Heart

There is only one of me beating in you.

I am the soul,

the center.

I bring life,

both emotional and physical.

I am not indestructible.

I will not work right if I am not cared for.

I feel the weight of this world.

I feel the need for something deeper,

something lasting,

something real.

Care for me so I don't break.

Care for me so I can thrive,

love without condition,

live without fear,

not grow cold and hard.

Care for me so I can beat in freedom.

Fury

Hearts bitter cold

Violent

Slicing

Dicing

To bone

And deeper.

Lies planted deep

Cutting off air

Fury strangulating flesh.

Truth buried in dark depths.

Tar oozing

Distorted black

Thick

Sticky

Suffocating the living

Burying alive until nothing is left but more of the same.

Loneliness

I'm sure there were times before my memory that you played your cruel game. There has to be. The tears come too quickly at times when I see certain things, things that cut to the core and leave me not understanding.

There is a first memory of you though. It was in the trailer park. We were alone with strangers.  I was only three, and he was only two. He was a baby...and so was I. I couldn't protect him from her words.

You were smirking when I fell from the top bunk and again in the fort. You were laughing as I sat terrified in front of the TV in that dark house when the sun was shining through the curtains.

I remember you on the walk from the school bus when I misjudged the length of the big dog's chain. Why were you with me that day as I walked to a stranger's house? I was only six.

You were there when we were told to line up against the wall because we woke her baby. We weren't naughty. I remember your cruelty even though I don't remember her name.

When they came, you were there, leaving me to care for them. I was seven.

I remember when you stood at the pulpit and made sure no one was involved and insured everyone whispered.

You punched me in the gut when she knocked and I still bleed. I handed over my new baby and went after her. That was the first of many times you visited me in the form of  his indifference.

Remember the damp grass on that April afternoon as my little ones and I became one in a heap? I was only 29, yet I felt 12 and 60 at the same time.

You've hung around in the form of lost dreams, cruel words, silence.

I don't regret everything about you though. Sometimes you did the right thing. Like the times I ran away and you met me on the road. I didn't like you, so I turned around.

I have realized that the fear of you invites you into my soul. I have survived your torcherous acts, yet I fear that you might kill my heart someday.

But if I look truth in the eye instead of you, I will see that I am surrounded by love. And love is the opposite of what you have to offer.

Today I grieved the toll you took on my life as the kind man listened, and a little bit more of my wall came down. You steal without regret, but I continue to survive, and I am okay. Beat up but standing. Loved not forgotten.

I know I will see you again someday in some form of devastation because life can be hard, but I will wait until then to acknowledge you. Until then, I will live in this place where you aren't. This home. This family that I am a part of. You helped a little bit in that, you know. Without you, I wouldn't have understood the dire need of the human soul to have a place to belong.
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I love the epilogue at the end of a good book. A peek into why the author wrote the story, the life experiences that brought the author to that place. Here is my epilogue.

Loneliness has haunted me a good deal of my life. I am trying to understand the toll it has taken and how to not fear it. But I do fear it. Maybe more than anything else. I have felt the effects of loneliness more than some and not as much as others. It is a powerful thing that I have to recognize. Then heal. Thankfully, I have someone to help me walk through that...everyone needs a good counselor at one time or another. I am okay with that.

I tend to apologize for who I am and how I think. I doubt myself which means I doubt the truth in me. I am working to break free one real moment at a time.

Judge

^{Luke 6:37-38}  “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. ³⁸ Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

This is one that I could maybe quote from memory, but until this morning if you would have asked me what it was about, I would have said tithing. This is the reference point I have heard it from most of my life with the first part left out...the acceptance part. As I was reading it today, I wondered why we take verses apart to meet our need for the moment. Isn't this a whole thought? Give acceptance and forgiveness and acceptance and forgiveness will be given abundantly? Is this really even about money? 

I acknowledge that I have walked in judgment a good deal of my life. I don't hate myself or beat myself up over it, but I do see clearly that I have walked that path and have harmed doing so. I put my tithe in the plate and walked out to judge over things like cloth vs. disposable, breast vs. bottle, homeschooling vs. traditional, and the obvious "big" ones. Judging with a sideways glance or even with my mouth. 

I wonder if I have judged more than most, because my passion has changed dramatically. I cannot stomach myself when I judge anymore, which I still struggle with, mostly toward Christians. I judge them the most at this stage of the game. I am convicted of that. I cannot hate/judge the haters/judgers. At the risk of sounding judgmental even there, I am not calling all Christians haters and judgers. I just think we..I included myself there...are really good at it, and I have no idea how that helps a world full of people that need love.

But things are changing for me. Some have called me "tolerant"...which as we know is an insult to a Good Christian Republican. But, I am no longer a Good Christian Republican. I really would prefer to not have a label placed on me. I want to be a person who walks in grace, love, acceptance, forgiveness. I want to give and receive those gifts. And maybe that will help more than judgment, hatred, rejection, and unforgiveness. I have not "backslidden" so far that I no longer know that there is right and wrong in the world. I do know that. But, I just don't see how shunning people is going to do a bit of good. It divides. If someone judges me, I don't give a shit if they think I am "bad" or "good." Jesus did not divide himself from the world, and he was just and perfect. I like the picture in my head of Jesus. I see him as a good man, you know the type, sitting down on a barstool with a hopeless man, listening, caring, understanding, helping, and just being...maybe even with a Widmer in his hand. Gasp. But truthfully, I almost cry when I see him that way because he isn't scary. He isn't going to see someone as so bad that he will condemn them or give up on them. I find that picture more appealing than someone with their nose in the air with their hidden scars trying to fix someone. I find real comforting and healing.

My challenge today is to learn how to forgive, accept, and love those who have hurt me, rejected me, and judged me the most...The Good Republican Christians. And the truth is, there are days when I have no idea how to do that. But, I don't want to carry the dead carcass of unforgiveness around on my back.

My counsellor said the best way to forgive is to accept. Accept that it happened. Accept that I can't change the past. When I let myself think about this, it is so clear to me, but then I let myself slip off that realization and fall to what I hate most. 

Without love I am bankrupt, and forgiving Christians is not exempt from that. I don't want to harm with my judgment and yet I do. There is only one hope for me to do that impossible thing, and that is the good man Jesus.

Jesus, only you have what I need to do this. I am empty. Please fill me. 

Sea

For God so loved the world...

See the proof when you rest?

Do you smell the salt suspended in air?

Hear the whitecaps roar?

Feel the bits of shell and rock sift between your toes.

See the shades of green to numerous to fathom?

Stop and absorb the peace in the midst of overwhelming greatness.
---
God I am amazed at the work of your hands.

Stand

"Your playing small does not serve the world." 

Ouch

When did I decide to live in fear of being big?

When did I decide that being humble means cowering?

No.

Not anymore.

I will face fear.

Have victory over it.

Watch it stumble with fatigue before it can reach out its crooked hand and grab me. 

Feel it fall behind.

Know it tires as I run faster to believe in myself. 

Hear it gasping, starving for something to keep it alive.

Today I decide to face something even more powerful than fear.

Strength.

To look for it deep within me. 

Ask when I can't grasp it. 

I am strong. 

I choose to believe in myself.

I choose to succeed.

I choose to stand.

I choose to believe the truth.

Our Deepest Fear by Marianne Williamson

 “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Man in the Arena by Theodore Roosevelt

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Reverence

I long for reverence toward God in my life.

For the awe that would make it all more clear.

Not religion or rules

But

The humbling that it is impossible without Him.

The freedom.

The clarity.

To lay the sacrifice on the alter morning and night.

To see it before my eyes and know it is real.

To say the words written long ago.

To walk a clear path.

To fall in the presence of God

In awe

Because

Who are we that God cares for us?

Shouldn't there be more reverence in the simple magnitude of the truth?

But fear jumps out from the dark shadows

And mocks me.

Do I really want deep truth?

Am I willing to set my sacrifice before him?

To move from

Known to unknown?

Control to surrender?

Anger to forgiveness?

But without faith, I am nothing.

I take the first step...again.

And if I am pushed back to start once more

I will continue to prevail

With His strength.

He will lead me.

Never leave me.

He has promised.

My heart races. It feels. There is life. I kneel with my face to the floor in awe of your goodness, in awe of what you have done.
You have saved me from hatred and unforgiveness that consumed me.
I am forgiven, set free because of you, Oh God.
There is no place for me to go but into your presence.

Psalm 8

Lord, our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory in the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.

You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!