Well, almost. At present it’s only twenty-nine years and three hundred and sixty four days. And I sit here on my bed in the glow of a bedroom lamp, glaring at my throat because it just keeps coughing for no flipping good reason (pointed look, bad throat!), thinking about all that’s come before and all that’s promised to come along. Simon posted a Happy Birthday greeting on my “Wall” on Facebook- I thought about posting back, but I probably would have only said something snarky and uninspired like, “Shut up and leave me alone!”

I warned you it would be uninspired.

Anyway, I didn’t do it. And I won’t. And I wouldn’t because what have I got to be mad at him about? Other than the fact that I was metaphorically down the street from his house last year and when I rang him up, instead of saying “Sure, drop on in” like a good neighbor, he told me to bugger off as if I were a sheep thieving bandit. Maybe it’s an accurate description. At any rate, he was frightened of me and I can’t help but feel the worst about that in the end.

I also got an email from Herbie. Boy, was I ever crazy about him . . . with his crazy corkscrew hair and Tourist Bureau of Canada clothes, with his ‘ism jokes and french pronunciations . . .  and he’s going to be a father. Geez, what happens? One day you’re some kind of raving lunatic, usually with a borderline alcohol problem, la-di-da-ing your way along,and  then a few days later you’re thirty years old waiting for your wife to have a baby. Amazing. I think he’ll be a good dad. He has a way of centering on someone in such a way that they feel that they themselves are the one constant in the universe. I’ve never experienced such a thing as a child but it certainly sounds beneficial.

So . . . what’s there to say on my 30th? Not much, except I’m looking for a house, will probably be getting married soon, want to get started on a doctorate program, and am pretty convinced I have a sexual addition. Nothing really that spectacular. I’m hoping to keep learning, keep growing, keep writing, and more than all these others, keep becoming more and more refined and like God. I’ve been encouraged of late in the Word. Just that there is the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Just that God is good and righteous and merciful and on the throne. Just that God can redeem anything. Lessons I learn over and over again, and sweeter each time.

I’ve also thought perhaps I will find a different Bible Study, not that the one I was attending is bad. It’s only that I was listening to LaSayre Bradleypreach tonight with his beautiful crotchety old man voice, and I thought, When I go to this study, I don’t find myself going away having learned more about God. I find that there is a good deal of emphasis (and understandably so) on who the Holy Spirit wants me to be and how do I really have Christ in my life and paying  attention to the places where I’m screwing up. (I admit that I may have missed the point, and if that’s the case, forgive me.) But, although I get the importance of those things, I think they really make sense for the group who are for the most part 26 and younger. 26 and younger is a really great time to ask those sort of questions, when your life still really does seem fluid and like you’re still carving out adulthood from it, figuring out who you are at all much less in Christ. I asked them of myself , usually between shots at that age, but that’s really a whole other line of thought. The point is . . . and it is not to say that I think I have any more claim to spiritual greatness than anyone else, merely that God seems to have steered me in this direction .  .  . but the point is that God is the center of everything, and He’s working in us each day, and He’s graceful and has provided through dependence on Him the ability for us to be able to be gracious to one another. The point is that this is real and we are a family and we should meet each others needs and experience depth and help and compassion with and for one another. I’m not saying that those things don’t happen there, only that I have not experienced them in the way I’m trying to explain. Perhaps I haven’t given it enough of a chance, I’m sure I probably haven’t. What I’m trying to say though with all of this is that if I sit and ponder about God by talking about myself and positing on things I should improve and need to learn because of God, surely, am I not still in the end just talking about myself?  Am I not misdirected somewhat in my focus?

I could be wrong. I really could, I’m not just trying to be falsely humble. I’ll have to pray for direction in it. But I am lonely for true fellowship and real definable growth. I hope I find a place where that can happen.

Well, that’s it for my Birthday dissertation, and I see now that it really is my birthday. Happy Birthday to me! :)

Who do I belong to? It isn’t me. It’s by blood I was purchased and to dust I will return. Who is the Author my life as well as its Great Love? Only Jesus. Jesus alone.

And who am I? Can anyone even tell? I’ve been reading a book about the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and while doing so it was mentioned that when Elijah did battle with the prophets of Baal and called down fire from Heaven, the prophets of Baal all resounded with cries that Elijah’s God was Lord. Can anyone tell that my God is Lord?

The point of the excerpt was that we Christians should pray outrageous prayers, like, for example, God, please shoot down fire from Heaven. But I think to myself that it isn’t the prayers that are missing, it’s me. I haven’t shown up to demonstrate what God has done for me. I’ve forgotten the beautiful and loving and radical and severe ways of my Master. And I haven’t been loving anyone very well at all.

And so, this radical prayer that I’ve been called to contemplate? Seems to lead me to a simple phrase: Pour me out of myself and You take up all the room. I’m Yours. And what purpose could I possibly have that is more valuable than Yours? How can I be so arrogant as to think that what it is I’m doing supercedes what You can do?

I am arrogant, and dishonest, and selfish and unmoving. And I believe with weeping hope that He will heal me from these things. I believe that if I truly ask, He will bless me by bestowing His manner in me. I believe He will give me the ability and the energy and the sustanence and the power to doggedly pursue Truth in all things.

So pray for me, friends, if you think of it. I have a long way to go.

Excuse me? Excuse-yes? Yes, I’m ready to order. I’d like a cholesterol free life experience, you know what I mean? I don’t want to have heart troubles or feel sluggish. I need to be in peak shape so that I can run the good race, can’t have any heavy stuff weighing me down. So, if you don’t mind, could I have my life made with No Yokes, please?

If you’ve ever placed an order like this, I can relate. Recently at work there was a cafaffle about a locked door. The fact that the printer was behind it was most of the trouble, the reasons of which are largely inconsequential, and I needed to use that printer. Imagine having to waste the time it takes to unlock a door, purposelessly, a hundred times a day to get anything off the printer when you’re doing casework and have to get things off the printer all the time, constantly, ad nauseum, ad infinitim. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, does it? Probably isn’t; Not the point. The point IS that come Monday morning this week, after doing this for about two months, I had Had Enough. I was livid and decided to act like a child. I purposely went in and UNlocked the door at every opportunity hoping that it would stay that way, and when that didn’t work, I just left it standing open. I figured  two could play that whole Drive-Someone-Crazy-About-Something-As-Inane-As-A-Locked-Door Game (What? You’ve never played that one?). I fumed and complained and made a real jerk of myself.

But then something happened. A coworker of mine who was the dumping ground for my vitriol did something that absolutely changed my perspective and my attitude: She prayed for me. I didn’t know it at the time. I had gone outside for a minute to take a break from my rage with a book that just happened to be in my purse called Forgotten God, which is about being guided by the Holy Spirit. Ouch, by the way. And as I read, I thought, Is this Love I’m acting with? Or Selfishness?

And it occurred to me that I was angry because I didn’t have a choice about the way things were being run in my office, but I was being offered a choice about how I was going to run things in my heart and how that heart was reflected in my actions. And I decided I was going to submit to God and run it right, in a way that would please Him and make me, as His representative, be honorable to the great gifts I’d been given, like having the Holy Spirit to dwell within me and guide me. Like having a job, like having the capabilities to work it, like having the income it provides me to support myself, like having all the luxuries in life that make it not only possible but to seem even justifiable to complain. I realized that I couldn’t do anything about the yoke, but I could carry it with dignity and the grace befitting someone who professes Jesus as Lord.

So as I was saying earlier, if you want a life with No Yokes? Good luck finding anyplace that can fill that particular order. But if you care about your heart really, you will (as I am still continuing to) learn to bear them with courage, humilty, and above all else, Love.

I’m taking a turn, friends.

It may seem that my life is a consistent relay of these but if someone disagrees I hope they feel free to stay on the straight and constant and leave my spastic path alone. Now then. I’m looking for a gym, trying to be disciplined in my writing, and hoping to commit myself more and more fully to God.

I get distracted. Who am I kidding? I am distracted. But thank God that he is faithful in waking me up when I fall asleep. I’m like those three who supposed to keep watch but couldn’t even  keep their eyes open, when there was the greatest work of the ages to be done. And Jesus asked, “So, you could not keep watch with Me for one hour?” and I say, “I guess not.” And he says, “Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” And I protest, saying, “But there’s an ANTM marathon on!”

Sigh.

I have gotten to the point where I trust implicitly that whenever things seem too heavy and awful to go on, I believe and even expect God to intervene. And the wonder is that he always does. I am reminded and blessed of God by the boldness of Jenny, by the uncompromise of Stephanie and the service of Ron. I sleep fitfully and my dreams are full of sadness and then I wake and walk out into sunshine. Not that every problem is trite. Not that every solution is simple. But God is faithful, regardless, and always gives grace sufficient. And I am taking a turn to more fully understand, appreciate, and report it.

God, thank you for being my remedial teacher and illuminating lessons I’ve already learned. Thank you for allowing me to twist my ankle when I take steps away from you and begin thrashing through the underbrush that leads away from the narrow road. Thank you for the time to contemplate as I sit, unable to go on with my injury, to look around and see that I have gone off the way, and for being my crutch to help me walk on until I am strong again.

(more…)

I have a confession of my own: I heart St. Augustine.

We’re like soulmates seperated by hundreds of years, and by class, gender, education, and age. We’ve both been foolish, we’ve both been degenerate. And yet God in his infinite wisdom and grace was kind enough to show us fully what kind of jerks we really were and grow us into something better, more in keeping with who he is. And it is encouragement to me now to read the words of someone who has sought, as I myself need to continually seek, the absolute truth.

<—–see the resemblence?—–>

” Entrust to truth whatever truth has given you, and you will lose nothing. What is withered in you will flower again, and your illness will be made well, and all that was flowing and wasting from you will regain shape and substance and will form part of you again, and they will not lay you down in the place where they themselves descend, but will stand fast with you and abide with you forever before God who stands and abides forever.”

May I say it? HOT.

(more…)

I think I need to go on a European tour. And I’m pretty sure I’m going to use this guy as my travel agent.

There’s really no need to go. The only reason that I’m even contemplating it is because I’m disappointed. How, you may ask? And I answer, In myself.

(more…)

So I spent some time today looking up some other blogs and came across a goldmine of those of Christian women. Eureka! Most of the writers are wives and/or mothers who seem to take the task very seriously, blogging about the need for more patience with thier children or the way they’ve been treating thier husband, neither of which I have current personal experience with. I appreciate their consistent focus on trying to follow the model set out for them in the Bible, and I admit some self-disdain when I realize that I will probably never be like that. I think to myself, that’s probably the sort of woman Simon wants (which, yes, does beg the question of, Well then why did he ever date you?).

(more…)

I ask myself, When did you begin to grow? Was it when everything fell apart or did it start before?

There seems to me to be a piece of everything that’s happened in everything that came before. Nothing simply appeared. If I hadn’t gone to a sleepover in seventh grade at the house of a girl I didn’t know very well. If I hadn’t been at a certain Bible study my first week of college. If that other boy hadn’t been bitter, if she hadn’t thrown me that surprise 20th birthday party. It was all so tenuous. It could have all turned out differently. But it didn’t. And this evidence reminds me that God’s plan is sometimes interwoven so by little things that it may seem at times as though nothing at all is happening. But then something will happen, like a couple offering to raise your child and give her the home that you would have wanted for her, and looking back, all the steps will come together.

And this is what I need to keep sight of.

(more…)

This morning feels like early spring. Windows opened, curtains fluttering slightly, and in the breeze there’s a smell like a fresh shower and the afterbirth of rain. I’ve been too long held down. And now even the weather seems to make my heart light.

I’ve been demanding, I can see that now. I’ve demanded that my demands were met and I decided for myself what I should have. I told God that if he wanted something different, I would submit. But I didn’t. I stored it all up, my disappointment, balled it up into a knot of self-pity. Because look at all I’ve had to put up with and now this too? Don’t I deserve what I want? Haven’t I suffered enough?

(more…)