real is something to behold. Of course I feel things really deeply, which is why the poetry comes out as it does. The poetry just attests to the great magnitude of God's ability to create something out of nothing. Love out of an initial annoyance.
I wouldn't want that poetry to mean something different than it means to me now. I mean, it isn't about the poetry, obviously. But if I were to fall in love with someone else someday, does that mean that I fell in love twice? And regarding the poetry, does that mean that poetry will be seen differently? I don't want to see things differently. I don't want to fall in love twice. Not for nostalgia's sake. Not for comfort's sake. Not for my sake, not for his. But for everything I am and everything I have learned that has culminated into where I am right now... I know that there is no way I will look back at this and think it wasn't real, true love. For the sake of everything that God is calling me to, I have to believe and trust that it's real and always will be. For the sake of what I feel God has for my life, I have to just be where I am and committed to that. You might call this, letting go. But letting go means saying, "God, you know that this is what I would love to happen someday. This is how I feel. But my hands are open, you can take it away. But until you take it away, I'm going to be committed to it because right now, this is where you are calling me. I'm going to hold onto it, but my hands are open for you to do Your will." So my love is a working definition, always working. The question is whether you can be committed to working on that definition together or not. And I guess someday, if things look different, at least I can say that I was committed to going forward where I was with what I had.

Elijah - 1 Kings 19

A poem I wrote

“God, I did all you wanted.
I passionately served you.
What was it all worth?
Cuz here I am alone.
Now you led me to this cave.
It has been nearly forty days.
It just doesn't make any sense.”
Then you said to stand on the mountain...
You said, “just wait here for me.
I'm going to pass by you,
just watch the mountains shatter.”
So I watched everything cave in,
crash down,
and burn.
And you asked me again why I'm here.
“I'm here, alone, and I don't know why;
all I was doing was following you.
Why would you leave me in this cave?”
But you don't apologize
because your will is perfect,
and everything shattered,
caved in,
crashed down,
and burned
all at your command.
“Let it be,” you said, and it was.
And it was, and it wasn't, and it will be,
or maybe it won't be.
Sometimes I don't want to be obedient
because it seems ridiculous.
If I'm being honest, it just doesn't make sense.
And I may never understand.
But one thing is for certain:
obedience is too easy
if you already know what is to come.

Thin Lines

I'm finding that life is so complex because there's nature and nurture, predestination and choice, decisions to make and destiny to accept, and on top of all those factors interplaying to create reality as it is, there are the thin lines and boundaries, which we create because we can't handle things being so complex, that are actually quite blurrier than we like to let on between my thoughts and God's, my will and God's--in essence all the aforementioned factors of nature, nurture, predestination, choice. We're not comfortable with the fact that we might love someone because God wants us to love him or her, thus it is both our will and God's will, our heart and God's heart, it is a choice and a predestined predisposure to love that person, it's a decision that must be made and a destiny to accept.
It is, furthermore, taking into account that maybe the lines are meant to be blurry, that maybe things are meant to be complex, and since it is so... it's too simplistic for me to feel like I'm the only one who is hurting or has the best viewpoint because the complexity is, everyone seems to have a different reality when it comes to certain situations. And sometimes it isn't a matter of whether something is right or wrong, sometimes it's just this or that. We want to boil things down to right or wrong because we like the lines, we are comfortable with having lines... but it can't always be that simple. It's too bad sometimes because if it were just a matter of right and wrong, things would be easier to get over.

Choice

"I always thought that there was this one perfect person for everybody in the world, you know, and when you found that person the rest of the world kind of magically faded away, and, you know, the two of you would just be inside this kind of protective bubble, but there is no bubble, I mean if there is you have to make it, I just think life is more than a series of moments, you know, we can make choices, and we can choose to protect the people we love, and that's what makes us who we are and those are the real memories"
-Forces of Nature

So it's not that I think movies offer a lot of truth or something, but here's why I quote that...
I mentioned before that I stressed about deciding what school to go to, but God is down either path. God is with me wherever I go... He is going to take care of me. That's the same with choosing what I do after I graduate now. I've applied two places: an environmental school and an internship at a non-profit in DC. Let's say I get accepted both of these places. *crosses fingers* I believe that I could go to the environmental school, and God would be there, and that would offset a set of events. Or I could go to the internship, and God would be there too, and that would just offset a different set of events. And if it is predestined that I do one of those... how could I ever make the wrong decision? Wouldn't whatever decision I make be the correct one? But obviously I have to apply places and make a choice--take some action--because if not, nothing is going to happen.
If I don't choose to cultivate relationships, I won't have any.
If you take someone like Mother Theresa... this amazing woman prayed and said, "God tell me where you want me to go, and I will go without delay." She felt called to go to Calcutta when she was on a train, and so when she got back to her nunnery or whatever it's called, she got right to action and asked permission to leave. They didn't let her go. But she didn't stop trying. I say all this to say that Mother Theresa is all about action.
I just think it is dangerous to say that everything is predestined because doesn't that make you just feel like you should just sit back and let things happen to you? But if you never move, you just stay where you are. And if you never move, you are making a choice; the choice is inaction.

Trusting

Honestly, sometimes I just want to scream. I don't know why things have to be so hard and complicated; why can't we just be? Why do we always have to second guess things? Does God intend for us to be so wishy washy? THIS is the problem with meaning. No one knows themselves what they mean or how they feel, so how in the world can someone else even begin to understand how someone feels? And since we can't know if we feel something because we do or because we are just fooling ourselves, and we, likewise, can't know if someone else feels something for real or not, then what are we left with? All we can do is cast down everything that sets itself against the pretensions of Christ.
Romantic movies have set us up believe that if things are meant to be, you will both pick the same elevator floor, or that you can write your phone number in a book and the right person will find it in a second-hand bookstore. But what if that's not how God works. What if what it takes is commitment? What if trusting God means being committed to not running away--trusting that if you feel led to, it's okay to choose to pick the same floor on the elevator as someone else? What if trusting God means trusting that He has given you a love, a passion for someone or something, and He wants you not to ignore it?

God is Bigger

I remember at LCBC this summmer they were doing a series about different characteristics of God. There was one particular sermon that sticks out in my mind, and I don't really recall what characteristic they were focusing on that day or anything, but at the beginning of the sermon, David Ashcraft asks who had been to the Grand Canyon. He said how gorgeous it is and how much he loved visiting there, and then he said that he wanted to show the people who have never been there just how awesome it is. So he takes his piece of gum out of his mouth and tries to mold it into the shape of the Grand Canyon as a representation. Well obviously, this is just absurd because a piece of gum does not compare to the beauty of the Grand Canyon.
It makes me think about how we can't possibly understand the scope of God's nature. Any explanation that we have of God falls short because there's no way to describe that kind of immensity, that scope of timelessness.
God is just that big.
So I just think that God is way bigger than any "doctrines of grace" or doctrines of Arminianism. This is something Joy and I talked about recently. It was interesting that she brought it up because I had been thinking it. She posed the question, "What if free will and God's elect coincide?" Maybe they do. In a more easily understandable example... sometimes we pray to God as Father, sometimes as Savior, as King, as Lover of our souls. You can see the difference especially with girls who are taught that Jesus is their bridegroom. Jesus is, in essence, the perfect boyfriend. Well, guys certainly don't view Jesus that way. I know that people have different roles also, but not in the complex way that God does. God plays all roles at all times. He meets you right where you need him. I can sometimes be a friend to my mom, but mostly, I'm a daughter. We are stuck in those roles to one another. But God is all types of relationships, all forms of love at the same time.
So isn't it possible that God is all things, and you can approach him differently depending on who you are. I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm stepping on ultimate truths because that is definitely not my aim, but what if predestination appeals to me because I like the view of God's love securing me. It isn't forced love to me, but rather God grabbed me so I couldn't fall off the cliff. He loved me that much that He didn't just reach out his hand, He grabbed me! On the other hand, some people like to feel a little more freedom in choice, and so if they want to feel that God held out his hand, and they chose to take it... well, I used to argue that this was a fundamental difference in the nature of God. But what if it isn't? What if God is both views put together?
I wouldn't expect our logic to understand it because God is God, and we are not. He is so much bigger than anything we can understand! And that is AWESOME!