Simplicity

I realized something.
My world has been covered in snow for 3 months, and I have been cold and miserable. I have spent several minutes bundling up every time I am about to go outside, whined incessantly while scraping my windows, cursed the road every time I go sliding out of control whenever I turn a corner, and wished moment after moment for spring to arrive...
But I haven't made any snowmen. I haven't gone sledding, thrown a snowball, or tasted a snowflake.
I haven't even thought of it.
And it made me think, how often I let the little opportunities for joy pass me by. I will get so consumed in the concerns of something, like snow, that I completely miss the opportunity to have a little fun that I could never have at any other time of the year.
Why is that stuff so much simpler to see when you're a kid? You never think it's gloomy because its raining, you just see puddles to jump in, and water droplets chasing each other down your window. You don't see weeds ruining a beautiful green landscape, you see fuzzy soft dandelions to make a wish on and blow away. The world is a playground, the sky is a canvas for your imagination, life is at your disposal and joy is around every corner. You don't see obstacles, frustrations and dead ends, you see opportunities, hope, and open windows.
I don't want to lose that innocence, that spark. I don't want to lose the eyes of a child, the heart of simplicity. I want to be able to stand alone in my bedroom and watch another world spring up around me.

<3

Everything

Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him... sin didn't, and doesn't, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it's sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that's the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end. Romans 5, The Message

Every time I watch this video, I get wrecked. I see myself all throughout it. Beaten down, torn away, losing my vision of my first love. And Him always, always pulling me through. Him always, always taking on whatever comes between us. Him always, always loving me.

There are a lot of fears and insecurities I am facing today. I have been aware of them for a long time, but not really faced them. And now facing them scares me. Doesn't scare me so much just to acknowledge it... I'd already gotten that far before. It more scares me that... I have built this perspective on myself, on my future, on people and relationships... and I have built so much of it on a foundation of fears and flaws and failure. And now, when I already feel like I'm afloat on nothing but a stormy sea; unsure, unpredictable, unsteady... I have to lift my anchor. The fears and flaws and failures that have been my consistency. My faulty belief system about myself that has been the one unchanging aspect of my life for as long as I can remember. To believe that I am what He says about me. To believe that I can do more than survive. To believe I am worth sticking around for. To believe people can see through my intense emotional baggage and find something they love and not run away...
All things I have acknowledged I have a hard time believing... but to take the next step to actually let go, let Him take them away, and believe in His voice to be my consistency instead. Believe in His love to be my anchor. "You calm my storms and You give me rest, You hold me in Your hands, You won't let me fall. You still my heart and You take my breath away, would You take me in, take me deeper now"
This will be my heart's cry. I will trust; He will see me through. And my heart will rejoice.

<3

Broken

I am at the end of myself.

I have spent every day for the last 2 weeks crying.

It's just one of those seasons where I question whether my life is going anywhere. It's emotionally draining to keep applying and applying and never getting a job. To think I heard the Lord and then not see the doors opening. It is hard to hold onto hope when it seems like everything that makes me happy is only allowed to remain in my life for a while and then it is either taken away or He asks me to lay it down.

And I keep trying - I keep trying to embrace it. To trust and believe that He is good in the midst of anything and everything that hurts. But lately it hurts so much it seems I can't even hear Him...

I feel like my heart has liquefied within me and just spilled out on the ground. Poured out - nothing holding me together. I keep thinking of Elijah on Mount Carmel when God sent fire on the sacrifice that even burned up the water.
I hope that happens to my heart.

But even through the pain, something inside me whispers this is right. At last my heart is broken and contrite. At last nothing else will satisfy. No person, no place, nothing. I knew He was leading me into the desert... I just didn't realize what the desert would be like.

"Then the Lion said - but I don't know if it spoke - 'you will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back and let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off... well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off - just as I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt... then he caught hold of me - I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I had no skin on - and threw me in the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm... after a bit the lion took me out and dressed me in new clothes." - Eustace, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

^ That's my hope

<3