Lifeline

You are my lifeline when I'm in need
You are my anchor, the Rock beneath my feet
You are my sanity, my Prince of Peace
You are my lifeline
You are all I need

And when these feet are walking blind
You are never far behind
See me to the end, my Faithful Friend
And You know
I will go
With You

Confessions of a Scab-Picker

I enjoy picking scabs.

This is a dirty secret of mine and an unnecessary confession, but I would venture to say that I am not alone.  It  is my best guess that if most people were honest with themselves and with others, they too would find themselves in the dirty-scab-pickers club.

What is it about picking scabs that fascinates me so?

Perhaps it is a nervous habit.  It could be a sort of self-loathing painful infliction of punishment.  Could it be that it is unconscious - a Neanderthal reaction attesting to the truly animalistic nature of us mammals?

Truthfully, I think that I insist on picking at the scabs on my body because somewhere deep inside, I just can't stand that my body can fix itself without my help.  I am offended with this well-working, independently-run machine in which my spirit has set up shop.  How dare it function without my permission?  Did I sign release papers or hand over the rights about whether or not I wanted that part of body to heal?

I suppose if it were physically possible, I would shove my hand into my chest cavity, clutch my beating heart in my fist and holler, "No, you do it like this!"  It is not so far-fetched for me to believe that if my lungs were more like bellows that I would gladly take a hold of the handles and pump away, happy and contented in my self-sufficiency.

Whether I like it or not, my body does not need my help to heal itself.  Day after day, year after year, cut after cut, scrape after scrape, my scabs will form and then simply sit, doing their work in the time frame that they know is best.  They are not rude house-guests, staying on my body for 3 weeks longer than necessary, eating my food and watching my TV and sleeping in my bed.

No.  Scabs stay only as long as they need, and then, usually without my noticing (let alone my help), they are gone.  And when they do leave, they reveal soft, slightly pink, brand new skin.  This skin is as new as the day I was born, untouched, unhurt, ready to brave the dangers of the world once again with a fresh perspective.

The pain in my life - the cuts and scrapes that my soul endures - heal in a similar fashion.  And in a similar fashion, I insist on helping it along in an already set-in-stone process.  I conjure up ways to forgive or set myself free or to forget what has happened or protect myself the next time around.  I pick, pick, pick, pick away at the scabs of my heart, convinced that it will never heal without my help.

But You designed both my body and my soul in similar fashion.  Neither need my assistance to heal.

In fact, the less I tamper with the scabbing wound, the faster and cleaner it will heal.  A wound that is opened and reopened again and again is exposed to any and every thing that would come and infect and infest and do its damage.

If I leave it alone, if I let it go, my wounds will heal on their own, guided by Your hand down the winding path of time.

You alone know how long it takes for a heart or a mind or a body to heal.  And while it frustrates me to no end that I cannot see what is going on under the cover of the scab, I know that You know what You are doing.  You designed this process long ago, before I had a body or a heart to wound.

I trust You with the scabs of my life.

And I will not pick. Pinky swear.

Because I'm Happy...Because I'm Free

I heard the birds singing this morning, and it made my heart leap in my chest.

It made me wonder, "What are they saying to You?  Are they thanking You for the sunrise? Are they telling You how grateful they are for the wings that carry them fast and high over trees and rivers and buildings and streetlights?  Do they long for the dawn, for their cue to speak up and sing out their songs of gratitude?"

I want to be like the sparrow.  She is not the most glorious of winged creatures, but she still has a song to sing and wings to fly and a place in Your heart.  In all her glorious drab-colored down and in all her magnificent minuteness, she has caught Your eye enough for You to give her a song to sing and wings to fly and a place in Your heart.

I am the sparrow. I am the least of those whom You created with purposeful intention to look and act and be like You, yet You give me a song to sing and wings to fly and a place in Your heart.  I am dull at times and am certainly very small in comparison to all You are and all You have, yet You give me a song to sing and wings to fly and a place in Your heart.

Your eye is on the sparrow.

Your eye is on me.

No CODs

Incredible breakthrough comes at a high cost.  The cost required is pain - pain to your pride, your selfishness, your neediness, and the list goes on (at least for me, it does).  In order to gain life in one area, there must be death in another.

I find that I'm am incredibly slow in my payments of pain to breakthrough.  And perhaps that is indeed the only way that breakthrough accepts payments.  I'm not sure if there is a way to pay in full up front.  If there is, I have yet to discover where to check that box on the form.

It is difficult but mandatory to look at yourself face to face and realize that you are a mess, no matter how pretty you make yourself look.  We have all sorts of methods of dressing ourselves up, but in the end, we are naked, poor, blind, needy, and the like.

I am naked, poor, blind, needy, and the like.

And it is beautiful indeed.  Oh, how beautiful it is when someone knows exactly what they are and can still look themselves in the eye!

I am a magnificent mess, always and forever. It'll never change, and that's OK.

As long as all of my weaknesses and shortcomings are clothed in a robe so righteous no one can refute it, then I'm A-OK. I'm golden. I'm set. I'm good.

Good. I'm good.

Wow.

Whether I run to You or I run to myself, the payment is pain.  But when I run to myself, I am paying someone who is totally and completely lacking in resources. I have nothing to offer me.

You are my one and only true resource. And You never run out.

I am bottomless. You are infinite.

Once again, we're a perfect pair.

Good Enough

I'm the fabric of love
I am patched up with sorrow
I am stitched together carefully
With tears of hope

I am right, I am wrong
I am both, I am neither
I am good and bad
And all of that, and in between

I am black, I am white
I am cloudy, I'm bright

If that's good enough for You
Then it's good enough for me, too

Complex-Free Italian Mama

Colossians 3:23-24 - "Whatever may be your task, work at it heartily, from the soul, as something done for the Lord and not for men, knowing with all certainty that it is from the Lord and not from men that you will receive the inheritance, which is your real reward. The One Whom you are actually serving is the Lord Christ."

If you're anything like me, you might have what I like to call the Italian Mama Guilt Complex.

Here's how it works:
You serve, serve, serve, serve because you love to serve.  This love of service is truly genuine, something in which you exult.  You love to see people happy, so you tune into what you know makes them happy, keeping a mental check list of each and every thing for each and every person in your life.  And then whenever an opportunity arises, you jump at the chance to provide that thing for them, whatever it may be.  Because you love it.  Right?

This goes on and on, and then, after a certain period of time (This could last anywhere from one day to ten years, depending on your disposition at the time.), you start to feel under appreciated.  People begin to stop thanking you or even noticing your tireless and genuinely-motivated labor.  You push on as you did before because you value loyalty and consistency even more than you value service.

And then, it happens.  You snap.  You begin to resent the people you once loved serving.  Oh, you continue to serve (read above paragraph), but it no longer brings you joy.  It is your main source of frustration and the theme around which each and every pity party you throw for yourself revolves.  You find yourself lashing out on the people you love most because they don't value what you do nearly as much as you do.

Cue the guilt.  A feeling of guilt within for not being good enough to make everyone happy, which you then gladly and liberally spew onto those who are not nearly as impressed with you as you are with yourself.

And by you, of course, I mean me.

The irony of Italian Mama Guilt Complex is that I'm fairly certain I've had it since I was 5 or 6 years old.  I fluttered to and fro on my nimble and almost-newly born feet, smiling and twirling and entertaining and pleasing.  And I loved it.

Twenty years later on feet not-so-nimble and not-so-new...yeah, not-so-much.

Why spill my guts and reveal to you what is probably the most shameful and embarrassing addiction in my life?

Because I had this amazing revelation today.

If I don't need anyone's approval, then I'm free to serve (or whatever other action or lack of action you'd like to insert here) without getting tired of it!

OK, so not an amazing revelation by the usual standard of the word revelation, but to my recently complex-wearied soul, it brought me relief like I have not felt in a very long time.

The truth of the matter is that God approves of me.  All the time.  Period.  End of story.  I am never a disappointment or a surprise to Him.  Ever.

With this permanent stamp of approval, I am free to love and to serve and to cook and to clean and to work and to sing and to play and to be silent and to be loud and to be stupid and to be brilliant and to be awesome and to really suck and to go to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and back again without ever having to consider one time whether or not anyone is happy with me or not.

Wow.  Fabulous.

I can do everything, from the most mundane to the most magnificent, as if I were doing it solely for Jesus and know that from the beginning to the end, He is pleased.

I can serve you without you ever noticing and still be completely satisfied at the end.

This is definitely a win, win (win) situation.

Thoughts From the Potter's Wheel

If You are a Potter by trade, and I am clay by nature, how then can I bark orders or make demands?  How then can I tell You what's best for me unless I have first asked You Your opinion?

You are a Creator without limitations, an Artisan whose skill and ability are matchless, a Benefactor whose generosity is devastating in its extravagance.

With descriptions such as these barely scraping the surface of who You truly are, even "clay" seems too great a description for one such as myself.

But You have called me
beautiful
daughter
conqueror
victorious
warrior
desirable
one worthy of Your jealousy and intensely passionate affections.

If You can gladly call me these things without hesitation or chagrin, then I will also rise up and call myself the very same.

Artisan of my life, I will not insult Your great ability or Your fathomless wisdom by rejecting the truth that You do indeed know my nature better than I do.

I am who You say I am.

I am taking on the shape and the form that You intend as Your hands knowingly mold me.

Because I am Yours.

And I'm Not Afraid of Sharptooth

Worry and anxiety make absolutely no sense.

Whenever I feel worried or anxious, it's usually with the intention - conscious or unconscous - of staying aware or on top of the situation so that it can't get the better of me. It's as if my soul believes unswervingly that if I am not anxious or if I do not worry, then I'm lazy and unaware, and I'll ultimately be overtaken.

The truth of the matter is, however, that the moment I've begun to worry, I am overtaken already. The worrisome situation has already gotten the better of me.

The purpose of trouble is to cause trouble - duh.

If I am troubled about trouble, then trouble's purpose is already satisfied, and it's hardly had to lift its dreary little finger. My worrisome attempt at not being troubled by trouble has done trouble's job for it.

That being said, there can only be one solution:

The only way to overcome trouble is to laugh in the face of it. Big or small, the problems of this life can never overcome one who is not afraid.

What If I Surrender?

When I say, "I surrender," it immediately demands that I must give up the right to say, "What if?"

We use the words, "What if?" in many different capacities. The phrase is a weapon to ward off our need to be obedient; it is a balm to pacify that nagging thought to step out into the unknown; it is a murderer of hopes and dreams and destiny. The desire to utter those two small, devastating words will remain within us, of course, but the right to speak them aloud or to dwell on them is relinquished with the word "surrender."

The word "surrender" is the most painful word a man can release from his lips. The mechanics of forming words are quite simple, but the heart to speak them truthfully with intent to act upon them is not so easy a task. The word "surrender" is painful because the heart required to speak it with truth and action in mind is a broken heart.

Now, I use the phrase "broken heart" in a different manner than the usual picture it creates. A man who has the heart of surrender is not a blubbering, pathetic, barely tolerable mess of a man, though seasons of being such is mandatory to master the heart of surrender. A man with the heart of surrender is rather a man who has broken away from being obedient to fear, rejection, doubt, shame, laziness, excuses, and the like.

Brokenness is the end of obedience to man-pleasing and self-pleasing. It is the beginning of obedience to the resounding whisper of our Father.

A truly broken heart has surrendered one type of obedience - the one which comes to us naturally - for an obedience of a different sort - the sort of obedience which is learned and has nothing to do with instinct. This is the obedience which leads to a most beautiful satisfaction.

Surrender's broken heart is not a debilitating, emotional state of mind. It is a heart which has stolen itself away from the natural order of the world, hiding itself in an order which makes no sense to man. The heart of surrender has found its hiding place in trusting the Father when He doesn't make sense (which is most of the time, by the way).

A surrendered heart has found its refuge in knowing that nothing in the universe, seen or unseen, can ever render God a liar.

Joyfully Hopeful Have-Not

Romans 12:12

"Be joyful in hope..."

If the Holy Spirit took the time to inspire Paul to write this one simple phrase, then there is mostly likely an equally simple and doubly as powerful reason that He did.

And here it is:

Hoping sucks without joy.

If you're hoping, it means you are a have-not.  And having not gets old after a while.  These "whiles" have a tendency to be "good, long whiles," dragging on and on until have-nots also become hope-nots.

Unless you can joyfully long for the things for which you hope, you're going to lose your steam along the way.  By the time you get the hopeful expectation and graduate from your have-not position, you're so exhausted from being so angry for being a have-not, you can't even enjoy having for the very first time.

Do yourself a favor, have-nots.  Get some joyful hope.

Wait joyfully, as a mother waits for the child growing in her belly.

Your have-not hope is already yours.  Enjoy every moment of waiting so your joy may be complete when at last you hold it for the first time.

I'll Know It When I Find it

on the brink
at the edge
staring down
over a ledge

letting go is as simple as
i love you
as final as death

eyes wide open
seeing for the first time
from black and white
to living color
life bursts forth

legs once thought to be
lame
put one foot in front of the other
a heart once though to be
silent
is beating out of its chest

a journey is only a journey
if the destination is
sure

i fancied myself a vagabond
a hopeful wanderer

destination escapes me now
but somewhere there is a
somewhere
to stay

The Road Less Traveled

I find it so fascinating that I can always feel when my life's about to break wide open.  This has happened umpteen thousands of times in my life.  Yet, with each new pressure that life places on me to push this breaking onward, I still find myself terrfied by it, as if I've never been to this place before, as if this is new territory.

It is, of course, new territory in the sense that I've never been to this particular fork in the road.  But the concepts and confrontations of forks in this road are nothing new.  I've come across thousands and thousands of splits on the road of my life.  Each time, I eventually choose, though I often throw the most unseemly and embarrassing tantrum before I do, and then I move forward.  And each time, I am ecstatic with my choice, knowing it was You all along guiding my way, and that I had absolutely nothing to do with where this road was taking me in the first place.

At this very moment along this very road, I am standing before a split.  A decision must be made, and I am breaking.  I feel the pressure of change pressing down on me with every breath and with every heartbeat.  Like a woman in labor, the pain and the pressure bears down on my very being, in the deepest places of my life, and whether I am ready for change or not, change is coming.  My course is set, and this cannot be stopped.  I am moments away from delivering something into my world of which I have no actual concept apart from my dreaming and my longing.  I have not a single idea of what it will look like, feel like, smell like, sound like, think like, love like, be like.

It is no secret to You that forks in the road shake me to my very core.  You've been by my side at each new twist and turn, and You've been the reasoning behind each decision made.  As much as I'd love to be able to take the credit for the course of my life, I know that I cannot.  You are my Guide - indeed, the very Way of the path on which I walk.

I have no idea where You are taking me, and I'm as uncomfortable as hell, but I'm letting go, as I have so many times before, and as I will so many times to come.

Help me to choose where it is that You're leading.  There are always multiple choices, but there is only one Way.

Creativity Killed the Cat

I am becoming more and more convinced that creativity is God's favorite thing about us.  There are several reasons I think this:

1. He is creative, and I'm pretty sure its His favorite pastime.
2. We are created and His favorite of all He created, born out of His relishing in His favorite pastime.
3. All of our creative energy is wasted on trying to not be creative.

In my understanding, if there is a behavior which seems natural to humanity, it is usually the opposite to which we were designed to be inclined.  We spend most of our time either trying to be something we're not or trying to be nothing at all.  We don't spend a whole lot of time just being.

And we would discover if we did that what we are is creative above all else, living suffocated and stifled if we are anything but.

What is it exactly that we are so afraid of?  What is so terrifying about being yourself?  Why do we rob the world of our thoughts, ideas, inventions, passions, dreams?

There is too much inside of me to let it sit there any longer.  I don't care how terrifying it is.  I'm reaching inside, and whatever I find is what You're getting.

Self-Preservation: A Learned Habit for the Cross-Wired Homosapien

I'm the worst blogger EVER.

This was supposed to be something I picked up again to be an outlet for myself, and obviously, we see how well that has worked out.

This fact brings me to a thought: exactly where am I letting-out if not here?

The irony of life as I find it is that the moments you need something the most are also the moments you seem to find the fewest moments for those things.  Self-preservation is a natural human instinct and tendency, but somewhere along the way, I'm pretty sure my wires got crossed.  I forget that the best way of preserving myself (and thus, those around me from the wrath of who I am when I haven't self-preserved) is to take a few moments to quiet my mind, get with my Jesus, and remind myself that life is not complicated as much as it is wonderful and beautiful and excellent and exciting and satisfying.

Whenever I work with musicians, I always start with this:
"Stick to the KISS principal.  Less is more.  So give me more by giving me less."

It's a wonderful concept, lofty in its idealism.  And in the area of music, it works almost every single time.

Over the last 2 years, the Lord has had me on a journey specifically to teach me to adhere closely to my own lofty idealisms in every area of my life.  My life is more simple than it has ever been, and truly, I hardly know what to do with myself.  I fight Him tooth and nail in these matters because for the majority of my life, my identity has been in my busyness, lost somewhere in the swirling mess of sincerely-motivated endeavors gone awry.

Who am I apart from what I do?

I hate to say that I've lost myself in it because I swore to myself that I never would but...

I've lost myself in it.

The beauty of my Jesus and of this life He has graced me with is that He never lets me stay lost for long.

He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters,

He restores my soul.

He preserves me when I cannot find a way to do it myself.