I was stuck in the star light, BE STILL near the nightfall, beauty of light descending. I watched as my life rolled past me, suddenly, as if asked for.

As I lay, light splashed over my wrist. The back of my hand rested against my mouth, elbow in the air.

I thought then of the times I spent reading books in childhood, and the thought made my heart almost weep.

I thought of grandpa's swing, his lawn, the acres we never explored, the time we wandered outside, I don't remember what, what we were doing. The way of faint childhood memories.

The time I was mad at my cousin for not playing tag. When I bought the lie as a child that to be angry and mad and unforgiving is to be happy. The opposite is true. Grace snatches the parts of our lives that would have been lost. To forgive, to give, to be grace is to be blessed.

I bought the lie. I had bought the lie this year that friendship was what I needed more than the desert. But it was not true. I knew in my head but not in my heart, though the process was undesirable.

I did not want the desert. Its stark contrast from a time of seeming perfection. I knew what I wanted in life was not what could ever truly make me happy, but I still pursued it all in my heart. I wanted presence of all those I loved and lived for. Yet Who I lived for (not enough) called me deeper.

I had come to the crossroads and needed to decide, that to surrender is to win. To be in the desert is to find your song. to be a songbird is to sing to the King. Times would come when I did not have this anymore. I had to learn that i have to be grateful for the season I am in. There's no way I can change it, so I had to surrender and stop resisting what He had for me. I have to cherish it now, my heart tries to repeat incessantly.

Finally when I began to understand, faintly, trying, etching out a pattern in the light. Things began to come into place. I realized it's not about the location of my body but my heart, how out of alignment my heart was.

I had hated the loneliness, despised the pain, the season. Wished for the ending and longed to play blame. But my troubles were reasons to rejoice, the chaos was reason to find solution and become a problem solver. The awareness of sin and the ache that caused was to keep a cleansing that was to be mine as long as my weak frame does settle this earth.

When do I ever find myself letting God know me? You know, that is all that will ever matter. It would all be waste if at the end of my life Jesus said, "I don't know her." The greatest fear-arousing possibility. (good fear, awe and worship) The terror and wonder and awestruck love it inspires.

Writing helps me breathe, so I continue to write. may it be unappreciated if only life giving to me and pleasing to my Father. Joy exuding, a walk unceasing. Stretching farther than my words extends God's love. Right through me, despite me. Right beside me I see him daily through my sister, through my needs being miraculously met, through so much to thank Him for.

God decided mercy for my life.

His gust blew me. I was of grief, stretched far and wide, my sins entangling me in silence akin to death. His love stretched farther and BROUGHT ME TO LIFE, throughout the questions and silence it awakened a knowing where there had not been one. He took off my guilt and exchanged it for forgiveness. That was all I needed.

Jesus brought ME TO LIFE.

It is in the desert He gives me a song, in the wilderness where He prepares me, to be a voice and not an echo.

You can't be a messenger without a message.

Hosea 2:14-15

'Therefore I am now going to allure her;

I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.

There I will give her back her vineyards, 

And will make a door of hope.

There she will sing as in the days of her youth,

As in the day she came up out of Egypt.'

I was crowned a queen and never gave up my crown, a systematic pleasure.

You can't be a messenger without a message. I am learning this is what is important: to KNOW Him and be known by Jesus, and after that, to be a voice and not an echo.

how worshipful is this hunger, how longing is love

Love is a strange thing.  It produces in me a passion to live, claws at my skin, my heart.  No one else can know the individual passion it has put into me.  It desires to not be a bother to the other, yet it subliminally demands the other's time, attention, affection, life, efforts poured out.

                pause for a moment      think on the wonders of this love, how it has shed tears, upset a normal life plan and brought unrelenting ceaseless questioning and explaining, as if this vivid life story inside me was a cave far distant that only few, only the lucky, only those of understanding and thirst, could find.

                                                how it worships, this hunger.  I wonder at this, my desire to worship another Being.  How can this One know all that is inside of me when others find me so hard to grasp?

          I am like a reed, tossed back and forth by once anger, then obligation.  I want to be one who inspires singing and light from the Source of all blessing, and I myself am a song, longing for reward continually, not able to live without praise.  how is it that we keep sacred and secular together, in one box, as one train of thought, as one radiantly admires song that is outwardly holy + perfect, and secretly perfect?  that its perfection only survives on imperfection, struggle?  that what seems to fit only is thriving on what is unholy, unbalanced, unsuccinct.

                Not just lost into oblivion.

Before Mission Trip Post (On Anger and Butterflies, written two days before I leave, which would be the morning of the 7th)

It is 3 freakin 29 in the morning and I am wide awake.  (haven't fallen asleep all night even trying) My heart pounded so loud when I got still enough earlier tonight/morning.

I'm pondering anger.  It's a feeling we tend to suppress, or maybe that's just me.  Why do we get angry?  For me, I have just experienced anger last night.  The let down of humans who just plain don't care enough.  It makes me angry.  I'm so ruined by Christians who speak the speak and don't love the lovers.  Maybe it's just selfish me.  Maybe it's just overly-intuitive me.  But I'm tired up angry.  Beet red angry hearted.

My hair is bothering me.  I can't sleep.  God, He is there for me through thick and thin.  Only problem is the people in my life only want to see the thick.  They don't imagine there is (grammatically should be 'are' but I am enjoying the 'is') thin circumstances in my life that I have HAD to deal with.  They don't see that outwardly I have that kind of family, or those types of struggles.  It's like a dream I had when I was a little girl.  I dreamed that this girl in my class was at my birthday party and when I went to the bathroom, she was in shock and said "I didn't know YOU went to the bathroom.  I thought girls like you didn't even need to pee."  Like that I was so perfect that I didn't go to the bathroom.  Oh dear..

Well that's what my life feels like.  I have placed myself in vulnerable places sharing my story and what I get is some acceptance, some people who couldn't care less if they saw me another day in their lives.

Back to the dream story.  I grew up with that stigma.  The stigma of classmates labeling me as the perfect one, thus I was avoided.  Turns out I would think the things I was excluded from were boring things anyway.  I am excited by depths, dignity, things that are hard to understand.  They like movies.  (and lots of other things too) Movies bore me.

Flash forward to my eleventh grade year.  I started watching movies.  By myself.  On my laptop.  STUPID decision.  Why was it stupid?  I don't know.  Please know I am not judging others when I say this, only myself, because I was NOT entertained highly enough by these movies.  Does that make sense?  I said I was NOT entertained enough.  Sorry if that was too intense.  This was a place when I did not with JOY do what was most edifying to my soul.  Intimacy with Jesus brings JOY. Praying for other believers brings HEALING.

I was not entertained, and I don't like being entertained.  However, that absense of feeling FULL shows I was made for something more.  Prayer is what entertains me.  Think of this: one definition of prayer is entertaining God.  When we pray we are entertaining God.  I would like to think I too am being entertained, that my attention is being kept and filled up with life: so in that sense it is much more than entertainment.

I have felt so much life ebbing and flowing through me this year, such an ache to write, and also an anger at those who left me.  To be honest, it was finally when I got godly friends and was communicating regularly in those relationships that then they left me.  One got married.  Another, oh and another, married.  I was not invited to the wedding.  Granted maybe we lost touch but that was one of the main things I was looking forward to in life: going to said person's wedding one day.

I will probably lose you as a friend as well because people don't stay faithful.  People move on, and it's rude.  People don't care, and that's rude.  And you probably thought of a rebuttal to the prior sentence if you are a certain person whose name I shall not mention.  And I will say, in my opinion, your rebuttal is also rude.

Wow, this sounds like a really angry post.  I wish I could just fall asleep.  Where is the ministry in this?