This is my birthday song. one of those songs you can’t stop playing because it puts words to how you feel and it’s a really good song, musically.
Sleeping at Last- Aperture. happiness is somewhere i have been before- a blurry photograph that i have since ignored. i’ll carefully adjust the aperture once more, until i set the record straight.
i’ll brush aside the dim, make room for the bright. i’ll be an editor, no, a curator of light. i’ll let my better angels always set me right, until i even out the score. until i even out the score.
God, it has been quite a year- i’ve lived a little bit and i’ve died a little more. i know that i’ve asked it before, but please let the scale tip here in my favor.
what was once the sweetest melody i’ve heard is now a memory reduced to little words. i’ll tune the orchestra and play the overture, until i pinpoint every note.
give me the heart of an archeologist, that i may dig until i prove that i exist. a subterranean cathedral in my midst, where echos come to rest. where echos come to rest. is this where echoes come to rest?
real courage is self-disclosure, putting those walls down!
A journal entry 5 months ago HIT ME hard today:
“4/24/11 Sometimes we make the mistake of seeing our walls as strength. Built on past hurts and present fears, we surround ourselves with walls. This gives us a false security and gives us a puff of confidence thinking it’s our strength. But true courage is allowing ourselves to be open, knowing who we are- the good and the bad, surrendering ourselves to this self-disclosure is real courage. It is to know we are broken on the inside, weak in our flesh but through abiding in His love, we are ALIVE, and full of joy (john 15)”
so for me, i thought my strength was being independent and the image that i have it all together. That’s my wall.
well, here’s my anouncement: “HEY EVERYBODY!!! i don’t have it all together. I’m no good by myself. i need you guys to love me, otherwise, i’m weak. i need love.”
I’m reading Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning and he defines trust as the courage to accept acceptance.
TRUST:: the courage to accept acceptance.
wow. I thought about it for a while and at first i thought i got it good. i knew i was accepted. But for me it wasnt so much that i couldn’t accept being accepted due to my flaws and shortcomings. It was more like I couldn’t accept that I NEEDED to be accepted. I realized I didn’t want to seem needy. I didn’t want to depend on other people for love. I didn’t want to seem weak. but i am- i do long for humans affection.
i think we contanstly need a refinement of the meanings of some of the cliche christian terms like- grace. purity. worship. LORD. church. the cross. love.
refinement. redefinement.
not only going deeper into the definition, although it does involve that but refinement as in a refreshment of the power and weight of these words, a wider sense of that word- in relation to a wider sense of who He is and how beautiful He is. Ask Him to redefine some of the words in our christian vocabulary closet and let Him BLOW IT UP! I guarantee you He will. Let that meaning and the heaviness of the TRUTHS in them penetrate our hearts. let it solidify in us as we walk it out in faith, trusting in these truths and trusting in the Truth.
may it be like leaven hidden in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened or like the tiny mustard seed, planted, and it grew into a tree and the birds of the air made nest in it’s branches. (luke 13)
We only know a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled...But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us towards that consummation: TRUST steadily in God, HOPE unswervingly, LOVE extravangantly.
