2 poems I love

"Sonnet 116" by Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

"Batter my Heart" by John Donne

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, overthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit You but Oh, to no end!
Reason, Your viceroy in me, should defend,
But it is captive, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love You, and would be loved fain.
But I am betrothed unto Your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to You, imprison me, for I
Except You enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me.

a good Christian girl

"This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike 'What's next, Daddy?' God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who He is, and we know who we are: Father and children."
-Romans 8:15

I bought this book last week called Confessions of a Good Christian Girl, and it has blown me out of the water. In a good way. One of the main points of the first chapter is that the Christian life is not the before-and-after story it is sometimes made out to be.

I used to think that I could bring all of my brokenness to God, and then He'd fix it and everything would be fine and dandy from then on. So when I began to let God walk me through my brokenness in January, I assumed things would be just peachy by, say, April.

Nope.

I'm still walking through my issues, and I'm realizing that they will never be fully resolved this side of heaven. I'm also beginning to be at peace with that. I can be broken and have issues, but I can also live my life without fear, "adventurously expectant" as the verse says.

I'm tired of being timid and grave-tending, wallowing in my pain or denying its' existence. God and I are on good terms again, and I'm choosing to trust Him again with my heart.

I know that He won't hurt me.

look at the birds

"Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to Him than birds." -Matthew 6:25

I have a bird feeder hanging out my window, and this plastic contraption has had more of an effect on my life than I thought it would.

You see, this bird feeder, contrary to my pessimistic predictions, actually attracts birds.

Lots of them.

I have always really loved birds - I don't know why, but they fascinate me. Jesus uses them to represent simplicity and trust in God, and maybe part of the reason these little creatures captivate me is that their nature is so opposite to mine.

I try so hard. I always have. Something deep inside of me needs to feel adequate, needs to feel like I can make up to God what He has done for me. So I strive, fail, feel guilty, tell myself to suck it up, and try again. And when I am wounded, I skip the first two steps and go right to blaming myself somehow, feeling guilty, and searching desperately for love, using other means.

My spiritual life has taken an interesting turn lately - I'm angry at God, you see.

As previously mentioned, when I am hurt, I don't become angry - instead I just absorb the pain and find some way to blame it on my own inadequacies. So my counselor has been urging me to let myself feel angry and disappointed in the people that have hurt me, including God. And I'm trying.

But it's difficult, because I've never been angry at God before - I've always tried so hard to be "good." I'm realizing though, that if my relationship with Him is to go anywhere from here, I must be honest with Him instead of ignoring my feelings like I'm in the practice of doing.

It's also scary - I feel like I've had my dear Foundation pulled out from under me, and I have no previous experience of this to fall back on, that'll assure me that I'm safe. It's hard to thank Him or ask Him for things when I'm realizing that deep down inside, I'm afraid He'll hurt me again.

I'm still in love with Him, though, and I still read my Bible and pray and journal and all that, but I don't feel His presence, and that is perhaps what scares me the most.

So, for now, I am clinging to the image of the birds, because I know that God is trying to speak to me through it. I just don't understand what He is trying to say. I'm sure the amazing connection will come soon, like it always does, but for now I wait, clinging to the mercies of God that keep my faith alive during times like this.

Romans 6

"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness."

if I had words

I have been learning a great deal about the grace of God lately. There is a scene from the movie Babe that I think expresses it quite profoundly (and always makes me cry).

Babe is depressed after learning of his potential fate as pork or bacon, and his owner, Farmer Hoggett, notices that he isn't eating. Trying but failing to feed Babe, Hoggett begins, haltingly, to sing a song:

"If I had words to make a day for you
I'd sing you a morning, golden and true
I would make this day last for all time
Then fill the night deep in moonshine"

At first, the song is quiet and almost awkward, but a beautiful Irish-sounding melody beings to play in the background, and Hoggett, who has scarcely spoken 5 words throughout the movie, begins to dance around the room, almost shouting the words to the song, his lively display almost embarrassing to the viewer. Babe, seeing Hoggett's love for him and hope in his recovery, begins to hope again and is able to eat at last.

I feel pretty silly for loving this scene so much, but it speaks so clearly of the grace of God to me! I, like Babe, have felt the weight of condemnation, of my fate without God, and my legalistic side loves to remind me of the fact that I fall so short of God's perfect standard. When I am in that state of mind, God is merely a divine Master to me, the personification of a goal I will never achieve, a never-ending purveyor of "should"s.

The catalyst of this scene, though, is that Hoggett doesn't force Babe to eat or to "snap out of it." Instead of lecturing Babe on the value of proper eating habits, Hoggett invites him to eat by simply singing a song. By expressing his vitality and joy through his song, Hoggett shows Babe how much he wants him to have this same joy. There is also a fundamental shift in the relationship between Babe and Hoggett; Babe becomes a friend instead of a mere animal to Hoggett, and Hoggett looks at Babe almost as a father would his lost son.

In the same way, God does not force us to recognize His glory, or even acknowledge Him for that matter, but invites us into His life for us. Only when we hear of the hope He offers do we catch a glimpse of the life we could have with Him as our Friend and Father instead of Master.

This is what God has been teaching me lately. He offers me His grace gently, in bits small enough for me to swallow instead of overpowering me with a greater glimpse. He has been, to quote Nicholas Nickleby, "persuad[ing] me that I am safe." And I am slowly learning to trust in His goodness.

"The Lord your God is with you; He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you; He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with singing." -Zephaniah 3:17

It's always weird starting these things. How much information to give? How much to leave a mystery? How to start what I hope will become somewhat of a chronicle of my life? I guess the only way is to just jump right in, so here goes...

My mom came to visit me this weekend, which was WONDERFUL - I hadn't seen her since the beginning of August and won't see her again 'til December, so this was a real treat. We did a lot of talking, shopping, and relaxing, so this weekend was exactly what I needed.

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving, so I don't have any classes and am trying to take the day off - ish. I'll be back in the grind soon enough, so I guess I should savour the time I have before reality hits again.

Because I'm more or less officially moving back to California at the end of this school year, and because I'm "mentally underemployed" as my mom says, I keep thinking about what my life will be like back at home. I want to find a good church to get involved in (maybe Rock Harbor), teach group exercise classes, and work towards getting my teaching credential at Cal State Fullerton. I'm sure I'll be writing a lot about that in the future as I keep dreaming, but for now I'll stick to the present.

I'm trying to motivate myself to do laundry and all of the other little chores that I left until today, but it's not working so well. I'm exhausted and quite relaxed, which are a bad combination if I want to be productive.

I should get to my homework and such, but I'm looking forward to this new way of expressing my thoughts.

"Faint hearts never won fair lady." - Robin Hood