something i wrote that has music

.
swiftly now

The wind, the breeze,
the trees
all pass
as do other things.
Passing, fading, failing ideality.
And Your face
deepens:
I can see now its crevices,
its scars of pain and tears of rain
that I knew not were there.

Your face swiftly altered shape
. from sweet to sovereign
. from soft to deep,
And I am swiftly running.
I'm so sorry that I'm running, still running - ever running.
Will Your arm be long enough for me?

Your face; I asked to see it
every tick-tock of this time illusion.
I had a glimpse,
and I ran away;
but I'm slowing down and leaning down to deeply drink again.

You'll take me back again?
You'll alter shape again.

Your face swiftly altered shape
. from sweet to sovereign
. from soft to deep,
And I am swiftly running.
I'm so sorry that I'm running, still running - ever running.
Will Your arm be long enough for me?

My heart
bleeds its emesis
aneurysmically and rhythmically and forcefully on all around me.
And suitors
whose pursuit of me
charge less violently than Your own of me
come with their ware.
I entertain them enough
to know that I am loved,
that I am beautiful and in control,
and I move out from love;
I've bluffed.

No commitment
lest my responsibility there call me a cop out on love
or on being sane
-or worse...ask me to breathe of both:
to sanely love,
a vast impossibility
at least for me.

Your face swiftly altered shape
. from sweet to sovereign
. from soft to deep,
And I am swiftly running.
I'm so sorry that I'm running, still running - ever running.
Will Your arm be long enough for me?

One more thing:
Sometimes, I look back...
Your face, closer still,
and steady-still and wondering,
"Little girl, where are you, and where are We going?"

thoughts on "him" revisited from Dec 2005

Lord Jesus, Let me make him a better man
and never a worse,
Let me make him more beautiful
and not bring on him a curse.
Let my influence never be from Folly's way.
Let me speak words of Life, come whatever may.

Is it better to be once and then never again
if Folly falls too and sees her end?
let me not detriment the Vow I hold dear!
Then let this prayer be the one that is clear:
"Take me, dear Lord, before Folly has o'retaken;
and let not dreams sleep from fears awakened."

Ever After

I watched Ever After a few days ago. It's funny how movies, more often than not, send me plummeting to an inward - forever inward - battlefield in my mind. There, everything is deep, raw, and life-altering.

As I sank further into myself after watching it, I related to the heroine of the story. In case it's been awhile, Ever After is sort of a Cinderella story. Towards the end, everything is lost. She has been bought by this really ugly, yucky guy. But, somehow, she worms her way out of the whole situation and is leaving his estate. Just then, the handsome prince comes to save her from the ugly, yucky guy, but she's already saved herself from the ugly, yucky guy; yet, she knows that something's still missing. She's saved herself from some things, but not everything. She still needs to be saved from the destiny of filth that's been handed to her and expected from her. She needs to be saved from being forced to settle for the drudgery of everyday life. She needs to be saved from the absence of hope of Happily Ever After.

The handsome prince does it.

I have saved myself from a lot of painful things - wormed my way out of some pretty helter skelter situations, and still, I need to be rescued. I need someone to be willing to openly view the sorrows that this life has handed to me -big and small- and free me from them. I need a prince charming to say to me, "I'm so glad you've waited for happily ever after. You don't have to let go of your dream. You will live happily ever after, and you will do it in my strong arms."

And then the Lord Jesus whispers to me, "Your hopes about happily ever after will not be dashed to pieces nor forgotten. They will not fail. You will live happily ever after, and you will do it in my strong arms."

The gospel is true. Here's how I know.

* There is a God. He is real. The world shouts of Him as an incredible Designer. Without Him, we wouldn’t live because He gives life to us.
* He came as a man, Jesus Christ. He lived and died as God. He wasn’t just a man; otherwise the world as it is wouldn’t make sense. Spiritual beings yield to Him. History was altered because of Him. People change completely in relationship with Him. And He desires intimacy with me. As I draw near to Him, He draws near to me. I know only by experience. He and I can be close so long as I seek closeness. He is a personal God, but I can only know Him as a personal God as I draw near to Him.
* There is heaven. Our Spirits, renewed by Christ, long for it completely. We have a desire in us for an ultimate utopia- peace, a world without hate and destruction. We long for it from the very core of our beings.
* From the very core of me, I am junk. It doesn’t matter how well my mother raised me, I still have a monster that lives inside of me longing for everything my way and for the world to bow down and worship me. Laugh at my jokes. Think I am wonderful. No matter who suffers, all must think that I am wonderful. Push others down, kt, so that you can be built up! Drown them. No matter how hard I try to stifle it, without Christ, it comes out, pushing its way through the surface of existence. Crowding out charity and benevolence. There are moments when it rests, but not for long. My selfishness always resurfaces in varying degrees for varying lengths of time without Him. And as it is, if there is some sort of perfect world after this one is over, I can’t be there. I need a Redeemer.
* And, if Jesus really is God- if He really lived, died, and rose again from the dead, then He must hold the key to my redemption. If He beat death by dying and then living, then in Him is hope.
* And so the story is. I am covered over by the blood of One who overcame death. Why would I rejoice in His blood and death? But His resurrection follows! It is the symbol of the foreshadowing reality that He conquered the stuff in me that keeps me from perfection.

And something deep inside me calls out, “This God is more real than anything you have ever laid eyes on.”

Do you ever just feel sad and that's all?

As I sit here "studying", I get sidetracked easily. My mind just needs to know. I'm learning, but not the test material; and part of me wishes I could just learn without tests.

But no matter, the thoughts that strike me tonight are ones of longing. All of them. And all of them about different things. Longing for the people I love to stop making stupid decisions. Longing for the Lord Jesus. Longing for unity with Him. When I won't have to look at Him through this dark glass, but see Him face to face.

There is a certain thing that I eagerly expect. It might be the one thing I don't ever question. It's so deeply ingrained in me- whether taught or not, I do not know - that I cannot deny it for more than a moment. It is the hope that there is more to this life than what we see now. If this is the end, nothing makes sense. Evil, hunger, pain, sorrow, breakups, people crushing others beneath their feet...I question all those. I question God's justice there. I question my beliefs. I question everything I have always known. But I cannot question the hope of Heaven. I may forget about it for a time, but when it enters my mind, there is no turning back. There is Heaven. There is resolution. There is beauty beneath all the drudgery.
I don't know what Heaven will be like. I know that it won't be most of the things that we picture it being; we simply can't fathom complete goodness. Even our best thoughts of what good entails are tainted by a mind that sees dimly. But as I try to ponder the unponderable, I feel at home.

Resolution. No more battles. No more struggle. No more.

My heart longs with the very deepest longing for the fulfillment of the hope of heaven.

recurring theme

there's this thing that goes on in my head. i can't remember when it started; and i don't know how to explain it exactly. it applies to countless circumstances, and i've never attempted to tell anyone because it has no words.

have you ever noticed how it's really difficult to talk about something you don't have a word for?

but i'll try anyways. it is sort of just a concept that appears in my mind. and every time it appears, it causes me to wonder and furrow my eyebrows and worship God. immediately.

i feel stupid even now explaining it because i just can't.

it's an image of yuck vs. God. usually my yuck, but not always. sometimes it's just an unowned yuck. it's an image of absolute purity vs. impurity, i guess.

yeah, that explanation applies, but it's so much more than that. i just can't capture it in words. i drew a picture of it on my computer once. so i'll just post that.

Erica

Chaos held the group of three-year-olds in its hand that day when I walked into P3 for work study. I had my work cut out for me; naptime was just around the corner.
As we prepared for naptime, I noticed that Erica was especially wound up, and, as usual, all the other kids closed their eyes in surrender to their archenemy Sleep while she was still wide-eyed.

The room was completely transformed from when I first walked in. The lights were off, there was soft music playing, and all were fast asleep...except Erica. I leaned over her and stroked her face with my fingertips. My thoughts drifted as I studied her eyes.
This girl will experience pain. She will probably collapse under the weight of it at some point. This little one will feel worthless. She will feel inadequate. Unlovable. Incomplete. Injured.
My heart broke.
"Erica, Jesus loves you," I whispered. "Jesus is God's son, and He made you before You were born. He knows what you will look like and what you're going to be like when you grow up. He knows everything about you, and He loves you. He thinks you're valuable." I paused to reposition. I wanted to communicate Jesus' love to her right then, in some attempt to relay it to her for a time when she'd need it - for the moment long from now when her world crashes down on her and makes no sense, for the moment when no one is on her side. "Do you want to sit in my lap?"
"Yes," came her soft answer. I scooped her and her blanket up in my arms and rocked. Her eyes grew heavier. Her body grew limper; and as I watched this little girl fall asleep, I sat mezmerized. How beautiful she was! That little life, right there in my arms. A tear slipped off my nose onto her blanket.
"Lord, let her know Your love. Let her experience it. Hold this little girl in your arms and penetrate Your truths into her heart."