Have you ever noticed how Jesus told people to get up? I am particularly drawn to Jesus' interaction with the man at the pool of Bethesda. He first asks the man "do you want to get well"
Well do you? do I? I think sometimes I just want to feel sorry for myself. Have you ever just wanted to be mad? You know that you are being irrational, maybe immature, maybe even wrong? But at that moment you really just want to be mad.
Well so this guy has being laying in this spot for years now just wanting to get into the pool when the Angel's dip their wings so he can be healed. How many people has he watched go into the water? How many people have pushed the old crippled man back out of the way? I see this guy and I think, "Poor guy, nobody will help you in, Bless your heart!" But not Jesus. He looks at the man and asks, "Do you want to get well?" So often we fall in love with our pain, even though it sucks it is what we are used to, it defines us, and how we operate.
In prison when a man has been inside for a long time and gets released, he often finds himself right back in jail, not because he needs to commit crime, but because he doesn't know how to be different.
I wonder what the man thought when Jesus asked him if he wanted to be well. Did he sarcastically think no I'd rather spend another 30 years laying here while others get my blessing. But instead he told the man with the followers, the man that they called Rabbi, "Yes" not really even knowing why he would put his trust in this stranger why he said it. Why after all this time did he still believe, did he still have hope. While he had not received his blessing so far he at least had attention from time to time as he told about his plight. Jesus didn't fuss over him, he said, "Get up, take up your mat and go." He told him to get up!
Were Jesus' words magic? Doubtful I bet that Jesus wasn't the first to tell him to get up, and I know that if anybody else would have said, Hey old dude, get up man. He would have thought them cruel. What about Jesus was different? Is Jesus telling you to get up? Will you? Or you can lay there for another 20 years waiting for a miracle, hoping that someone else doesn't get your blessing or you can... Get Up.
One woman's journey from the crazy cluttered lazy life to an organized free and joyous life.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
I want fancy pants and tiaras dang it!
I am admitting that I am a wanna be. I have wanted to be many things: Taller, thinner, prettier, richer, and more cultured. I have wanted to be more southern, more country or at least have a neat British accent. I have wanted to be a cow-girl, a volleyball player, a dancer, a singer and a writer.
Some days I want to be a debutante sipping champagne from crystal flutes, but instead I will slurp pepsi or grape juice out of a wine glass. I want to be a person who enjoys eating raw vegetables like broccoli and carrot sticks but I'm not. Today I want to be more Southern than my old Kentucky home allows. Don't get me wrong there are certain benefits of being a Kentuckian and being able to claim the redneck, hillbilly, sweet bluegrass girl properties of Bourban fired blood and simple sayings. However being from the deep south allows you a certain amount of Scarlett O'hara charm, and turns of phrase that I envy the opportunity to use such as "Well I Suwanee" or "popping up like yard onions"
For now though I will pour some bubbly (Pepsi) into my Home Interiors Humming Bird Wine Glass and think about the things I want.
Some days I want to be a debutante sipping champagne from crystal flutes, but instead I will slurp pepsi or grape juice out of a wine glass. I want to be a person who enjoys eating raw vegetables like broccoli and carrot sticks but I'm not. Today I want to be more Southern than my old Kentucky home allows. Don't get me wrong there are certain benefits of being a Kentuckian and being able to claim the redneck, hillbilly, sweet bluegrass girl properties of Bourban fired blood and simple sayings. However being from the deep south allows you a certain amount of Scarlett O'hara charm, and turns of phrase that I envy the opportunity to use such as "Well I Suwanee" or "popping up like yard onions"
For now though I will pour some bubbly (Pepsi) into my Home Interiors Humming Bird Wine Glass and think about the things I want.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The Rock: Rockcastle Kentucky
There is a road out there that leads to a place where dreams are made. It's winding and seemingly infinite but at the end of the journey there is a cliff that opens up to stars sleeping on water. It is so peaceful it makes you excited. It feeds and nourishes your soul, and as you hear the waves lap against the shore, it has this gentle way of caressing the emotion right out of you. Some days it coaxes out the tears and sometimes makes you laugh. Somehow this place knows you as a friend. Fortunately it won't talk back, but just lets you talk all the weariness out of your heart. The dewy night air just hugs you when its right, and the gentle breeze will wipe the tears from cheeks. I go to this place often and it feels like home. As soon as I step onto this rock and take that first breath of the summer air I know how much I have missed this feeling, this place. For some reason the air seems softer out here, the elements less harsh. Its a place to share memories and a place to make them. Sometimes it insists that you be the only one out there, just an old talk between old friend.
Monday, March 31, 2008
My Fourth Day Talk
My Fourth Day
My name is Alisha Brown I attended Pennyrile Emmaeus Walk number 53. I sat at the table of Ruth. This is my testimony.
As a young girl around the age of ten I attended Vacation Bible school at Lamasco Baptist Church in Lamasco Ky. I remember doing Bible drills in one of the classrooms in the basement of the church and I enjoyed all the activities, crafts and singings that took place during that week. What I enjoyed the most about VBS that year in the summer of 93 was a tall blond haired boy named Jason coincidentally, who I was infatuated with. At Vacation Bible School we learned about the life and death of Jesus, and how he died for all of our sins. He Died for me? I understood that I should be grateful and I was sad that Jesus died for my sins because at that time my experience with death was a very scary thing that involved funeral homes and people crying as they passed by the casket of the dearly beloved that had passed on.
At VBS they talked a lot about being saved, and everybody was very excited when it happened. How I really understood it, was that once someone was saved they were allowed to attend "The Last Supper" something I understood to be some kind of potluck party that all the saved people got to go to, and also that if you weren't saved you weren't allowed to go. It didn't make any never mind to me at the time, cause of course then I didn't have the love affair with food that I currently do. So "being saved" was something that I didn't really need to be, that is until the object of my affection : Jason, got saved. Suddenly I wanted to be saved too. After confessing this in class the VBS teacher hugged me tightly and might have even cried a little as she sent me to go talk to the Pastor.
He sat me down on the first pew in the sanctuary and handed me a piece of paper, a tract I think it was with the sinner's prayer on it. He left me to read the story of Jesus' crucifixion and then the prayer, and when he returned he asked me if I understood it. I didn't, and I told him so. He asked me to read it again and to pray about it. I did and when he asked a second time if I understood what it meant I said that I did, because I thought that is what I was supposed to say, as if I didn't that he might tell me that i couldn't be saved. He then proceeded to ask me a few questions and apparently i answered them all correctly because I was baptized a few days later.
I went to Church every other weekend when I went to my Dad's. Every night before bed I said the Lord's Prayer which I was so proud for memorizing. From the adults in my life I learned many things that you weren't supposed to do, and from everybody else things that the Bible says you are not supposed to do. My childhood friend's would say, " The Bible says, You are not supposed to lie. The Bible says that you are not suppose to steal, the bible says this and the bible says that. Most of things I knew of the Bible is what I heard, not anything I actually read. Every time I decided that I was going to read the Bible I started in genesis, because what I knew about books and about reading is that you are supposed to start from the beginning. I barely made it passed the story of Noah and the Ark. I believed in God. I understood that Jesus was God's son (sort of). During much of this time my family was studying with the Jehovah's witnesses and so I learned a lot about religion, which of course doesn't have very much to do with Jesus. We weren't supposed to celebrate Christmas or Birthdays, or easter or Halloween and was not supposed to say the pledge of Allegiance. As a child this was a very hard concept for me to understand and so Religion looked like this huge list of things you weren't supposed to do.
As I entered my teenage years we moved to trigg county and subsequently away from this source of influence. My mom was in and out of the whole religion thing and it wasn't something we talked about much. My best friend in high school invited me to go with her to Acquire the Fire a teen retreat in Nashville. There were several other Christian teenagers on this trip, ones that were really on fire about God and they spoke about the Bible knowledgeably and I was wonderfully impressed and at the same time terribly intimidated.
Acquire the fire was a great experience. A group of young people there to learn about God in a fresh and fun way. Every talk was interesting and powerful, but my favorite part of the experience was the worship. The music was incredible. People sang to God with their heads back and arms lifted toward the heavens, which was different than anything I had ever seen in a Baptist Church or at the Kingdom Hall during an altar call on my second night there, I found myself moving toward the stage, I was halfway there before i had even realized i made one step. My best friend was with me and other teenagers that we had come with. I fell on my knees and cried. I begged God to forgive me, to help me, to save me. I got up from there relieved and I felt better, I felt peace.
i returned home a new person. I was excited about God, and about how to live for him. I wanted to do mission work, I wanted to be a part of Acquire the Fire something that meant so much to me. I joined a teen bible study group, but I didn't attend church: not regularly anyway. I met with other teens in the lobby of the school theater most mornings to pray. I read my Bible more, and I actually started to understand it. I listened to Christian music in lieu of the other genres that were popular at that time. i was happy, I had friends, I had drive and direction that is until I had my first boyfriend. He was older and had a much more lax view of what Christianity meant. I was young and impressionable. I believed in fairy tales, I believed that we would be together forever and so I made myself align my views with his, because after all people that are in love forever have everything in common, Right? It starts with one compromise of your beliefs, just one. My innocence was the first, the first of many more that were to follow.. I believed that if I loved him enough I could make it work, make it last. I was wrong, because my priorities were wrong, I put him above everything.
The start of my college education was the beginning of the end for my first love. I learned a lot at college none of which helped me grow spiritually. Each an everyday I fell more in love with the world a little by little my spirit died. I was smart and the devil used my "intelligence" as a way to lie to me. He used so called logic to convince me that the Bible wasn't completely true, after all it was written by men thousands of years ago. A book that was written so long ago couldn't possibly be relevant to me today.
I loved the world. I thought of myself as a hip young intelligent woman. In America women that are hip and young aren't in churches, they are in episodes of Sex in the City or so I thought. I was really living in the world now, but for me I believed that I was doing alright because I was doing a lot better than some people. I drank but I only got drunk ever once in a while. I wasn't promiscuous by today's standards but i wasn't pure or chaste by any stretch of the imagination. My friends and I had the idea that if you cared about somebody it was okay. I smoked marijuana on occasion but I never did anything worse like x, or coke like some of the people I hung out with had done. This is what I believed! I wasn't the worst so I was still okay. I partied a lot, and I'm not a morning person on a stone sober day so i missed a lot of my classes. I went on Academic Probation after my second semester because of my attendance. I moved back home with my mom and was commuting back in forth to Murray for the fall semester of 2001. After 9/11 I stopped going.
I started serving at cracker barrel and my partying college life continued locally without the academics. Now mind you I still considered myself a Christian! I said my nightly prayers, asking God to forgive me where I had failed him, and feeling a little guilty for my transgressions, although not enough to really repeat from them. I didn't talk like a Christian, I didn't act like one but in my mind I was one because I wasn't a hypocrite. I didn't go to church, because I said, "I can worship God anywhere." Although I very rarely did.
My life was not going as well as I thought it should. I had my own apartment that I struggled to pay the bills on. I wanted more than anything to be in love. Being a romantic is really hereditary in my family and I wanted someone to love. I prayed that God would give me someone to love. I picked out men to love, but no one that every loved me back. I was the perpetual Queen of unrequited love. There is nothing like a broken heart to make you feel like you are at the bottom of the barrel. And so with my heart broken I called out to God to save my soul, to really save my soul, make me clean, to make me new. You all know that when you are first saved that the feeling is incredible. People describe it as better than any high, Like feeling like a weight is lifted. I had gotten so far away from this that I guess I didn't feel saved. When I got saved as a teenager at Acquire the Fire I felt clean, but since that time I had bathed in so much sin that my heart, my soul felt dirty, and so I asked for God to cleanse me with His blood. After crying out to God and pouring out all the weariness that was in my soul I was once again on God's team and feeling like a Christian. My mom got saved in March of 2002 and a year later I was back on track. I was on fire yet again. I wanted to work for the Lord, go out and minister to people. I wanted God to use me.
There was a possibility for a promotion at Cracker Barrel, to travel all over the country opening up their new stores. I wanted it and looked at is a way to travel and minister all while making a pretty good living. I begged God for it, telling Him of the wonderful opportunity I would have to witness to others. I asked God to help me in the interview, so that I would get the job. He did, I did, and it was a wonderful opportunity to witness, if I had only taken that opportunity. I found out very soon that God was the last thing people wanted to talk about. In fact it was politically incorrect to talk about God and might even be grounds for my dismissal or even a lawsuit if I offended someone. I didn't want to lose my job so I just decided that I wouldn't talk about God unless someone else brought Him up. People very rarely did. Everybody was nice and I was doing well.
I excelled professionally in this environment and stood out from my colleagues, so much so that when in a year and a half after I started I was recommended for a promotion. I applied, interviewed and got that too. I would go through phases where I would be a good little Christian girl and do my best to do a good job. Then there would be times when I kind of gave up when I realized it was hard, most of these phases revolved around my love life. I prayed fairly regularly and felt genuine remorse when I backslid, all coupled with a new determination to do better.
Through all of this you may recognize one constant, one certainty. The reason I could not succeed in my Christian walk is because I had nothing to sustain it. I didn't attend church and therefor I had no support system of other members of the body of Christ to strengthen and encourage me. I now understand how important it is for new Christians to be involved in a Church family, the Bible tells us that after Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus he went and stayed with the Disciples for a few days. This is the type strengthening that we all need.
I also wasn't committed to the study of God's word, and so I received no nourishment, or only just enough to keep me from completely starving to death spiritually. I thought, I really thought that it was enough just to believe in God. Its NOT. We need to be fed so we don't wither away and die.
I started to grow tired of traveling all the time and yearned to be home. I missed my family and friends at home. I wanted a close relationship with God, wanted to attend church and I desperately wanted a romantic relationship which I had determined was impossible to sustain when you traveled all over the country for 9 - 10 months out of the year. But truly above all I wanted to grow closer to God and was sure that I needed out of my current environment to do so, And so I put in a 6 month notice of my decision to leave cracker barrel.
I first visited trigg county Baptist Church in Feb of 2007 when I was home between stores. It was awakening experience and so perfectly timed it is scary. It was then that I wanted more. More of everything, I thirsted for the Word, and the more I got into it the more God would reveal the truth about the lies that I had let the devil convince me of. I began to trust God to take care of me and wanted God's perfect plan for my life, not my fly by the seat of my pants style of living that i was so accustomed to. I knew that God had better for me that I could ever imagine, I knew this because i read it in his Word.
I continued to work out my six months notice with Cracker barrel and attended church when I was home. When I was away from home I kept in the word and day by day, very little by little I changed. It was a two steps forwards, one step back deal.
I started seeing a wonderful man who lived in Nashville. He, a good Christian man was respectful and engaging, but for the first time in my entire hopeless romantic life I did not lose sight of my priorities. A month or so into it I earnestly asked God to be involved, I surrendered my courtship with Jeff to God, told Him he was in control, if this was the man he wanted for me then okay, and if it wasn't okay. And I thought I meant it, but when God did end it only a few days later I was upset, at first.
I prayed about it and eventually understood that even though this guy was good Christian man, he was a man that i picked, not a man that God had chosen for me. In the depths of my despair of the ended relationship I cried out to God asking why I was the only one to love. I sobbed and asked why every relationship I was in, I wasn't loved back. I told God "all I want is for a man to love me as much as I love him, thats it, thats all." I just wanted SOMEONE to love me as much as i loved them: And then I heard it, that still quiet voice. "I will love you more than anybody ever can." and there it was.
Jesus was the man I had been looking for all my life. The one that loved me before I met him, the one that wooed me and pursued me through all of my ugliness, through all my sin and when I was the most unlovable. It was then that I thanked God for closing a door that I wasn't supposed to go through. I was overwhelmed, He loved me so much, he didn't want me hurt, he didn't want me unhappy and HE the MAKER of the of the Heavens and Earth cared SO MUCH about me that He would keep me out off something I didn't need to be in. I GOT it, I really did, and I resolved to turn every aspect of my life over to GOD, including my love life. I told God that I was going to wait until He hand picked me a man. A man that wasn't just going to be good for me, but that was the BEST that he had for me.
Many of you know that I am now engaged to be married to that man who God picked for me. Just as Eve was Made for Adam. It's is a wonderful story, perhaps for another time.
Soon after leaving the training team in July I joined trigg County baptist Church and was invited to attend the emmaeus walk in October. I was excited to go and had heard many great things and wanted another experience to grow closer God.
Before I attended Emmaeus I went to church regularly, I studied my Bible and read my devotional almost everyday. I prayed and not just at night but all throughout the day. Before Emaeus I was often late for church, cursed sometimes still when I was angry or frustrated, but I was growing in Christ. Day by day he revealed truth to me, through his word, through Christian fellowship, through sermon, and song.
I attended Emmaeus at a key point in development. When I went to Emmaeus I was asking God what it was the I was supposed to do. what is my Purpose I kept asking, but I hadn't really heard a definite response. I went to Emmaeus with that question. During my walk I learned a lot. I learned about God's love. I came away from emmaues understanding a simple truth, that the Jesus that is within me is the only Jesus that some people will ever see. I learned the importance of the body of believers and how much I can learn from another persons trials. I learned through the talks that you can not know what a person has been through just by looking at them. I learned how to study, how to witness and different ways of worship and prayer. I came away revived and with a new determination to pursue God. I learned that as the body of Christ we are the hands, feet, mouths, arms hearts and minds of God.
After Emaeus I am in my fourth day. As great as those 3 days basking and learning in God's love was, my fourth day is better. After Emaeus I still worship and serve at Trigg County baptist church. I still study my Bible and and read my devotional nearly everyday. I still pray throughout my days, each day an attempt to pray without ceasing. I am still late for church and I still struggle with taming my tongue when I am angry or frustrated, and day by day truth is revealed to me through the Word, through fellowship, song and sermon. I am different in the way I approach each day. I understand through lots of my own experience how I can get off track. I understand the importance of renewing myself through my church and study. Most days I ask God in prayer to forgive and save me because I figure what can it hurt, to rededicate yourself to God everyday.
I said before that I went to Emaeus to discover my purpose. What I discovered is how to listen to God, or better yet how to hear Him. I learned to trust in Him and to learn follow His direction. Through listening to God I have found that it doesn't always or even often go the way I expect it to, but He always has a blessing for me when I am obedient. For he that is faithful in little is also faithful in much. I know that as I learn and grow God will provide more opportunities to serve Him, which is as I have found out, is my purpose.
De Colores
My name is Alisha Brown I attended Pennyrile Emmaeus Walk number 53. I sat at the table of Ruth. This is my testimony.
As a young girl around the age of ten I attended Vacation Bible school at Lamasco Baptist Church in Lamasco Ky. I remember doing Bible drills in one of the classrooms in the basement of the church and I enjoyed all the activities, crafts and singings that took place during that week. What I enjoyed the most about VBS that year in the summer of 93 was a tall blond haired boy named Jason coincidentally, who I was infatuated with. At Vacation Bible School we learned about the life and death of Jesus, and how he died for all of our sins. He Died for me? I understood that I should be grateful and I was sad that Jesus died for my sins because at that time my experience with death was a very scary thing that involved funeral homes and people crying as they passed by the casket of the dearly beloved that had passed on.
At VBS they talked a lot about being saved, and everybody was very excited when it happened. How I really understood it, was that once someone was saved they were allowed to attend "The Last Supper" something I understood to be some kind of potluck party that all the saved people got to go to, and also that if you weren't saved you weren't allowed to go. It didn't make any never mind to me at the time, cause of course then I didn't have the love affair with food that I currently do. So "being saved" was something that I didn't really need to be, that is until the object of my affection : Jason, got saved. Suddenly I wanted to be saved too. After confessing this in class the VBS teacher hugged me tightly and might have even cried a little as she sent me to go talk to the Pastor.
He sat me down on the first pew in the sanctuary and handed me a piece of paper, a tract I think it was with the sinner's prayer on it. He left me to read the story of Jesus' crucifixion and then the prayer, and when he returned he asked me if I understood it. I didn't, and I told him so. He asked me to read it again and to pray about it. I did and when he asked a second time if I understood what it meant I said that I did, because I thought that is what I was supposed to say, as if I didn't that he might tell me that i couldn't be saved. He then proceeded to ask me a few questions and apparently i answered them all correctly because I was baptized a few days later.
I went to Church every other weekend when I went to my Dad's. Every night before bed I said the Lord's Prayer which I was so proud for memorizing. From the adults in my life I learned many things that you weren't supposed to do, and from everybody else things that the Bible says you are not supposed to do. My childhood friend's would say, " The Bible says, You are not supposed to lie. The Bible says that you are not suppose to steal, the bible says this and the bible says that. Most of things I knew of the Bible is what I heard, not anything I actually read. Every time I decided that I was going to read the Bible I started in genesis, because what I knew about books and about reading is that you are supposed to start from the beginning. I barely made it passed the story of Noah and the Ark. I believed in God. I understood that Jesus was God's son (sort of). During much of this time my family was studying with the Jehovah's witnesses and so I learned a lot about religion, which of course doesn't have very much to do with Jesus. We weren't supposed to celebrate Christmas or Birthdays, or easter or Halloween and was not supposed to say the pledge of Allegiance. As a child this was a very hard concept for me to understand and so Religion looked like this huge list of things you weren't supposed to do.
As I entered my teenage years we moved to trigg county and subsequently away from this source of influence. My mom was in and out of the whole religion thing and it wasn't something we talked about much. My best friend in high school invited me to go with her to Acquire the Fire a teen retreat in Nashville. There were several other Christian teenagers on this trip, ones that were really on fire about God and they spoke about the Bible knowledgeably and I was wonderfully impressed and at the same time terribly intimidated.
Acquire the fire was a great experience. A group of young people there to learn about God in a fresh and fun way. Every talk was interesting and powerful, but my favorite part of the experience was the worship. The music was incredible. People sang to God with their heads back and arms lifted toward the heavens, which was different than anything I had ever seen in a Baptist Church or at the Kingdom Hall during an altar call on my second night there, I found myself moving toward the stage, I was halfway there before i had even realized i made one step. My best friend was with me and other teenagers that we had come with. I fell on my knees and cried. I begged God to forgive me, to help me, to save me. I got up from there relieved and I felt better, I felt peace.
i returned home a new person. I was excited about God, and about how to live for him. I wanted to do mission work, I wanted to be a part of Acquire the Fire something that meant so much to me. I joined a teen bible study group, but I didn't attend church: not regularly anyway. I met with other teens in the lobby of the school theater most mornings to pray. I read my Bible more, and I actually started to understand it. I listened to Christian music in lieu of the other genres that were popular at that time. i was happy, I had friends, I had drive and direction that is until I had my first boyfriend. He was older and had a much more lax view of what Christianity meant. I was young and impressionable. I believed in fairy tales, I believed that we would be together forever and so I made myself align my views with his, because after all people that are in love forever have everything in common, Right? It starts with one compromise of your beliefs, just one. My innocence was the first, the first of many more that were to follow.. I believed that if I loved him enough I could make it work, make it last. I was wrong, because my priorities were wrong, I put him above everything.
The start of my college education was the beginning of the end for my first love. I learned a lot at college none of which helped me grow spiritually. Each an everyday I fell more in love with the world a little by little my spirit died. I was smart and the devil used my "intelligence" as a way to lie to me. He used so called logic to convince me that the Bible wasn't completely true, after all it was written by men thousands of years ago. A book that was written so long ago couldn't possibly be relevant to me today.
I loved the world. I thought of myself as a hip young intelligent woman. In America women that are hip and young aren't in churches, they are in episodes of Sex in the City or so I thought. I was really living in the world now, but for me I believed that I was doing alright because I was doing a lot better than some people. I drank but I only got drunk ever once in a while. I wasn't promiscuous by today's standards but i wasn't pure or chaste by any stretch of the imagination. My friends and I had the idea that if you cared about somebody it was okay. I smoked marijuana on occasion but I never did anything worse like x, or coke like some of the people I hung out with had done. This is what I believed! I wasn't the worst so I was still okay. I partied a lot, and I'm not a morning person on a stone sober day so i missed a lot of my classes. I went on Academic Probation after my second semester because of my attendance. I moved back home with my mom and was commuting back in forth to Murray for the fall semester of 2001. After 9/11 I stopped going.
I started serving at cracker barrel and my partying college life continued locally without the academics. Now mind you I still considered myself a Christian! I said my nightly prayers, asking God to forgive me where I had failed him, and feeling a little guilty for my transgressions, although not enough to really repeat from them. I didn't talk like a Christian, I didn't act like one but in my mind I was one because I wasn't a hypocrite. I didn't go to church, because I said, "I can worship God anywhere." Although I very rarely did.
My life was not going as well as I thought it should. I had my own apartment that I struggled to pay the bills on. I wanted more than anything to be in love. Being a romantic is really hereditary in my family and I wanted someone to love. I prayed that God would give me someone to love. I picked out men to love, but no one that every loved me back. I was the perpetual Queen of unrequited love. There is nothing like a broken heart to make you feel like you are at the bottom of the barrel. And so with my heart broken I called out to God to save my soul, to really save my soul, make me clean, to make me new. You all know that when you are first saved that the feeling is incredible. People describe it as better than any high, Like feeling like a weight is lifted. I had gotten so far away from this that I guess I didn't feel saved. When I got saved as a teenager at Acquire the Fire I felt clean, but since that time I had bathed in so much sin that my heart, my soul felt dirty, and so I asked for God to cleanse me with His blood. After crying out to God and pouring out all the weariness that was in my soul I was once again on God's team and feeling like a Christian. My mom got saved in March of 2002 and a year later I was back on track. I was on fire yet again. I wanted to work for the Lord, go out and minister to people. I wanted God to use me.
There was a possibility for a promotion at Cracker Barrel, to travel all over the country opening up their new stores. I wanted it and looked at is a way to travel and minister all while making a pretty good living. I begged God for it, telling Him of the wonderful opportunity I would have to witness to others. I asked God to help me in the interview, so that I would get the job. He did, I did, and it was a wonderful opportunity to witness, if I had only taken that opportunity. I found out very soon that God was the last thing people wanted to talk about. In fact it was politically incorrect to talk about God and might even be grounds for my dismissal or even a lawsuit if I offended someone. I didn't want to lose my job so I just decided that I wouldn't talk about God unless someone else brought Him up. People very rarely did. Everybody was nice and I was doing well.
I excelled professionally in this environment and stood out from my colleagues, so much so that when in a year and a half after I started I was recommended for a promotion. I applied, interviewed and got that too. I would go through phases where I would be a good little Christian girl and do my best to do a good job. Then there would be times when I kind of gave up when I realized it was hard, most of these phases revolved around my love life. I prayed fairly regularly and felt genuine remorse when I backslid, all coupled with a new determination to do better.
Through all of this you may recognize one constant, one certainty. The reason I could not succeed in my Christian walk is because I had nothing to sustain it. I didn't attend church and therefor I had no support system of other members of the body of Christ to strengthen and encourage me. I now understand how important it is for new Christians to be involved in a Church family, the Bible tells us that after Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus he went and stayed with the Disciples for a few days. This is the type strengthening that we all need.
I also wasn't committed to the study of God's word, and so I received no nourishment, or only just enough to keep me from completely starving to death spiritually. I thought, I really thought that it was enough just to believe in God. Its NOT. We need to be fed so we don't wither away and die.
I started to grow tired of traveling all the time and yearned to be home. I missed my family and friends at home. I wanted a close relationship with God, wanted to attend church and I desperately wanted a romantic relationship which I had determined was impossible to sustain when you traveled all over the country for 9 - 10 months out of the year. But truly above all I wanted to grow closer to God and was sure that I needed out of my current environment to do so, And so I put in a 6 month notice of my decision to leave cracker barrel.
I first visited trigg county Baptist Church in Feb of 2007 when I was home between stores. It was awakening experience and so perfectly timed it is scary. It was then that I wanted more. More of everything, I thirsted for the Word, and the more I got into it the more God would reveal the truth about the lies that I had let the devil convince me of. I began to trust God to take care of me and wanted God's perfect plan for my life, not my fly by the seat of my pants style of living that i was so accustomed to. I knew that God had better for me that I could ever imagine, I knew this because i read it in his Word.
I continued to work out my six months notice with Cracker barrel and attended church when I was home. When I was away from home I kept in the word and day by day, very little by little I changed. It was a two steps forwards, one step back deal.
I started seeing a wonderful man who lived in Nashville. He, a good Christian man was respectful and engaging, but for the first time in my entire hopeless romantic life I did not lose sight of my priorities. A month or so into it I earnestly asked God to be involved, I surrendered my courtship with Jeff to God, told Him he was in control, if this was the man he wanted for me then okay, and if it wasn't okay. And I thought I meant it, but when God did end it only a few days later I was upset, at first.
I prayed about it and eventually understood that even though this guy was good Christian man, he was a man that i picked, not a man that God had chosen for me. In the depths of my despair of the ended relationship I cried out to God asking why I was the only one to love. I sobbed and asked why every relationship I was in, I wasn't loved back. I told God "all I want is for a man to love me as much as I love him, thats it, thats all." I just wanted SOMEONE to love me as much as i loved them: And then I heard it, that still quiet voice. "I will love you more than anybody ever can." and there it was.
Jesus was the man I had been looking for all my life. The one that loved me before I met him, the one that wooed me and pursued me through all of my ugliness, through all my sin and when I was the most unlovable. It was then that I thanked God for closing a door that I wasn't supposed to go through. I was overwhelmed, He loved me so much, he didn't want me hurt, he didn't want me unhappy and HE the MAKER of the of the Heavens and Earth cared SO MUCH about me that He would keep me out off something I didn't need to be in. I GOT it, I really did, and I resolved to turn every aspect of my life over to GOD, including my love life. I told God that I was going to wait until He hand picked me a man. A man that wasn't just going to be good for me, but that was the BEST that he had for me.
Many of you know that I am now engaged to be married to that man who God picked for me. Just as Eve was Made for Adam. It's is a wonderful story, perhaps for another time.
Soon after leaving the training team in July I joined trigg County baptist Church and was invited to attend the emmaeus walk in October. I was excited to go and had heard many great things and wanted another experience to grow closer God.
Before I attended Emmaeus I went to church regularly, I studied my Bible and read my devotional almost everyday. I prayed and not just at night but all throughout the day. Before Emaeus I was often late for church, cursed sometimes still when I was angry or frustrated, but I was growing in Christ. Day by day he revealed truth to me, through his word, through Christian fellowship, through sermon, and song.
I attended Emmaeus at a key point in development. When I went to Emmaeus I was asking God what it was the I was supposed to do. what is my Purpose I kept asking, but I hadn't really heard a definite response. I went to Emmaeus with that question. During my walk I learned a lot. I learned about God's love. I came away from emmaues understanding a simple truth, that the Jesus that is within me is the only Jesus that some people will ever see. I learned the importance of the body of believers and how much I can learn from another persons trials. I learned through the talks that you can not know what a person has been through just by looking at them. I learned how to study, how to witness and different ways of worship and prayer. I came away revived and with a new determination to pursue God. I learned that as the body of Christ we are the hands, feet, mouths, arms hearts and minds of God.
After Emaeus I am in my fourth day. As great as those 3 days basking and learning in God's love was, my fourth day is better. After Emaeus I still worship and serve at Trigg County baptist church. I still study my Bible and and read my devotional nearly everyday. I still pray throughout my days, each day an attempt to pray without ceasing. I am still late for church and I still struggle with taming my tongue when I am angry or frustrated, and day by day truth is revealed to me through the Word, through fellowship, song and sermon. I am different in the way I approach each day. I understand through lots of my own experience how I can get off track. I understand the importance of renewing myself through my church and study. Most days I ask God in prayer to forgive and save me because I figure what can it hurt, to rededicate yourself to God everyday.
I said before that I went to Emaeus to discover my purpose. What I discovered is how to listen to God, or better yet how to hear Him. I learned to trust in Him and to learn follow His direction. Through listening to God I have found that it doesn't always or even often go the way I expect it to, but He always has a blessing for me when I am obedient. For he that is faithful in little is also faithful in much. I know that as I learn and grow God will provide more opportunities to serve Him, which is as I have found out, is my purpose.
De Colores
Saturday, April 14, 2007
The Prince
The Day I met the Prince of the Forest
I woke up this morning with a start, my eyes darted to the clock radio on the nightstand to realize that I was an hour late for check out. I phoned the front desk to find out that if I checked out before the maid cleaned my room then I wouldn't be charged for another day. I spent the next 40 minutes frantically packing up my things. Since I basically live in hotel rooms for a month at a time, I like to have the comforts of home with me, meaning that I bring more than most college freshmen take to their dorms. After cart loads, I was finally all packed and ready to go...ready to go where? The plan was to find a hotel in the west valley of Phoenix that was more affordable than the $130 a night room provided on the company tab. After two blocks I had a thought and I immediately perked up, The Grand Canyon! I called a friend that I had made in the six weeks I had been in Phoenix and asked how to get to the there. After a short interrogation, he told me to take I-17 to Flagstaff, pick up 40 west bound and follow the signs.
Minutes after getting onto the interstate, a tumbleweed blew across the highway in front of me and in my head I could hear the soundtrack of a 60's western. I laughed at myself and turned up the radio, classic rock, and settled in for my 4 hour drive. I sang REO speed wagon, Stevie Ray Vaughn, AC/DC and Lynard Skynard at the top of my lungs as I zipped past cactus plants and desert rock that stretched out into the horizon. As I continued to climb northward and into higher elevation, my radio station went to static and so I switched over to Country Radio and as the miles on my trip odometer climbed up, the temperature outside my window dipped lower. Before long I was entranced by falling snow, and white dusted pine trees. I love how shy snow is! Rain is bold, dropping from the sky to fall on your windshield in big SPLATS, but snowflakes are much more elusive. They will zoom straight toward you, and then at the second before impact will go up and over the car, never connecting with the windshield.
As I pondered the different personalities of precipitation I noticed deer/elk signs along the highway and tried to recall if an elk looked more like a moose or like a deer, and it was just moments later that I found my answer, as I saw an Elk in the median, grazing on frozen tundra. I was so jonesed about it that I had to call and tell someone. The first person that answered their phone was my sister, and I screamed into the phone, "It's snowing, like snowing snowing and I saw an Elk and I'm going to the Grand Canyon!!!" It took awhile to repeat it several more times much much slower before she realized the three separate statements I was attempting to convey. She was not nearly as excited as I wanted her to be, so she put mama on the phone who could appreciate my silly joy. Mama was excited for me, but also concerned that I was traveling in the snow, so I naturally down played the severity of the situation which I am pretty sure is in my contract as a daughter. After a few more conversations, I finally get to Highway 64, which takes me right into the Grand Canyon National Park. I am desperately trying to beat the setting sun, because as a romantic there is nothing sweeter than the idea of my first glimpse of the Grand Canyon to be at sunset.
The Sun is barely still in the sky as I turn into the Park entrance, and it begins to snow again. By this point I am so giddy with anticipation that I am literally bouncing in my seat, although a little disappointed that it is dusk, and the clouds are bleeding gray all over my snow dusted forest. I turn into the very first place where there is a Parking sign and actually turn the ignition off before I put the car in park in my mad dash to get my first view of the Grand Canyon. I lock my car, throw on my hoody and half skip half walk down the trail to receive my first look at this incredible gorge. My breath catches, my eyes widen and I freeze at the enormity of what I see. Grand is not a big enough word, beautiful doesn't come close to what this is. I realize my breath is coming hard as if I have been holding it for a long time. It is snowing hard and the gray clouds are trying to blanket the canyon for the night. I walk the trail and every step is a new vantage point a fresh perspective on this thing that keeps surprising me with its beauty. You get this feeling like your are supposed to whisper in order to show reverence, when all you really want to do is scream. I did neither as I was doing a good job just to keep breathing, as I kept finding reasons to hold my breath.
The gray clouds kept sinking into the canyon as the evening got darker and quieter. I continued to follow the trail desperate to see as much as I could before the falling snow, and impending darkness stole it all from my sight. At a bend in the trail you get this amazing view that stops you in your tracks. I am not sure how long I stood there in that spot trying to memorize every peak and valley. Every color seems new to me and I can't believe I have gone my whole life without this experience. I suddenly realize that I should get out of the park before the snow gets much worse, and think suddenly that I am not sure exactly where the car is. I steal one more glance at the Canyon before turning on the trail to go back the way I came.
I stop short because directly in front of me on the walking trail is a young buck. He has his head tilted a little to the left and I wonder if he has been watching me or if he too has been captured by the magical view. He shakes his head and turns to walk beside the trail. I follow him, stopping to watch as he nibbles on this blade of grass or sniff at that tree branch. I can't believe this is happening and realize that nobody else will either without some kind of proof. I take out my camera phone and snap a couple of pictures of him, he doesn't seem to mind and I would almost swear that he posed like a pro for one of them. I keep following him as he meanders through the brush and think about how majestic he is, how regal. I think about the Disney movie Bambi and how Bambi's dad is the prince of the forest. I giggle at the thought that I just met Grand Canyon Royalty. I decide that if he had a name it would surely be something like Charles, William or Edmond. As I decide matter of factly on Edmond he steps out into the parking lot, 20 yards from my car. He stops to look at me for a moment, dips his head low as if to bow, and I will be damned if I didn't feel inclined to curtsy before he strolls across the parking lot and back into the brush, and as quickly as he appeared, he was gone. I stood still in the parking lot for a moment feeling very much like Snow White with my new wildlife friend. I get into my car to drive out of the park and to the hotel, and keep replaying it over and over in my mind. I know that today was a gift, an experience that I could never duplicate or fabricate. I am writing this now to make sure that I don't forget the details of this amazing day, the day I met the Prince of the Forest.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Slay your own dragons
From the moment girls are born it begins. We are being programmed. For your early years you are force fed the Great Disney classics like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and other such tales of love, romance and handsome Princes that risk life and limb to save you. After childhood, your teenage years, Saved by the Bell and Daytime Soap operas, more of the same story line. So by this point you have started to make certain assumptions about what love and dating is like.
When I was in middle school I really expected high school to be just like Saved by the Bell, My high school years were, in fact, nothing like I had anticipated.
So naturally you would assume that by the time I graduated from high school, moved on to college and into my adult years that I would learn that life is NOTHING like the movies, or like T.V. I did not learn this. I still actually believed that there was ONE person for me, soul mate, my other half, that was out there somewhere. By the time I was 20 I had faith that two people met, fell in love, got married and lived at the least a semi-happy ever after. There is much propaganda to fuel this thought process.
Exhibit A: Romance Novels. Same story every time, boy meets girl, girl has some reason to hate boy, boy pursues girl with undying ferocity until after "the angry kiss" they realize that they are madly in love and live happily ever after.
Exhibit B: Chick flicks. Much like Romance Novels they have a very similar theme, but always the promise that there is one perfect person for everyone, "You complete me." -Jerry McGuire "Id rather fight with you than make love to anybody else." - The Wedding Date, "You make me wanna be a better man." -As Good as it Gets. Girls love this shit, it restores the belief that there is a guy out there that will say the perfect thing at the perfect time and that you will have your "Movie Moment."
and Exhibit C: Primetime T.V. Why does Grey's Anatomy have more viewers every week than any other show, because of all the cool medical stuff? Hell NO! It's because it makes you believe. What is genius about the writing on this show is that the characters are flawed, awkward and damaged enough to give the viewer the message that they are REAL. Thus restoring faith that there really is a McDreamy that you will end up with or at the very least, enough McSteamy's to keep you busy til he realizes you are the one.
We are programmed. Partially because we want to believe. Every now and then you see just enough in real life to make you believe that it DOES happen. Your friend gets married to the perfect guy, at the perfect wedding (in which you actually loved your dress) and appear to have the perfect life...
Until he admits to an affair, they move out of their big shiny new house into separate small apartments. She confesses to you over a pint of Moose Tracks that she has never really been happy and she is relieved that she has a way out. SERIOUSLY? WTF!
And it happens again to your Goody Girl Cousin who he finds in his bed with some random guy in a cowboy hat and spurs that she is riding like its the last 8 seconds of the Rodeo Finals...
And again to your next door neighbor, who is loading her stuff in to a U-haul and tells you "We just drifted apart."
And Again to the girl at work who missed a couple days to "Iron Out" the legalities of the restraining order he put on her when she torched all his stuff on the front lawn because there were an alarming amount of text messages on his cell phone bill attributed to some "Home Wrecking Hussy, whose name is actually Chastity, can you BELIEVE that?"
And so it goes, because we are not equipped to handle what real relationships are like. Because there are too few movie moments. Because you realize that the honey moon doesn't really last forever. Because you finally understood after a couple years that you settled, or you got married to young. And because after years of feeling unappreciated someone else pays attention to all the wonderful things about you that your partner has seemed to have forgotten.
I hope I am wrong, and I hope that people really can be matched on "the 29 dimensions of compatibility" by the wonderful non enterprising folks of e-harmony. I hope that "True Love" really exists, it happens, and most of all that it lasts, but I see no evidence to support this.
I am not completely giving up on this, after all you can't undo overnight, decades of conditioned response, but at the least I will see the chick flicks, grey's anatomy's and etc as what they are, fantasy produced and marketed for my entertainment.
Update:
I have since found my Charming Prince, got married and am pursuing my happy ever after. I'll let you know how it goes. So far.... so good.
When I was in middle school I really expected high school to be just like Saved by the Bell, My high school years were, in fact, nothing like I had anticipated.
So naturally you would assume that by the time I graduated from high school, moved on to college and into my adult years that I would learn that life is NOTHING like the movies, or like T.V. I did not learn this. I still actually believed that there was ONE person for me, soul mate, my other half, that was out there somewhere. By the time I was 20 I had faith that two people met, fell in love, got married and lived at the least a semi-happy ever after. There is much propaganda to fuel this thought process.
Exhibit A: Romance Novels. Same story every time, boy meets girl, girl has some reason to hate boy, boy pursues girl with undying ferocity until after "the angry kiss" they realize that they are madly in love and live happily ever after.
Exhibit B: Chick flicks. Much like Romance Novels they have a very similar theme, but always the promise that there is one perfect person for everyone, "You complete me." -Jerry McGuire "Id rather fight with you than make love to anybody else." - The Wedding Date, "You make me wanna be a better man." -As Good as it Gets. Girls love this shit, it restores the belief that there is a guy out there that will say the perfect thing at the perfect time and that you will have your "Movie Moment."
and Exhibit C: Primetime T.V. Why does Grey's Anatomy have more viewers every week than any other show, because of all the cool medical stuff? Hell NO! It's because it makes you believe. What is genius about the writing on this show is that the characters are flawed, awkward and damaged enough to give the viewer the message that they are REAL. Thus restoring faith that there really is a McDreamy that you will end up with or at the very least, enough McSteamy's to keep you busy til he realizes you are the one.
We are programmed. Partially because we want to believe. Every now and then you see just enough in real life to make you believe that it DOES happen. Your friend gets married to the perfect guy, at the perfect wedding (in which you actually loved your dress) and appear to have the perfect life...
Until he admits to an affair, they move out of their big shiny new house into separate small apartments. She confesses to you over a pint of Moose Tracks that she has never really been happy and she is relieved that she has a way out. SERIOUSLY? WTF!
And it happens again to your Goody Girl Cousin who he finds in his bed with some random guy in a cowboy hat and spurs that she is riding like its the last 8 seconds of the Rodeo Finals...
And again to your next door neighbor, who is loading her stuff in to a U-haul and tells you "We just drifted apart."
And Again to the girl at work who missed a couple days to "Iron Out" the legalities of the restraining order he put on her when she torched all his stuff on the front lawn because there were an alarming amount of text messages on his cell phone bill attributed to some "Home Wrecking Hussy, whose name is actually Chastity, can you BELIEVE that?"
And so it goes, because we are not equipped to handle what real relationships are like. Because there are too few movie moments. Because you realize that the honey moon doesn't really last forever. Because you finally understood after a couple years that you settled, or you got married to young. And because after years of feeling unappreciated someone else pays attention to all the wonderful things about you that your partner has seemed to have forgotten.
I hope I am wrong, and I hope that people really can be matched on "the 29 dimensions of compatibility" by the wonderful non enterprising folks of e-harmony. I hope that "True Love" really exists, it happens, and most of all that it lasts, but I see no evidence to support this.
I am not completely giving up on this, after all you can't undo overnight, decades of conditioned response, but at the least I will see the chick flicks, grey's anatomy's and etc as what they are, fantasy produced and marketed for my entertainment.
Update:
I have since found my Charming Prince, got married and am pursuing my happy ever after. I'll let you know how it goes. So far.... so good.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
13 heartbreaks and the Broken Road
July 26, 2006
 | Okay, this is partially in response to my dear friend Jarrod's recent blog in which he discusses love. Here are my thoughts on the subject. You are falling without remembering stumbling, You come out of you shell so to speak, but not until the exact moment that you are blinded by the exquisite brightness do you realize that you have been previosly engulfed by darkness. Colors are more vibrant, your senses are sharpened. And you are so unexplicably happy, that it it scary. For me that is what falling in love is like. Here you are just bee-bopping along, loving life, doing the work thing and then BAM! you are in it. Not sure how you got there, but it is sooo great! The unfortunate thing is that a lot of people don't even realize they are in love until it is gone. Poor saps, you have to feel sorry for them, not even getting to appreciate it. I read once that statistically people think that they are "in love" 13 times before they actually find "the one." Let me be the Master of the Obvious for just a second here but that means 13 heartbreaks, 13! That is like touching an iron just to see if it is hot; You know there is damn good possibly you will get burned, but you do it anyway just to see? Insanity!!! So this is usually how it goes, you meet somebody, you are immiediately attracted to them and your first thought is "Okay he's/she's cute, but what is wrong with them." So somewhere in your acquaintance you discover how much you have in common and how funny the other person is until it becomes just the two of you, two peas in a pod if you will, against all the wackos, and freaks in this world. So naturally you share yourself. You reveal your hopes and dreams You tell him/her about your family. You make them meet your friends (only partly to get their approval) You go places together, have amazing sex (73% of women polled said that the sex they are having right now is the best they have ever had.) and they reciprocate. Basically you invite someone else into your world. So here you are floating in enamoured bliss when uh-oh something goes wrong, and the more you try to fix it, the worse it gets. So what do you do? You do not want to lose this love, so you grab on with both hand and frantically pull it back to you. You are convinced that you can control it, if you try hard enough. Possibly you are one of those people who choose not to acknowledge the problem in hopes that it will just go away. But it is lost. So when your lover escapes, OOPS I mean leaves, they take with them, that emotional, physical, or spirtual part of you that you gave them. I think that is the "broken" part. So now you have this void inside of you that you have to fill. The most popular method is to fill it with Tequila or your favorite booze at least for a couple days. You promise yourself that you will not be stupid anymore, that you will get through this. you surround yourself with the people who have always loved you the most, family and friends. And so you begin to heal. You are at a point now that you have have replaced all the bitterness and hate of your broken relationship with hope and resolve. You aren't broken anymore, so what do you do, you go and find love again. Sounds crazy right? Each time that your heart gets broken and your realionship fails you change. Each time you become a new person, one who is ready for a different kind of realtionship. You teach yourself to be more cautious, to ask more, reveal less. You are smarter, wiser with new tricks. You are slowly, painfully becoming the person that you need to be when you find "the one." The unfortunate thing is that each new lover has to pay for the old lovers mistakes, but that is the price you pay in love. All of the pain, the tears, the booze, the mistakes, one night stands and bad breakups are the "Broken Road." The Broken Road, that scary winding path that you travel to find by accident or mishap the one person that you are meant to be with. Weary traveler, don't despair. When your heart is broken and you feel that there is no hope, just remember that you are almost there. Just around the next bend or over the next hill, you will find it, or it will find you. Does it really take 13 times? I hope not, I am sure it is less for some and more for others. Just know that it IS out there. Don't settle, don't put up with love. I've always said that I would rather have I love I couldn't live without than one I could stand to live with. SO, with that said, I guess i should kick the tires and light the fires cause it looks like it is gonna be a long bumpy ride. |
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