As I grow up, I find myself wishing so hard to be a child again. As I age, my personality traits become more extreme: workaholic, driven, obsessive, perfectionist. Traits that can certainly be given as a blessing, but can be used as a curse if I am not careful. And with my drivenness comes another repercussion that I knew not when I was young: anxiety & fear.
As a child, I was carefree and so in love with Jesus. So unhindered by the things of the world, because I was not forced to truly live in the world. But as we become adults, living in this world becomes important and we begin to find our place in society….often taking on the traits that society breeds. I have found that the more driven I become, the more anxious I am. Lately, I have struggled with this more than ever. I manage a lot of people within my company and we are growing, so there is always something to fix. It could be 10pm at night and I could be watching a movie with Ryan, but still I feel this urge within me to forever check my email, to forever fix things, to answer asks, to keep working because something in me finds false value in that. And when I do these things, I am very vulnerable to Satan’s attacks because I am not working out of a balanced overflow of God’s rest in my life. He attacks me by using anxiety - a feeling that causes us to have no hope for the future and to wish the certain event we are fearing to be over. But if I were to haveanxiety over multiple things - my job, my tumblr, my lack of organization.... am I not just wishing all of these things away? Hoping they will all be over so I don’t have to feel fear anymore? What sadness to wish your life away because of fear. Anxiousness can be at the root of many problems. It can cause you to act in ways that are normally not yourself, because really you are just reacting out of fear that is rooted deep in your life. As I was reading the word the other day, I came across a verse that I hadn’t noticed before. In John 16, Jesus is speaking to his disciples about his death and how they will experience great sadness……but there will come a time after his resurrection when it changes. In verse 22 he says that after his resurrection, "no one will take your joy away.” This verse is rich with implication that there is a permanent joy that will come after Christ’s resurrection. This will happen when they are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. Reading this verse was a little lightbulb for me. So often I justify my anxiousness as just the suffering of what it means to live on earth. I really can lie to myself and forget that I truly have control over the way fear sucks the joy right out of me. I should be fighting for that joy. What Jesus is saying in this verse is that a time is now here where we can always have hope….because the essence of hope lives inside of us now as the Holy Spirit. So when sin comes and sadness comes, your permanent joy should well up inside of you. This is crazy amazing to me. I have joy living inside of me, etched into my DNA, hoping always, living wildly free in the love of my savior. But how do I access this joy? When I get over-obsessive about my job, or worried about how pointless I feel my situation is, it is easy to build a cage around my mind, almost protecting these anxious thoughts….because sin feeds off of it. How do we break that cage down and allow the joy that is within us to bubble over? Some things that God’s really been teaching me lately are these three things: 1. Thanksgiving changes things. When I stop worrying about my worry problem and just start thanking God for stuff in instead…..my heart changes. Philippians 4:6-7 says "Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” It can be a cliche verse in the Christian world, but this verse seriously holds the key to setting me, and perhaps you, free to lead a life that is etched with permanent joy. How do we not worry about anything? We pray. How do we pray? With thanksgiving. We see Jesus demonstrate this time and time again. When he spoke with his Father his prayers were rich with thanksgiving. This thanksgiving is what changes our hearts. It breaks the stone away until our heart becomes flesh again. When I allow fear and anxiety to creep into my life, I can almost feel my heart become stone. I do not want to pray. I don’t really care about anything except myself. I can scream and cry and beg for change in my life, but my own heart only really changes when I stop yelling thousands and thousands of words and just utter the small phrase in my hoarse voice - ‘thank you.’ Thanksgiving allows the flood gates to open and it gives you a vision and a hope for your future. Thanksgiving through prayer allows the peace of God to guard your heart and your mind. It will destroy the fear that tries to creep in and it will allow the permanent joy, which is given to you by the Spirit, to flourish. I challenge you to take a week and just thank God. Worship him for what he is done in your life. I guarantee that you will be so busy noticing the beautiful things God’s given you in your life that you will start to forget how to be anxious. 2. Rest changes things. This is a discipline. This is hard. In our culture we are taught that rest = lazy. We are one of the most overworked cultures of the world and our media and our technology is teaching us that we don’t ever have to turn off. This is so hurtful to our hearts. I have felt the effects of this in my life and it has wreaked havoc. I bounce from work task to work task, getting more done than most and priding myself on it. When I get home, I run to the gym. Then, I get on my tumblr, I answer asks and write blogs and stay busy. Even when Ryan comes home and wants to rest, I often need to find something to do while just sitting on the couch. I play with my phone. I check my Facebook. And our culture glorifies this trait as the mark of a well put together and successful woman. But this causes destruction. If your success does not yield growth, joy, and the presence of God in your life.....it is not success. God himself taught us in the beginning of Genesis that rest is important. Not just physical rest, but mental rest too. The battle is all in the spiritual world, so shouldn’t we think it was important to rest our hearts and our minds as well? Hebrews 4:9-11 says, "There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.” Without rest, we fall into disobedience. Why? Because we do not have time to be in God’s presence, to let our hearts heal and refresh, and to refocus our hearts on the hope and permanent joy that the Spirit has put within us. The idea of rest means that you take time away from your job, from technology, from busyness, and you allow Jesus to heal your heart. As I put up structure in my life for this, I have decided to only work 5 days a week. On Saturday, I try to take that day as a day of rest. I go read a book. I go on a hike and pray. I do something my heart loves that is away from media, technology, phones, work, emails, and I just allow my heart to be a child again. On Sunday, I give that day back to the Lord as a day to serve and thank him for what he has done for me. (and I have accountability in my life to make sure I keep doing this....it's way too easy to try to go back to being busy just to be busy!) With this implemented in my life, my heart feels more childlike than ever before. I can work hard through out the week without fear, without exhaustion, without the idea that I am drowning, and I can rest assured that Saturday is a day where I will be a little kid again, where my heart will be ministered to by the Spirit and my permanent joy will rise, giving me strength for the week ahead. 3. His presence changes thing. In Psalm 16:11 it says, "You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” In Jesus’ presence there is fullness of joy. When we allow for rest, we are able to also rest in his presence. He is then able to show us who we really are. This life is one reality. But there is a whole other reality, the true reality, of who we are really called to be in the spiritual. As we enter into thanksgiving and we implement rest, we need to learn to just stay in his presence…..because that's where we will see who we were meant to be and the hope that is to come for us. This will always well up a permanent joy inside of us, as our perspective will change and our hearts will begin to see the freedom we were called to walk in. Faced with the life that the world presents to us, fear and anxiety and worry are normal things, things that any hard-working person should have to deal with. Right? I don’t think so anymore. As I begin allowing thanksgiving to become a lifestyle, as I begin to take time to rest and be the child I used to be, as I take time to just be with Jesus and allow him to speak to my heart……there I find fullness of joy. The joy he talked about with his disciples. The kind of joy that stems from hope that is from his grace. That joy no one, no man or spiritual force, can ever, ever, ever take away from me. -Chelsie
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Love bears all things.
the most beautiful words of the chapter, not because they make me feel good, but because they show me a truth that i need to be forever reminded of. in times of need, in times of anger, in times of rage, these words are glanced over. my heart refusing to understand the pain it will have to go through to carry this command out, the self i will have to give up. love is not to feel good. or beautiful. or whole. or romantic. love is not just pretty country weddings. handwritten vows. love is not rosy flowers, intimate love making, many children, or years of commitment. pieces are found in these things, but they are not the full story. love is not all for me. love is to bear. love is to fight. love is to hold another up no matter the cost. love is to wrap wounds. to take poison out. to see the bleeding, ragged, oozing flesh and to find the maker's beauty somewhere inside. we’re driving in the car and holding hands. ryan makes a comment about how much money we made that week. i withdraw my hand and snap something ugly, ugly words to wound. because that is what i seem to do best. his next words break me. “you know I am for you….right? I am for you. Any comment I ever make is never aimed to hurt your heart. I am for you, I will fight for your happiness, even in small things. You never seem to believe it. Please believe it." love bears all things. he bears all things. he is teaching me how. his heart shows me Jesus’ heart. his heart shows me all i need to know about this little scripture, this Pauline thought, this command that is full of grace. thousands of years ago, another man showed me the way i should love. He saw my rotting flesh and never blinked. He walked toward me, ignoring the stench, the eyesore I was, formed from a badly distorted image of Him, twisted by an evilness that grew from the garden. i gave off serpent smell. but He came toward me anyway. He lay at my feet and sobbed. He whispered to me, before i was even made pure, and He said “I am for you. I am for you. I am for you. I will bear this." to the disgust of the so-called "pure ones", he touched my wounds, making himself impure, completely dirty by my disease, He let the filth drip onto His own skin. and with His touch, my skin was white. He bore me. the weight of my wounds. He held me up while i was still sinking down into the serpent’s home. it is the serpent’s lie that twists Ryan’s words in my ear. it is the serpent’s lie that does not allow me to believe someone would hold me even with my wounds. but I must believe it. everything hinges on this. Ryan grasps my hand, tears in his eyes, and begs me to hear him. His fingers find my wet lashes and a head lowered in shame. I am for you. I am for you. I am for you. I will bear your weight. I will fight for you. His words soak into me, music that grows because it is truth. you cannot silence truth that is spoken aloud. He is for me. my savior first, and He is the one who taught Ryan the way of this grace. the most beautiful knowledge in the world. my wounds will never overtake me. love is to bear wounds. love is to bear sin. not to shield this sin, but to instead shield the sinner. because Jesus did. He took its weight. Jesus is teaching me. Ryan is teaching me. and I understand. our love is not for soft kisses, midnight snuggles, whispered ‘i love yous,’ though those things are there to show love in other ways. but our love is first to show Jesus. and Jesus was a wound dresser, a sin bearer, a shame taker, a shield against enemy fire, a heart healer. marriage is for ryan to bear my brokenness and to take me to Jesus. marriage is for me to bear ryan’s brokenness and take him to Jesus. one of my favorites lines to the church of Corinth. love bears all things. i have received a beautiful lifetime to practice what my savior did for me. in grace, i can bear all things, because it was first done for me. i will love you through the muck and darkness of your sin. and you will love me through the disfigurements that human life has gifted to me. and perhaps the most beautiful thing of all is the fact that we can look at each other, covered in mud and filth, and see Jesus shining through. i love you because i love him.
drowning. the icy blue is calm and lonely and hurts my heart. they say it’s the most peaceful way to die and i believe it. it is silence and sound all at once. every memory dances to me across the salty sea and i am visited by friends. gold creatures hug my legs and pull me down, down, down. your voice whispers to me and i decide that if i could have anything fill my lungs over and over again, it would be you. and i pretend the water is you. and i drink you. i feel you. i hear you. you hold my hand as i dance with the waves. you kiss me through ripples and currents. down into the depths and all i see is quiet. and then you whisper to me. your invisible mouth brushes my lips and asks me to choose. choose between the floods of peace and the chaos of you. i choose you. i choose you. i choose you. the water tempts me back to the grave of pirate ships and worlds of sunken nations, mermaids long forgotten, but i cannot go, not if i never hear your heart beat again. and so i fight. i choose chaos and not peace, and i know it’s right. my feet kick the sleepy tentacles of water and my hands search for you. you guide them upwards. and then the lonely peace breaks. the expanse of blue serenity ends and my hands feel cold air. they feel pain and hurt and tears and the noise of life is deafening. my stomach doubles over with shock. my lungs seize up and panic. strong hands pull me into a fisherman’s boat. i am lost. i am found. i found peace. but i chose you. i ride toward the shore and i choose you. again. and again. and again. and again.
I must be delivered from my obsession to be loved. This obsession enslaves me to the feelings of others. I do not need to be loved by others, for I am cherished by the one who is love at it’s fullest. When Jesus is the final source of my love, my enslavement to others ends. I will be free to fully love them.
The reason why I am, and you are, so angry at those around you is because you are enslaved to them. You need them. You need them to praise you, accept you, think well of you. You may consider yourself one of those who doesn't care what people think, I thought that too. But perhaps we are wrong. If we analyze almost everything we do, it is usually for our own glorification. For example, we take on too much responsibility at church, work, school, etc. because we fear saying no. Why do we fear saying no? Because we will look bad and we will receive a reputation of negativity. Why do we care what we look like so much, how much weight we lose, how strong we are? Because we want approval. We use people to encourage us, to affirm us, to love us. We find our worth in them without even knowing it. Now this is not all bad. There is something naturally within ourselves that lends to our desire to please....but I think too many of us are letting this control us. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look decent, to be liked, to be loved, to be reputable. God made us with a need to be loved, to be glorified and to be whole. But do you know truly why he made us like this? He wanted to affirm us! He desired us so much, that he made us with an overwhelming need for love so that he could love us himself! He wanted to be our fulfillment, our covenant keeper, or lover. So you know what? Stop faking your godliness and trust Jesus with it instead. Stop it. Now. You are broken and I am broken and we are so hurt by people we sometimes can't stand it. Our innermost being cries out for people to love us and we are wounded deeply because they just don't. We are broken people who desire other broken people's love to help us feel less broken about ourselves...and then we break more when they just can't love us. Silly sounding, isn't it? Romans 8:18-21 says, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God." Jesus made us for glory. Not for our earthly glory that we all unknowingly seek. We all have that secret thought that maybe one day we will change the world, we will be discovered, talented, famous, loved, rich, powerful. Perhaps you want to make a difference and you disguise the real reason with your desire, "to just change the world for God." Sometimes I think many of us, in our confusion, want to become great. Why? Because within your world changing and your greatness, your name will be known. Many will love you, will look up to you, will need you. This makes us feel good, like we are special in this world. Guess what? You were special that day that you sinned so bad that you thought Christ could never love you again. You were special right out of the womb, before anyone knew your name. You can remain nameless, sinful, and broken and you are still special. Stop needing others to affirm this. Christ give us a hope. This hope is that we are so special that one day we will be utterly known and loved by the only love that ever mattered. By him. Now that I understand that I must find all of my glorification in Christ, I am free to love others. You see, when we are so concerned about our status and reputation, we are enslaved to others. This causes us to loathe them. How can we love those who enslave us.....we can't! It wouldn't be natural. So there is an easy solution.....stop needing to be loved by others, and you will finally be able to passionately love them yourself. You will stop being so concerned with what glory they can give you, and start being concerned with helping them achieve glory in Christ. When you stop needing love from those around you, and start needing Christ's love only, your bonds will be broken. We are pre-destined to be God's daughters and sons, loved radically by him. (Ephesians 1:5-8). We are heirs to Christ's kingdom and the receivers of all his promises. (Ephesians 3:6). God has CHOSEN us to be dearly loved. (Colossians 3:12) If we are chosen by Jesus, we don't need anyone else anymore. We don't need them to glorify us, to edify us and to choose us. We were already hand-picked by Christ himself as a child. Now that we know this, let's relearn what it truly means to find ALL of our identity in Christ. As we find our identity in him, we find our freedom to love everyone else too. your hands remind me of days when the created worked and toiled and fought for their land. your eyes are deeper than oceans and hint of days spent reading about England and Narnia, places your face is familiar with. how the time passed us quickly. Your mannerisms are silent studies on the beauty of a life that i failed at. there is magic in the mundane.
your eyes are ancient because you are ancient, dating back to when whispers of flesh flung deep into your dirt filled ears, and you arose. you danced for a maker who knew not of ipods and college and complexities and travesties. you danced for a man who laughed in his delight, and you spent your days gazing upon the feat of a being called woman. perhaps she could have been me. you fell in love. you saw destruction. you were there and were in existence and saw the magic of the world painted into vision. take me back into the pool of truth. take me back to the simplicities of pure beauty, and i promise i will run in the meadows littered with lilies that were Heaven’s extras. i will laugh in the sunrise of a day pierced with violets of passion. we will be exposed, naked in the garden, and the truth will set us free. Something is really bothering me as of late. Christian girls on tumblr/facebook and elsewhere are always saying how everything will be okay once they find a godly man to be in love with - life will be perfect, healed, satisfactory again. They will never have to worry about relationship issues and the need to be loved will be completely fulfilled forever.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE having a godly gentleman as a boyfriend. He adds to my life and makes it even more full and rich, beautiful and romantic. I encourage all women to find a man that points them to Jesus. But these men will not make life perfect. Nobody does and we should not expect them to. No matter how godly, how smart, how intelligent, how gentleman like. If we expect this from them, they are bound to fail. Only Jesus can fully satisfy that longing within us. I almost feel like we are setting ourselves up! We think that once a godly man walks into our lives, we are set to have full joy forever! This is never true. Godly men will never replace our need for a romance with our saviour. They are there to enhance that relationship with Jesus, but if we spend our days idly pining away for a Prince Charming - we will miss the only real Prince Charming there is. You will still fight with your godly man/husband and there will be times they don’t live up to all your expectations! And if you think that they were supposed to be the answer to all your problems, than you will be sorely disappointed when they become tiresome. Our joy should never depend on one sole human being, no matter how godly. Don’t let the ache for a godly man replace your pursuit of the real romance you were created for. I don’t need you to fix situations or relations. I don’t need you to intervene in my life or make things change. All I ask is for a heart that has been healed. I ask to be content. Satisfied. In love. Joyful. It doesn’t matter what you tell me to do, where you tell me to go….I’ll do it. Whatever you ask, it will be done. I will surrender it all. But all situations without joy feel lifeless, no matter how blessed I am. Give me joy…take away everything. But at least leave me with joy. I want purpose and this love at all costs. I will pursue it and I ask that you lead me to it. I am empty without you, empty without the feeling of full life you pour into me.
Sometimes I wonder the purpose Jesus has created me for. It is terrifying not knowing where we are supposed to go in life, what we are supposed to do and how we are supposed to go about doing it. This can paralyze us and we can become so frozen that we decide not to do anything at all. In the midst of this worry, we get comfortable. We get stagnant. We get lukewarm. We start enjoying our ipods, our TV shows, our food, our beds, our trashy movies. We love our comfortable things, but we feel a subtle tugging at our hearts that something is very wrong. There is an ache for something different, something new. It’s as if our soul craves adventurous living, even though we do not know it. We feel this yearning for something new because in our uncomfortable state, we crave Jesus more, we rely on him more and we are willing to do anything possible to be closer to his undying love. I was at this place, wondering what Jesus had in store for me. I have been through my share of sort of scary things, where God asked me to step out of my comfort zone. I helped my parents start a church, I went to college at a young age, I started a company with my mom and some friends. But at this point in my life I realized that I was not a radically different person like I should be. I was not doing all these things for God, but for myself instead. Upon arriving in Haiti, the sights and smells are so different than what you are used to. Trash sits burning in the street. Makeshift tents are everywhere and you can see little babies poking their heads out from behind the tent tarps. Cattle wander in the rubble of homes that were hit in the earthquake. Horns beep. People yell. You feel a sense of adventure as you ride through the streets – a murmur of unpredictable danger and excitement. Then you also feel the heartbreaking, horrifying sadness. You visit homes where babies are dying in dark rooms, shut away from the world. You feel hopelessness for them, brokenness for their pain, and the injustice of their situation. You hold them and play with them, hoping that one day they will live to see hope again. In these orphanages and hospitals, there are more cribs than floor space. There are too few volunteers and so many babies are left sobbing, neglected in their cribs. Many babies will pee, poop and throw up from sickness and it will sit on the floor until someone cleans it up. Some babies have cuts, sores, runny noses, tuberculosis, terrible sickness and tubes in their noses. The floor is concrete and dusty and most toddlers have no shoes. They giggle so much when you tickle them and call you mama if you spend more than ten minutes with them. Their playground is a pile of rubble - the remnants of a tiny home that collapsed in the earthquake. On the hopeful side, you visit ministries where mission minded women are working harder than anyone you’ve seen before. They are working to make it so Haitian women do not have to give up their children for adoption, but can instead make a living and see their babies grow up. You see hope and desperation. But more than anything, you find love. This was the most outstanding aspect of my recent trip to Haiti. The love I encountered. I met so many Christ-followers in Haiti that were TRULY world changers. These people were the very few that gave up all they had and flew to a place that many would shudder to go. These Christians that I met in Haiti were going without, day and night, to ensure a future for the Haitian people they worked with. The frivolous things we care about meant nothing to them. They do not stress about texting, facebook, tv shows and hot water in their showers like we do. They are not as concerned about their cars or their income - and they pray that God will provide when the time is right. What really concerned them was making a difference in someone’s life. The love of Jesus radiated from these Christian people, who are helping local men and women all over Haiti. And trust me, it is not an easy job. I met a 20 year old boy who went on a missions trip to Haiti last year. He liked it so much that he came back and started a medical clinic, and now works with Haitian doctors to help others. He is flying out to the Congo within the next few months, and he hasn’t even been to medical school yet! I also met a group of college kids on a missions trip who did not just go out and serve Haiti during the day, but took communion and worshipped through song when they came back at night. I met a couple that sold everything they owned and moved all the way across the world from Australia, expecting to live in a tent to serve Jesus. I met people who came down here on internships and felt so compelled to help that they just decided to stay full time and help wherever they could. I met women that worked around the clock to deliver babies at a medical clinic for teen moms and that are actively looking to expand their facilities to better help save Haitian women's' lives. As I adjusted to how different Haiti is from America – cold showers, dust, wearing the same clothes every day, riding in the back of a pick up, traffic, scary drivers, usually no internet, unsafe foods, disease, unclean water, political unrest, no air conditioning, intense heat, orphaned children everywhere, extreme pollution, garbage on every street, extreme poverty, heartbreak and death – I realized that in that place of being out of my element, I experienced the love of Christ more than anywhere else in the world. In that place of uncomfortability, you must rely on Jesus more than ever. The relying on Jesus actually feels really amazing once you actually give in and start trusting! :) I don’t want this post to come off as harsh or blunt. But coming back to America has disgusted me. We think our lives are so hard here. Come spend a day in Haiti. Hold a baby and see the young mothers who drop them off. Then you will really see heartbreak at it’s worst. How can I sit here and whine about my phone not working or my shower not being hot, when somewhere a teenage mother is being forced to part with her precious baby? How can I complain about a long day at work, when some missionaries are working day and night to save women’s lives? How can I wish I was financially more well off when tonight someone is starving to death? Jesus asks me to give up everything to follow him….can I really do this? Can you do this? Often times we try to smooth this scary question over with, “Well, God hasn’t called me to do something that radical.” But Jesus asks us to pick up our cross and follow him. Am I doing that? Are you? Where in your life are you living uncomfortably for the sake of someone else? Where in your life are you being radical for Jesus? If you can’t think of an area, than it is time to start rethinking the purpose of your life. I am going to leave you with a quote that I absolutely love. Having faith often means doing what others see as crazy. Something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers. - Francis Chan Okay, guys..... so spiritually speaking, you died. Now your new life is hidden with Christ. Christ should now be your WHOLE life. Take up your cross and follow him. Be consumed. Be the light Jesus has created you to be. Do not consider this home, but be looking for your greater purpose… a purpose where you consider others more important than yourself. Bring justice to the injustice. Bring hope to the hopeless. Bring love to the hateful. Bring salvation to the lost. Drown in the radiant love Jesus has showered upon you and show others how to do the same. Give up your life and you will gain everything. Go change the world. 2 Corinthians 6 Even in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we're beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we're telling the truth, and when God's showing his power. Even when we're doing our best setting things right; when we're praised, and when we're blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all. Dear, dear Church, I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. I'm speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively! I journaled this 5 months ago. Thank you for saving me from this, Jesus. Continue to heal me.
Crying, I fall to my knees in my room. I believe I may have something mentally wrong with me. I have no feeling for anything. I’m trying, but all I feel is extreme anger…hate. It is like the extreme joy I normally feel has been sucked from me. I am a vacuum, an abyss, a dark chasm waiting to consume any happiness that may come my way. I wish I were emotional, felt things the way humans are supposed to. Instead I feel apathy. I feel emptiness. I feel a wall. Literally inside my head….a brick wall, forcing any emotion out. It is evil….does this make me evil? I have every reason to be in love with life, happy, joyful. But the will to feel this way has escaped me. There is no way I can get it back…it’s running too fast. I am trying but am grasping at thin air. Jesus….save me. I don’t know what is wrong with me. You have abandoned me, Jesus. You have left me and I doubt you even exist. I try. I’ve prayed for months…everyday almost all day long for you to heal my soul. But you won’t. I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do in the Bible, to ask for your grace and healing. It doesn’t work. Jesus, please. I beg you. My soul cries out to you. Daddy, rescue me. What have you created me for? It can’t be this despair. And then, out of nowhere, I see you. A man is walking toward me. I know it’s you, but I’ve never seen you before. I see you and want to shout praises for you. But I can’t. My mouth is bound by something that cannot be torn. Oh Jesus, I long to shout glory to your name. You walk toward me and I feel fear at what you will think of me, A girl bound and broken, captured in my faults, hateful and selfish. I want freedom but cannot imagine how I could ever deserve it in my sin. You stop a distance away and you gaze at me. I remain on my knees, tears making pathways down my face. I rock back and forth with the emotion inside of me – the emotion of love. I want to worship you. Free me! Your look captivates me with so much love that I see myself radiated in your eyes. I see myself how I could be. I am beautiful through you. And then you start to walk toward me. Step by step. I see you open your mouth and you start to sing. The air is electric with the notes you sing to me. The song you sing is to me, in fact the song is I! You are singing me into existence, as if you are describing my soul. I can see the notes dancing from your holy mouth, like honey. It is sweet and intense. I shake with the need to sing back to you. Oh Jesus, let me sing! As you sing, love pours from you and I feel something fall from my back. I look down and a chain is at my feet. Another note of yours hits my ears and I feel lighter and lighter with every melody. “I have made you and you delight me,” Jesus sings with passion. And in my great excitement I get up, realizing that I am no longer chained down by hate. The binding on my voice falls to the ground and I feel freedom within my grasp. And then Jesus stops singing and looks at me. I do what I have always desired to do - I start to sing. And so I sing and I make notes, melodies I have never uttered before. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come. Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise forever and ever and ever. Jesus! I now looked back at Jesus and saw he was no longer singing. He gazed on me with awe, his hands raised to his father. “Jesus?” I asked in a question. Tears ran down his face as he stared at me adoringly. “This is what you have been created for. Sing to me, proclaim my name and pursue me passionately. Because I will forever pursue you, without ceasing, until you are madly in love with me. Our love story will be one for the record books.” I giggle and start singing again, with love and joy and passion. Like never before. And in seconds I open my eyes, and I am back on the floor of my room. Jesus was gone, but I knew he was still with me. And I will never stop singing. |
Hey, friend! I'm Chelsie!
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