Old Dogs, Old Tricks

There is this constant gnawing deep in my soul, a not-so-gentle reminder that nothing is right unless I am Yours.  It's amazing to me that I've walked with You so long that I hardly know how to function apart from You, and yet, I am constantly inclined to run away, ashamed of the nakedness that I cannot seem to cover, no matter how hard I try.

I long to be covered only when I am with You, far more than I long for that in the presence of anyone else.  You're not a fool, as so many men are.  You see through the cheap gimmicks I use to divert people's attention from my nakedness with my desperate and pathetic attempts to be perfect on my own.

You see through me from the start, unimpressed and uninterested with my filthy rags of righteousness.  You are and always have been much more interested in the girl behind the gimmicks, the girl I cannot bear to present to You without some sort of song and dance.

How can it be that You're so interested in just me?  Dance, monkey, dance is not Your gig.  You could care less what I have to offer if it is anything beside me, myself, and I.

Humbled once again by this revelation that is old and still yet so new, I ask You simply to

Break the strings that are bound to me
That keep this marionette dancing.
Wipe away the rouge that hides
The cheeks that would be otherwise tear-stained.
Wash these feet that tire from running
And set them gently before Your own.

If I am to run, You should always be my destination.

Motivationally Challenged

I always find that the only time I'm truly motivated to write, sing, pray, meditate, read - and the list goes on - is when I'm beyond frustrated.

This is, of course, a completely unhealthy motivation, and I'm confessing it because chances are I'm not the only person in the world who relies on these unhealthy means to get in touch with the things I both love and need the most.

I'm fairly certain that true maturity lies somewhere beyond the point of being motivated by circumstances and emotions and being motivated by absolute truth.  Circumstances and emotions are not truth.  They are passing distractions, flimsy and foolish, silly and stupid.  Absolute truth does not really need a definition.  It just is - whatever the "it" may be that you're speaking of at the moment.

I want to be as solid and as immovable as absolute truth.  As much as it irritates my pride to the very core to admit, I am movable, petty and whiny and selfish and confused.

The only way for me to look like You, Jesus, is for me to be with You. And when my motivations for that are wrong, take my misguided efforts and use them to wash me clean so that my motivations will be right the next time around.

Am I Smarter than a Fifth Grader?

I John 5:14 - 15: "This is the confidence we have in approaching the Son of God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him."

As long as the Lord is hearing us, we can know that He's giving us the things we've asked of Him.  Period.  There's no spiritual hocus-pocus or Christianese voodoo we have to perform.  No amount of whining or begging or pleading.  God has ears.  And as long as He does, He hears His children.  And as long as He hears His children, He is providing the requests they put before Him.

The question is whether or not we can wait on Him while He does the things that we ask of Him.

I was a very confident child.  If I marched up to my father and asked him for something, I didn't think once that he wouldn't give it to me.  And, if it were a reasonable desire, for the most part, I received the thing that I had requested.

However, if I grew impatient and whined about how long it was taking for me to receive the thing I asked for, then guess what?  I usually didn't get it.  At least not until I'd received a good reminder of who was Father and who was not.

I'm speaking mostly to myself when I say that we seriously need to get with the program.  These concepts are very elementary - literally.  These are lessons I learned in grade school, yet I still find myself whining and complaining to a Father who is infinitely more good and has infinitely more resources than my earthy father.

How I can doubt for one moment that He is not making a way for me even now?

Forgive us, Jesus.  Teach us how to wait on You.

Proverbial Bruising

For the last four or five years, I've done my best to include one chapter of the book of Proverbs in my daily study of the Word.  There are thirty-one chapters in the book.  There are thirty-one days in a month.  (Well, most of them, anyway.)  It just seems to be one of those kind-of-but-probably-not-so-coincidental God things.

Consequently, you can imagine that I've underlined nearly every single one of the verses in nearly every single one of the thirty-one chapters.  That Solomon guy.  He knew his stuff.

My monthly journey of underlining and re-underlining my way through the intricate wisdom and philosophy of this book has lead me to understand one thing...

I have much more in common with the fool than I do with the wise man.

Here are just a few examples:

"The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin."  That chattering bit gets me every time.

"A man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor, but a man of understanding holds his tongue."  So, is that holding of the tongue a literal thing, Lord?  Like with my fingers?  Or do you want me to actually shut up?


"Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion."  OK, fine.  But the pig thing's a bit harsh, don't you think?


"A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day; restraining her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand."  Quarrelsome?  I like to think of it as being right.

"Do you see a man who speaks in haste?  There is more hope for a fool than for him."  Pretty straight forward and to the point.  Not looking at a whole lot of hope at this point. 

Oh, and this one is one of my favorites:

"Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid."  Ouch.


The Word (Proverbs, more specifically. Surprise, surprise.) is pretty clear that Lord disciplines those that he loves as a father disciplines his children.  In Hebrews 12, it pushes the point further, saying that "if you are without discipline...then you are illegitimate children and not sons" (verse 9).

Logically, I would much rather be disciplined than be a bastard child.  But with the amount of discipline I require, I often find myself wondering if being a bastard would be a little less painful.

Of course, in the end, thoughts like that are as foolish as Proverbs so clearly reminds me that I am.  No manner of bruises or wounds that my ego may obtain from the incredibly gracious discipline I receive from the Lord could ever compare to the painful emptiness of never knowing Him as Father.

I suppose that being a fool is not the end of the world, so long as Father God sees the wisdom in me and is able to purposefully and intricately but not necessarily gently beat it out of me.

Soul Searching and Writer's Block

Journaling has been one of the main staples of my need to be heard for as long as I can remember.  When I actually have a bookshelf in my new apartment, then I can invite you over to see that there would be as many journals lining the shelves as there are books.  Now, before you are disgusted with my narcissism, I wouldn't actually put my personal journals on a bookshelf.  That's just weird.  I simply needed something to prove my point about how important journaling has been to me in the past.

That horrible, horrible attempt at imagery brings me to my next point -

I've stopped writing.  (Obviously.)

I noticed this about 3 weeks ago, when I sat down to write in my journal and it was the same one I'd had for a long, long time.  In the past, it seemed that every time I sat down to write, it was in a new journal.  My thoughts were so many and so constant that the pages could barely keep up with what I was scribbling down.  Until the last few years, nearly every day of my adolescent and adult life has been recorded.

I went to the Lord immediately upon this realization.

"Jesus?"

"Yes, Sara.  What is it?"

"Why don't I write anymore?"

And He answered me the way He usually does when I ask questions to which I already know the answer.

"Why don't you tell me, daughter?"

This answer annoys me, which the Lord most certainly knows, and most certainly does not pay one bit of attention to either way.  Which annoys me more.

This question annoys me because it  forces me to evaluate where I'm at in life.  I mean, who actually enjoys soul-searching?

It is, however, a necessary part of the process of being alive and on this planet - a part which I seem to be so happy avoiding as of late.

This blog is my attempt to take the next step in my soul searching.  It's public, I suppose, because I need to be heard.  And you'll read it, I suppose, because in the end, we're all soul searching and want to know that we're not the only crazy soul-searchers out there.

As far as the title of the blog, it is the first thought that comes to my mind when I think about the place I am in my life right now.  This phrase was true when my mother told me oh so long ago.  It was true when her mother told her and when her mother's mother told her before that.

And every day of my life for the rest of my life, it will be true.  No matter how much soul-searching you and I do and no matter what it is we discover in that search, it will always be the things we already have, the things we did absolutely nothing to earn, that are the best things.