Cleaning UP

People in my life, who don't understand my relationship with God, often ask me, "Why would you Love a God who lets bad things happen?"

This is one of the hardest questions, in my opinion, to answer. I think, because, at some point in our walk, whether before our decision for Relationship with God or after, we also wondered about it. Maybe some of us still are.

Bad things have happened to me, no doubt. Its those bad things that kept me away and its those bad things that now draw me nearer and nearer to God. I think, when we are honest, a lot of us blame God. At some point, I realized that God was not the reason for my pain, he was the source of my healing. He wasn't the attacker, He was the savior.

Today I had an epiphany that helped me understand a little more about how this relationship between Him and I may have gone, and still goes. I am His child. And like a child in the home of her parents, I am given choices. For instance, parents desire clean rooms. Why? As children we probably thought it was a conspiracy of hatred. A ploy to keep us from our friends and activities that brought us far more pleasure, like riding our bikes or doing things that made our rooms even more messy.

But clean spaces, as we get older we realize, keep us sane. When my space is clean I can function better. It is also safer! And healthier. Those were probably our parents true motives... our own protection, safety, health and mental health, but we rarely saw it this way.

But for some reason, even though they knew they wanted it to be cleaned, they still LET us do all the crazy things that mess it up. Like try on every piece of clothing in the house. Or make huge elaborate forts out of books and sheets and kitchen utensils. They allowed us to make choices and to dirty our rooms if we wanted to. The expectation was cleanliness, but they wanted us to be responsible for it.

Today I realized there are some parallels in the way God deals with us. He knows what is best for us, and He expects it of us, but He allows us to make our own messes and our own choices... And when these messes become unsafe and unhealthy He only awaits our request for His help. Sometimes He cleans it up. Sometimes He cleans with us. Sometimes, He removes the distraction and allows us to clean it up ourselves. I think He knows just which way to handle each mess, even when we stare at with no idea wear to start, and the thought that this just might be impossible.

The Road To Emmaus

I'm just jotting here... meditating on what I'm reading...

Today the reading in DIL (Disciplines for the Inner Life) was luke 24: 13-35. The scripture was about Jesus meeting some men on the road just after His tomb had been discovered empty. These particular men were discussing the events while they walked home, and Jesus met them en route for a little chat. They didn't recognize Him for whatever reason... was He transformed? Was He cloaked and hooded? Was He blinding them? We dont actually know, we just know that they are unaware that this is Jesus Himself. To them in this moment, He is just another human... a stranger at that!

And they allow Him into their conversation. He even becomes the main speaker... enlightening them and revealing the mysteries of Scripture concerning Him as they walk. They invite Him in. They know He should come with them, and they know that He wont just push himself their direction, but that He must be invited. They urge Him to come stay with them.

And then... after the invitation, sitting at the table, this Stranger takes the bread and He breaks it and He gives thanks to God, and they KNOW it is Him. They know this is their Savior, Jesus Himself!

Always I have seen that scripture and thought, they saw Him do it at supper the night before He went to the cross, and that is why it is in this moment that He gives Himself away... but today I realized, these men are not of the 12 disciples. They will actually be the ones to go and testify to them that Jesus is alive, and back up what the woman have already been saying! It is with these men that have invited Jesus in and allowed Him to break bread with them, that Jesus comes to the 12 disciples later. And these once strangers didn't know He was going to supernaturally show up in their midst either. They went simply to tell of Him, and then, SUPERNATURAL MOMENT, in steps Jesus!

Yesterday I was at church, and I was waiting for communion, a time in Catholic church that is spent on your knees in reverence... a time when the church is still with the weight of the Glory of the breaking of bread and the pouring of wine! In awe I always look up as the bell rings and the priest holds the bread up to the heavens, acknowledging its significance. And today as I read and realized that it was at that moment of clarity in the lives of the men on the road, wandering and wondering what will come of them in this new time, wondering if their Savior lives, if they have one at all, is the moment that Christ breaks bread with them and offers thanks to God and offers again his body and blood to them! I have always hungered for that time in church... it has always been my favorite time, even amidst power ballads, awesome dances and beautiful displays of love and worship... it is at that time, on my knees, staring unwaveringly at the bread and wine, body and blood of Christ, that I know more clearly than any other time, that Christ loves me, I have more to be grateful for that to complain about and that God is real and God WANTS me and I NEED Him.

Introduction - Day Zero

My Song

I never thought I'd be 27. As a young girl, and even as a teen, life just fit. I was in the process of living out my dreams. They were still yet to be fulfilled. They were going to come true. It felt so right. But now, at 27, my dreams seem like unreachable fantasies... bygones.

I would write one day, I told young self! I would be published, and people would read the works of my imagination! It was going to be so easy.

I would play guitar like Clapton! Sure I wasn't born with that unfathomable talent that some kids have for music, but I loved it more than anything and I would be dedicated and focused. I would learn!

I would lose weight. I'd stop being the semi-active overweight girl. I would lose weight and I would dance! I LOVE to dance... I always had the moves, I just didn't have the body. But it would happen. Life would work.

Then I got to be 23. 24. 25. Now I'm 27. Still overweight, still blocked up when I write, still playing amateur guitar and singing different words to the same 8 or 9 chords I know. I see movies about young people live out their dreams. My heart races like it did when I was young myself and what I was watching were possibilities. Then the credits role and I'm 27, sitting in a chair, watching movies about amazing kids 5, maybe 10 years younger than me, doing all the things I dreamed about... dream about still.

Some dreams have died because they had to. I murdered them with my unwillingness to move. But I want to write. I want to play. I want to dance! So I'm beginning a journal... no, a long song rather. I will reveal, everyday, my place in my journey. It will hold me accountable.

No more watching the movies. Or hearing the songs. Or reading the books. I'm going to live my own! I'm going to be the star in my life, the words to my song, the plot in my book. It's time I lived. The Bible says, we are to love, and when we truly love, we will know real life. I have gone so long in my life, unable to truly love me. Because I failed myself. 27 and still not one dream has been fulfilled. And I have been behind the scenes of it all. Master of my fate! I have put the bit in my mouth and pulled back on the reins.

So first, and most importantly (and I will say this out loud also) I hand the reins to the True Master. To God. And ask Him to lead me! I know that He will not pull back so much as me, but rather drive me forward... And when it is time to pull back, He will know when, so much better than me. His motives, are, and have always been, so much more honorable and pure than mine.

And Spirit... make me honest! Real! Transparent! And keep me that way, In Jesus name!

This is the very end of day zero... Which has been a 27 year break in the music of my life song!