The weapon of love

"Don't be afraid little warrior bride, victory's on the other side."

I had a dream the other night.

As you may know, I am prone to nightmares. Namely ones in which I am being attacked, or chased, and no one is there to help me, or people are right there but they cant see me, they can't hear me... and I am defenseless, and frozen in fear... and I always wake up terrified. Often too terrified to fall back asleep.

I have found the best way to avoid these types of dreams is to fall asleep while talking to someone. But sometimes they come all the same.

I was having one of these dreams a few nights ago. Someone broke into my house with a gun and was looking to attack my family. Inside of my dream, I somehow knew it wasn't real and was struggling to wake up, but I couldn't. Suddenly I realized, this is my dream, and I grabbed a butcher knife and faced my attacker. "I'm not scared of you" she declared to my face. And then I felt it, courage washing over me. I knew I would win this, if only I tried. So I stood my ground. I chose to win. And once I made my choice, there was no changing my fate. I overcame.

I am facing so many rejection issues right now. With every job I apply for, I get my hopes up and watch them crumble to the ground again. I finally got as far as an interview 2 weeks ago... and then was informed they filled the position, and always echoing in the back of my mind is this... there's someone else, ALWAYS someone else, someone better...

I mean thats just how it's been for me. I never seem to win.

Then there's this battle with my weight, and on top of it my body image in general. I am SUUUCH an emotional eater. I always have been. I get on top of eating healthy and exercising for a while, then something happens, good or bad or stressful or sad that compels me to eat something, anything, to comfort myself. And I give in and stop trying once again.

I stop trying, but I never stop caring.

Because once it all goes downhill again I get stuck in this comparing and losing game with any girl anywhere I see who has the type of body I want. Movies, magazines, maybe just a friend. Always someone who isn't me. And I think, if only..

I am seeing that in order to reach a victory, I have to make up my mind to fight. And if I make up my mind to fight, I have to grasp a weapon. In fact, the decision not to let a fear or habit beat me is, in itself, an action. It's not a matter of immediately eliminating the fear... the fear of rejection, the fear of even trying to reach a goal because I have failed so many times... it's more a matter of FACING the fear, weapon in hand, and conquering strike by strike, even though it stares right back at me in defiance.

And I think the weapon that defeats every fear is love. Many things can stand against it, challenge it, accuse it, hinder it, discourage it... but nothing can overcome it, not in the end.

So I reach out to grasp now the kind of love that overcomes that crippling fear of inadequacy and rejection. I reach out to grasp the love that says I am worth being taken care of, though I may not believe it. And I reach out to grasp the love that offers perfect acceptance and peace.

And with that, I will fight the giants of the job market, the monsters of the culture, and most of all, the whispering scars within my own heart.

And as I believe...

Love is invincible facing danger and death. Passion laughs at the terrors of hell.

...love will win the day.

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Wonderland

"Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast"

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this movie. In addition to envying Alice's wardrobe, admiring the beautiful masterpiece Tim Burton created, and falling in love with Avril Lavigne's latest song, I was left with a deep and thought provoking reminder...

What I choose to believe can create or destroy my destiny. If I don't know who I am, can I truly accomplish anything? If I let the opinions of others define me, I cannot fulfill my purpose.

But if I believe in the impossible and let myself become "much more muchier" in spite of my inability to see the future and regardless of the approval of others... if I take what is given to me and trust the transformation process, I will be equipped for the moment at hand, I will fulfill my destiny.

Perhaps I am stretching the Alice metaphor way too far. Maybe it really is just ridiculous drug influenced nonsense. But to me, it seemed to speak of faith. And faith is really just "hope mixed with trust". So maybe my life is something of a Wonderland. And I am loving the adventure.


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Rain

"So stand in the rain, stand your ground. Stand up when it's all crashing down, you stand through the pain, you won't drown... And one day, whats lost can be found."

It's rainy season finally, and I couldn't be happier. I love everything about the rain. I love the way it looks outside, I love the way it smells, I love the feeling of it on my skin, I love seeing the raindrops splash into the puddles they are forming.

A lot of people are worried here because of the horrible flooding a couple of years ago... but I am too happy to be worried right now. :) I feel like I have somehow won a battle. Like what is happening outside of my window is simultaneously happening in my spirit, in my heart. It was 8 months ago I felt the Lord tell me He was leading me into the desert. That He was going to strip away all the things I had used to give me a sense of security and identity apart from Him. That it was going to be dry and painful and confusing. I said yes and let Him lead me there, through one plan after another falling through, losing relationships, missing the sound of His voice. I soaked my pillow in tears numerous times, I poured out my heart on paper over and over, I asked Him questions I had never dared to ask before. Just when I thought I had hit rock bottom, it seemed I began to fall down even further.

But inside I knew it wouldn't last forever. I tried everything I could to keep my heart soft and not just lie down, defeated in the face of my emotions and circumstances. I failed many times, but I never let go of hope.

And now, it seems, clouds have formed and they are beginning to break over my desert. Refreshing and life-giving rain is spilling out over my world. Drowning my fears and washing away my doubts. I have learned to trust. I have learned how to keep hope alive. I have learned to find beauty in a place that seems to lack abundantly in every way. I have learned... I am learning.

The desert and parched land will be glad, the wilderness will rejoice and blossom... water will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs... and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away."

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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.

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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.

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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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