Give me only that which is True

Oh Lord, bend my hands and cut them off

For I have often struck Thee with a wayward will

When these fingers should embrace Thee by faith.

I am not weaned from all created glory, honour, wisdom, and esteem of others;

For I have a secret motive to I, my name, in all I do.

Let me not only speak the word sin,

But see the thing itself.

Give me to view a discovered sinfulness;

To know that though my sins are crucified,

They are never wholly mortified.

Hatred, malice, ill will, vain glory that hungers for and hunts after man's approval and applause;

All are crucified, forgiven, but they rise again in my sinful heart.

Oh, my crucified, but never wholly mortified sinfulness!

Oh, my lifelong damage and daily shame!

Oh, my indwelling and besetting sins!

Oh, the tormenting slavery of my sinful heart!

Destroy, Oh God, the dark guest within whose hidden presence makes my life a hell!

Yet Thou hast not left me here without Grace.

The cross still stands and meets my needs in the deepest straits of the soul.

The memory of my great sins, my many temptations, my falls

Bring afresh into my mind the rememberence of Thy great help;

Of Thy support from Heaven;

Of the great Grace that saves such a wretch as I am.

There is no treasure so wonderful

As that continuous experience

Of Thy Grace towards me which alone can subdue the risings of sin within.

Give me more of it.

The End.

This isn't fair at all.

I can't do this to you.

I can't do this to me.

I just can't do this.

You honestly have no idea just how much I don't deserve your trust.

I am a horrible, miserable wretch.

I am a hopeless cause.

My heart is dirty, damaged, dipped in grace.

Grace I do not deserve.

In any way.

And it hasn't consumed me.

Nowhere even close.

I am branded Gomer.

I am a leaver.

I am a wandering harlot who has re-entered the darkness.

Over and over and over and over.

Do not give me anything good.

Do not toss your pearls in my direction.

Do not show me your heart.

Do not ask for my heart.

Do not take my hand.

Do not look into my eyes.

Do not show me your affection.

Do not attempt to love me into becoming lovely.

Do not show me grace I am unfit to receive.

Don't.

Just don't.

I can't take it.

I'm not worthy of it.

And I never will be.

I have been too far gone.

I have been too long away.

And I have lost my way.

I am nothing but ashes.

Ashes and dust.

No beauty can come from this.

Please don't even dream of it.

You will only deceive yourself.

Darling, please, just run.

Run from this.

Run from me.

It's the only way you will be safe.

Because I will destroy this.

I will destroy you.

I am destroying me.

I find myself loving you, so I am asking you to go.

Leave me here.

Leave me.

For I cannot take you into this night.

False Alarm.

NO.

NO NO NO NO NO!

Not this time.

I can't and I won't.

No no no no no no no no no NO!

I realize that this probably makes absolutely no sense to anyone who might be reading this right now.

Fuck it.

Oh well.

There are multiple someones praying for me at this exact moment.

Whoever you are, thank you.

More than you could ever know.

Old Habits Die Hard

I can't stop throwing punches at grace.

It's getting out of hand.

I don't know how to turn this off.

..........Shit.

Here I go...

Chapter 13

What great gravity is this that drew my soul toward yours? What great force, that though I went falsely, went kicking, went disguising myself to earn your love, also disguised, to earn your keeping, your resting, your staying, your will fleshed into mine, grasped by a slowly revealed truth, the barter of my soul, the soul that I fear, the soul that I loathe, the soul that: if you will love, I will love. I will redeem you, if you will redeem me? Is this our purpose, you and I together to pacify each other, to lead each other toward the lie that we are good, that we are noble, that we need not redemption, save the one that you and I invented of our own clay?

I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.

I went looking, I wrote out a list, I drew an image, I bled a poem of you. Your were pretty, and my friends believed I was worthy of you. You were clever, but I was smarter, the only one able to lead you. You see, love, I did not love you, I loved me. And you were only a tool that I used to fix myself, to fool myself, to redeem myself. And though I have taught you to lay your lily hand in mine, I walk alone, for I cannot talk to you, lest you talk it back to me, lest I believe that I am not worthy, not deserving, not redeemed.

I want desperately for you to be my friend. But you are not my friend; you have slid up warmly to the man I wanted to be, the man I pretended to be, and I was your Jesus and, you were mine. Should I show you who I am, we may crumble. I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me.

I want to be known and loved anyway. Can you do this? I trust by your easy breathing that you are human like me, that you are fallen like me, that you are lonely, like me. My love, do I know you? What is this great gravity that pulls us so painfully toward each other? Why do we not connect? Will we be forever in fleshing this out? And how will we with words, narrow words, come into the knowing of each other? Is this God's way of meriting grace, of teaching us of the labyrinth of His love for us, teaching us, in degrees, that which He is sacrificing to join ourselves to Him? Or better yet, has He formed our being fractional so that we might conclude one great hope, plodding and sighing and breathing into one another in such a great push that we might break through into the known and being loved, only to cave into a greater perdition and fall down at His throne still begging for our acceptance? Begging for our completion?

We were fools to believe that we would redeem each other.

Were I some sleeping Adam, to wake and find you resting at my rib, to share these things that God has done, to walk you through the garden, to counsel your timid steps, your bewildered eye, your heart so slow to love, so careful to love, so sheepish that I stepped up my aim and became a man. Is this what God intended? That though He made you from my rib, it is you who is making me, humbling me, destroying me, and in so doing revealing Him.

Will we be in ashes before we are one?

What great gravity is this that drew my heart toward yours? What great force collapsed my orbit, my lonesome state? What is this that wants in me the want in you? Don't we go at each other with yielded eyes, with cumbered hands and feet, with clunky tongues? This deed is unattainable! We cannot know each other!

I am quitting this thing, but not what you think. I am not going away.

I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God's own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me.

I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding your love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again.

God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps, then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us."

Blue Like Jazz

Donald Miller

The Weight- Thrice

There's many who'll tell you they'll give you their love,
But when they say "give" they mean "take."
They"ll hang 'round just like vultures till push comes to shove.
They'll take flight when the earth starts to shake.

Someone may say that they'll always be true,
Then slip out the door 'fore the dawn.
But I won't leave you hanging on.
Another may stay till they find someone new,
Then before you know they'll be gone.
But I won't leave you hanging on;
No, I won't be that someone.

And come what may, I won't abandon you or leave you behind
Because love is a loyalty sworn, not a burning for a moment.
And come what may, I will be standing right here by your side;
I won't run away, though the storm's getting worse and there's no end in sight.

Some talk of destiny, others of fate,
But soon they'll be saying goodbye.
But I won't leave you high and dry.
Because a ring don't mean nothing
If you can't haul the weight,
And some of them won't even try,
But I won't leave you high and dry;
I won't leave you wondering why.

And come what may, I won't abandon you or leave you behind
Because love is a loyalty sworn, not a burning for a moment.
And come what may, I will be standing right here by your side;
I won't run away, though the storm's getting worse and there's no end in sight.

And storms will surely come,
But true love is a choice you must make
And you're the one that I have set my heart to choose.
As long as I live, I swear I'll see this through.

And come what may, I won't abandon you or leave you behind
Because love is a loyalty sworn, not a burning for a moment.
And come what may, I will be standing right here by your side;
I won't run away, though the storm's getting worse and there's no end in sight.

I remember how sometimes, when I was a little girl, and I wouldn't be able to go to sleep because I was crying too hard.

And somehow, the only thing that would make me stop was to grab my Bible and hold it to my chest as tight as I could... and slowly I would fall asleep that way.

I remember how sometimes, when I was a teenager, I had so much inside of me that I felt I had no idea how to express.

And somehow, the only thing that would make me feel any sort of peace would be to listen to bands like Thrice in a completely dark room... and slowly I would fall asleep that way.

I think tonight calls for both at once.

But first:

There are a few things I need to claim.

Over you.

For you.

Because if you find yourself too weak to approach the Throne of Grace to find mercy and help in this, your time of need, then I will do it for you.

I will plead your case.

And I will bring the Truth back to you.

Because yes, you are worth it.

You are worth it.

I will fight for as long as I have to until you believe that you are worth it.

Fuck

This

Shit

Lamentations 3

¹⁸ so I say, "My endurance has perished;
   so has my hope from the LORD."

¹⁹ Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
    the wormwood and the gall!
²⁰ My soul continually remembers it
   and is bowed down within me.
²¹ But this I call to mind,
   and therefore I have hope:

²² The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
   his mercies never come to an end;
²³ they are new every morning;
   great is your faithfulness.
²⁴ "The LORD is my portion," says my soul,
   "therefore I will hope in him."

²⁵ The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
   to the soul who seeks him.
²⁶ It is good that one should wait quietly
   for the salvation of the LORD.
²⁷ It is good for a man that he bear
   the yoke in his youth.

²⁸ Let him sit alone in silence
   when it is laid on him;
²⁹ let him put his mouth in the dust—
   there may yet be hope;
³⁰ let him give his cheek to the one who strikes,
   and let him be filled with insults.

³¹ For the Lord will not
   cast off forever,
³² but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
    according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
³³ for he does not willingly afflict
   or grieve the children of men.

Step Two

From:

"I'm too afraid to listen to God because I'm scared of what He might say."

To:

"I think the reason why I have been put into this time of waiting is because I am more receptive to listening to God. And I feel like He has some really beautiful and healing things to say to me."

Thank you, Abba.

Quiet my soul.

Help me hear You.

Let me feel Your love.

We're just getting started here... and there's not telling how deep this will go.

Shepherd, lead.

And I will follow.

Psalm 37:8- "... do not fret, it only leads to evil."

Peace Be Still

"And all at once,

I am unhinged

And all it took

Was one motion

One movement

In the direction towards You

To reveal the truth:

That I cannot see You for who You are"

When he said what he said, I immediately felt my stomach wrench and my spirit yell, "Not again!"

Talking it out made me realize that while I didn't believe I was being lied to, I felt I was.

And thats unfair.

But deeper than that, my gut core reaction was to think and to even say, "God is deceiving me again."

Because for the last 2 and a half years, I have felt deceived by God because of what happened with Chris.

And I didn't know how to name it such.

The mindset that I have been functioning in for so long now is that God deceived me.

Not that Chris deceived me.

I had and still do in a lot of ways have Chris up on such a pedestal that I trusted Chris' word against God's.

This is why I still have never truly healed.

Because the entire foundation that I was attempting to seek healing on was a lie.

A complete and total lie.

Every sermon I listend too, every book I read, every conversation I had was in the attempt to figure out why GOD had done this to me, NOT why God had simply allowed Chris to do it.

That Chris' word was more trustworthy than God's.

And because God "told" Chris things that were never even close to confirmed for me, I must have been mistaken.

Or that God must have been out to get me. God decieved me through Chris' decision because God moved Chris to make it.

And I am just now for the first time seeing that that is entirely and completely untrue in every way.

The dude fucked up. And I had put the blame completely on the wrong party for so long.

And while that may look like nothing more than a small mix up- it's nowhere near that.

Because then when situations like this come up that ask me to open my hand instead of keeping it clenched, I immediately retreat- because I have been convinced to believe in a God that does not have my best interest at heart by an Enemy that has worked in disgustingly quick and thorough ways.

I heard myself say: "Last time I opened my hand, my heart was ripped out."

And while that may be true for what it is, it is not BECAUSE my hand was opened that my heart was ripped out. My heart was ripped out by the one that my hand was not opened to. The One that I opened my hand to is the One who has been desiring to fully heal me ever since.

But I just couldn't trust Him.

I was too deceived.

And why was I so easily convinced of these lies?

Because I trusted Chris' word more than God's.

Why?

Because I loved Chris more than I loved God.

I clung to Chris more. I confided in Chris more.

I found my worth and my sense of self in Chris more.

It wasn't that I ever set out for that. I never went into that relationship hoping that I would make the mistake of loving Chris more than I loved God.

But it did happen.

How did it happen?

That's what I am trying to dig down into and discover.

It's multi faceted.

But I know that in part, it is because things happened too quickly for us to see warning signs to stop it from happening.

Everything beautiful grows over time.

That is how it is meant to be.

So these feelings, these questions, this anxiety, this fear... this is me not trusting.

Not wanting to trust.

And not wanting him to trust.

This is me not listening.

And not wanting him to listen.

This is the battle that I named the other night.

The battle to learn to trust You and see You for who You are.

I'm terrified that if he starts listening to God, God is going to tell him to teach me a lesson.

To leave me.

To hurt me.

Because that's what I have spent two and a half years believing about God and what God did with Chris.

That the only way I get any sembelence of love or care or affection is when I do it myself.

When in reality, that was all a farce. A dangerous and painful one at that.

I believed that offering anything up to God automatically meant that God is going to take it away.

"Last time I opened my hand, my heart was ripped out"

My spirit is yelling, "Don't listen, don't listen, don't listen! Don't even ask!"

Over and over and over.

I am fighting this with everything in me.

I want to scream and cry and run at God and punch at his chest and tell him to stop it.

To stop hurting me.

When He is trying to heal me.

I am learning that I can't run away from things like this.

I can't just pretend they're not there by not facing them.

Retreat is not an option.

Escape routes are not healthy or fair.

And neither is distracting myself from facing them by covering them up.

Wounds this deep must be stitched, not bandaged.

And that can only come after sucking out the poison first.

I am in need.

Deep and desperate.

My Shepherd, I am Much-Afraid.

And we are In The Mist.

Bring me to the Place of Anointing.

"My Lord, if You can deceive me, You may."

But I long to take You at Your word and trust that you cannot and will not.

"If this is only a test, I hope that I'm passing, cause I'm losing steam. But I still want to trust You...

"Peace be still."

"This is divine redemption"

I am learning how to live without an escape plan.

And I'm not sure how I feel about that yet.

It kind of makes me feel like curling up into the fetal position.

And it also kind of makes me want to run through an open field with my arms stretched wide.

It makes my heart beat faster than I thought was humanly possible.

And it makes my breath slower than I knew could actually keep someone alive.

It makes me want to laugh in complete freedom.

And it makes me want to cry out of total uncomfortability.

This is all just so new and sudden and unexpected and something I had resigned myself to thinking I would never need to learn.

I'm an expert at planning escape routes because after years and years of becoming terrifying good at reading the signs, I have always been able to tell when it was the right time for me to skip out first.

And almost always there was that small tinge of hope that someone would follow.

Tell me not this time.

Not like this.

Not that way.

Stay right here.

Don't.

Leave.

But all I have ever met with have been confirmed suspicions over and over to the point where, at least as I stopped thinking I was crazy, I just sadly started believing that I wasn't worth it.

And never would be.

It rooted itself so deep that I stopped ever even noticing it was there.

And just tried to live with it.

Completely unaware of how unhealthy it was.

And especially unaware of how much my heart was aching for the truth.

So time.

After time.

After time.

I looked.

I tried.

I forced.

I hurt.

I experienced, lived through, and came out of the most emotionally damaging year of my life...

...Completely unaware of what was waiting for me on the other side.

I have been sideswiped.

I have been ambushed.

I have been shown everything that I never thought I was allowed to see.

And so now I find myself here... in this position... where all I can do is cry...

From the deep and utter gratitude that I am filling up with to the point of overflowing.

For the first time in my life, I'm not tiptoeing through this.

For the first time ever, I'm not asking questions anymore.

There are no maybes.

And my mind is blown.

It is making my head spin.

It has me on the edge of sanity, really.

Because I never ever ever in a million years thought of myself as worthy of something as beautiful as this.

As understanding as this.

As comforting as this.

As sacrificial as this.

As gracious as this.

As loving as this.

As real as this.

As wonderful as you.

"This is divine redemption"

And I am left utterly speechless at how incredibly beautiful you make me feel.