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

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Beauty in a Garbage Heap

"Find my heart at the bottom of the well I'm in. Lower Your strong hand down and rescue me. See my soul in the place I fell into. Lift my head from the shame I've bowed down to. Speak to me in my lonely place. Raise me up when no hope seems to remain. It's just like You to bring life to these dry bones, it's just like You to bring beauty to ashes, it's just like You to bring light into darkness... it's just like You, Lord, it's just like You."

Sometimes I am just a mess. Sometimes my life looks like trash and I am just picking up the pieces trying to find the beauty, trying to to find the purpose that little nagging voice inside keeps insisting is there. Sometimes I find it, like a flower emerging from the rubble, daring me to believe that there is life outside of my heart as well as inside, beckoning me to hope for more. But sometimes I don't see the beauty, sometimes I just have to trust that it's there. That if I dig a little more, push a little further, breathe a little deeper, I will find it; but maybe not now, maybe not today... maybe for today I just need to be patient.

Sometimes I know He is holding me... but I just don't feel it. Sometimes feeling it isn't important. Fact is, He is good. He brings beauty to ashes. It's just like Him. He is life. He IS hope. He is love. He is all I need and I have Him.

Maybe today the beauty is in a piece of broken glass, a shard of what was, with the ability to reflect reality. No it is not alive, it is just reflecting... but it's something. And that's enough for me. :)


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Love me in the pain

"Tides they turn, and hearts disfigure but that's no concern when we're wounded together"

I was talking to my youth pastor once. Ranting about how much I need to figure out and sort through and heal from before I could ever be in a relationship. He looked at me and said "Yeah I see your point... but Abby, wait for someone who can see you even in the midst of your pain, with scars, with maybe some unresolved issues... and love you in it."
It stuck with me.
For my entire life I've been of the mind that I need to figure so many things out on my own. That I need to get to a certain place alone with Jesus before I can invite other people into that part of my heart. And there is a place for intimacy. In the deepest places, only He can reach down and heal the wounds. And He is our First Love - nothing and no one should ever come before.
But I guess what I am realizing now is that He can and desires to use other people to reveal different pieces of His heart. It may be from a place I expect, and it may be from the place I least expect.
What I do know is this - it is not by my own design that healing comes. I give my pain to Him first - He provides the solution. Through a piece of art, a piece of creation, His word, another person... whatever the source... He IS love.And "He is revealed in our love" (TWLOHA).
So I will breathe. I will love. I will open my heart... and I will be alive.
Maybe this is over simplified.
But I'm healing.

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Promise

Teach me what this means.
Shatter expectations.
Wash away the haunting nightmares as love overcomes fear.
Scare away my pain.
Accept my invitation.
Cover me as clouds cover the sun on rainy days.
Show me how to breathe.
Steal my bleak surrender.
Whisper to me from miles away until I feel you near.
Change my life today.
Make my hard heart tender.
Put your arms around me now and promise that you'll stay.

Purpose for the Pain

From Renee Yohe's journal her first try in rehab

"Today I choose to feel the pain of sitting through a feeling, the terror in realizing that I am powerless over so many things, and the joy in knowing that I do not experience these things alone. I fight my feet when they beg me to run and battle my mind in its attempts to protect me from remembering the things I worked so hard to forget. Today I choose to fight, to stand in front of the mirror and let God hold my hand as I wake up the dead and face them head on. Today is a constant war for healing, and today is filled with promise and potential. I have dreams and goals of changing the world, of leaving a true legacy of love and redemption. I long to be a catalyst for a revolution. But, the most beautiful thing about all of this is that this redemption I've experienced was not my own doing, but that of One who is far greater than I. It is not my hands that keep my arms from scars or my mouth from quenching its thirst in pretty poison. It is a God who loves me, who carries me when I am too weak, and He has been, He always was. I just wouldn't let Him. The hope that I had in Him was the rope that I clung to through the darkest of days. When I was in highschool I met a girl who introduced me to this prayer, 'God make me a shining star in the universe, give me ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to understand.' This has been the prayer of my heart, my hope. The idea that God could take the ugliest, darkest corners of our lives and expose it, make our secrets transparent and shine through them, is what fuels me. I want nothing more than to share my heart with the hope that God would take my pain and give it purpose, beauty and use it to redeem those who may find themselves somewhere in these pages. There IS a purpose for the pain. It is called redemption." - Purpose for the Pain, Renee Yohe

I love this book. It is stirring my passions, my vision, my heart. It is giving me hope. Reminding me that dreams come true, reassuring me that He will use it all - every failure, every flaw, every pain I let Him walk me through. It is reminding me not to give up on the people who have given up on themselves, who have planted themselves into my heart. There is power in remembering. Love heals all wounds. Hope triumphs over fear. He is redemption. And hidden inside His wounds, there is no room for regret.

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Rules

Rules. Rules. Rules. Rules. Rules.

Who makes them? That's the burning question in my mind. Who puts a price on somebody's passion? Why do we have to do what makes sense all the time? Why do we trade what we love for what is practical? What if our passion is impractical? What if you want to pursue your dreams and society tells you no. The world tells you no. The church tells you no. The economy tells you no. What do you do? Settle?

I'd rather dream of impossible things.

I'd rather color outside of the lines.

I'd rather defy gravity.

I'd rather... but do I have the courage? The strength to swim against the tide? To be compelled by an internal longing rather than an external demand? Does my passion burn brightly enough?

I think I'll stoke the fire in my heart and let it consume me. Let the flames lick away at my fear and misgivings. Then at least if it burns out, it's not because it was squelched.

Some rules are just made to be broken.

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Roots & Wings

Gimli: Tell me, Legolas, why did I come on this quest? Little did I know where the chief peril lay! Truly Elrond spoke, saying that we could not foresee what we might meet upon our road. Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound at this parting, even if I were to go this night straight to the dark lord.
Legolas: Such is the way of it, to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. But I count you blessed, Gimli son of Gloin: for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise.

Isn't this such a picture of life? I fear for the worst... but the worst is easy compared to the best. Life is made up of giving regardless of what the future holds. Home is within the deposits you make in the lives of others. Love is wherever you have made a heart connection with someone else. Often I have wished to be what seems "normal". To have roots without wings. But instead it seems over and over I am called to pour myself into something or someone and then removed from it. Or I give everything I have and never see the fruit.

Now I have begun to notice this pattern in my life, and I have a natural way of dealing; I pull away. I try not to care so much, or not to give as deeply. But when I do... I live restlessly. And so I begin to see that the dark and dangerous things are the predictable pains, the ones I would choose for myself; the ones I know I can handle. But the light and joy, this I am only worthy to encounter and participate in by His grace and will, and the pain I endure in it is the highest. To pour out my whole heart over and over again to those I have been given to love is an honor beyond measure. May I forever suffer the loss of myself into the joy of relationship at my own free will, and be ruined for anything less.

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