3:37 am
it’s 3:37 am. i’m broken.
i try to find you. i know you’re here. but i can’t hear you.
i’ve pursued your character. i’ve longed for your truth.
i’ve drawn near and you’ve taken me in. i believed in you.
but i feel as if my eyes are warm with a blindfold. I can’t see. but you can.but you’re quiet. much too silent.
i don’t know where to go. who to talk to. what to say. when to stop and let go?
if it will all work out. then when? then how?
i calmed myself. i quit asking questions. i tried to listen. i’ve lived one day as it came.
i loved. was loved in return. but i was hurt too. built walls. kicked you out.
you took me in. you loved me. you always have. always will.
but I ran. hard. fast. away.
and I’ve been running ever since.
pretending. keeping it all together.
i’m broken. and can’t go anymore.
i keep it in. hold it up. piece it together when it cracks.
i rely on you. you’re the only constant.
past. present. future.
and i want to know so badly what the future holds. i want to know so badly your plans.
and why? to see if they live up to mine? to see if i approve?
i love you.
but i doubt you.
i’m weak. falling apart.
i want to know it all so bad.
but then i break. it hits me.
my life. it’s yours to keep.
you hold it together so much better than i ever will.
inaudible.
“You know those things that have pinged you? Those gifts that are beautiful? Those countries and people that are most important to you? The God you love? Keep moving toward those. And what she was pointing me toward wasn’t mystical or elusive. She kept pointing me back toward the God I’m trying to follow, the people and the places I’ve been drawn to, and the hopes that emerged within me. That’s what Jesus does too, he points us toward himself.”
“I don’t think God is giving me the silent treatment because he’s mad. I think God’s hope and plan for us is pretty simple to figure out. For those who resonate with formulas, here it is: add your whole life, your loves, your passions, and your interests together with what God said He wants us to be about and that’s your answer. If you want to know the answer to the bigger question– what’s God’s plan for the world?–buckle up: it’s us.”
“We’re God’s plan, and we always have been. We aren’t just supposed to be observers, listeners, or have a bunch of opinions. We’re not here to let everyone know what we agree and don’t agree with, because, frankly who cares? Tell me about the God you love; tell me about what He has inspired uniquely in you; tell me about what you’re going to do about it, and a plan for your life will be pretty easy to figure out from there. I guess what I’m saying is that most of us don’t get an audible plan for our lives. It’s way better than that. We get to be God’s plan for the whole world by pointing people to him.”
-Bob Goff, “Love Does”
fear.
If I could go back in time and change one thing it would be to erase my sense of fear.
Over time we learn that life doesn’t work out the way we want it to, so we back down, become gun shy and try not make eye contact with what put us in our place.
Some lessons I need. Like my unsuccessful attempt to jump my bike off a makeshift ramp in middle school, or the time when I was 5 and went to see luminaries with my neighbors without telling my parents. Those lessons I needed and learned from. But other setbacks in life have left me paralyzed. They taught me a lesson, but I also began to fear what put me down.
What if we had no fears?
Instead, what if the people who intimidate us became our motivation?
What if the trials we see approching became a source of faith?
What if we looked what scares us deep down, square in the eyes and told it, “nope, not today.”
Can you imagine what could happen, where we could go, or what we could do if we truly trusted in the faith of God and his promise to never forsake us or leave?
When we begin to lose our fear, it will be noticed. Courage and hope will soon begin to radiate and cover the dark depths of uncertainty in our eyes. People will see our willingness to take risks. Because you can’t just jump off the high dive without hesitating, and not be noticed.
When I didn’t make majorette the first time I tried out, I never thought I would never make it. I just kept working, I did whatever I had to do to put on a sparkly outfit, white boots, and makeup and march out on to the field one day. I didn’t know when it would come, I just knew it would, because no one told me it wouldn’t. No one told me I would never make majorette in college, and continue to twirl at UAB for five years despite a severe injury, surgery, and 6 months of rehab. No one ever told me I would eventually get to share being captain with one of my best friends my last year of twirling. I also never expected to get my dream job of getting paid to teach kids how to twirl baton, but I did. I never knew that any of this couldn’t happen, but God did.
I still have a long way to go, and along the way I’ve discovered that fearing something may keep us in perspective, but it can also prevent our lives to be lived to the fullest.
So go out, and live with no fear. And if you don’t think you can, just remember no one is telling you can’t.
The Lord will fight for you, and you need only be still. Exodus 14:14
never alone.
Never alone
When your hope has been broken
And the fear is unspoken but true
You’re never alone
Like a dream in a child
Or a childish dream in you
I’ll do anything that I can do
To show you my love and comfort you
When you can’t seem to find your way home
And when life gets too hard
To face on your own
I will stand as a light through your darkest unknown
I will walk with you
So you’re never alone
You’re never alone
Like a tear in the ocean
Or a star on a clear winter night
You’re never alone
When the courage you needed
Has been all but defeated in you
I’ll do anything that I can do
To show you my love and comfort you
When you can’t seem to find your way home
And when life gets too hard
To face on your own
I will stand as a light through your darkest unknown
I will walk with you
So you’re never alone
Never Alone
Never Alone
Never Alone
When you can’t seem to find your way home
And when life gets too hard
To face on your own
I will stand as a light through your darkest unknown
I will walk with you
I will walk with you
I will walk with you
So you’re never alone
giving up.
A few months ago I had enough of the “unknown” part of my life, so I decided that I would piece exactly what I wanted out of my future together.
Why this was a good idea, I am not sure. I can only guess I decided having some dim blueprint of a future was better than a blank page, so I started sketching and picking until I had my whole plan almost finished.
I was nearly to completion, which possibly may have been picking the color of my future house with white picket fence, when God threw a major wrench in this so-called perfect ideal life. I thought sorting through my possible choices and picking only what made sense to me was following God’s will, but it isn’t.
My mom once told me that the best way to find God’s will for my life is to live closely to him, developing the character and likeness of God, and allowing him to show me the desires of my heart. Through time he will reveal everything, but instead I was forcing it out of him.
I had turned what is meant to be a time of developing a relationship and learning about myself and God’s plan for my life into a hard trek up the side of a mountain, and I’m nearing the exhaustion point.
I’m tired of guessing and picking and choosing. I’m done with thinking I know what is best for me. I’m ready to give in, give up, throw in my gloves and quit fighting. 
My knees have fallen limp and lifeless to the ground. I’ve been repeatedly pounding at God with my fists clenched, throwing questions, whys, why nots, bargains and my own useless suggestions in his face, as if I knew my life better than the one who created me from nothing.
Why it’s okay to tell the creator of the universe what I’ll be doing in ten, or twenty years or even six moths from now, I’ll never know.
I do know when I give up on throwing together my so-called life, complete with job and boyfriend and pets and whatever else I was thinking, I won’t be shunned or given the cold shoulder like I’ve given God so many times. Instead he will take me in his arms, hold me, and I can only imagine him wiping away my tears.
He will replace my fear with love and my worrying with peace. What I can’t see physically in front of me, he will show with promises of his goodness. He may be quiet at times, but will never leave. And when the time is right, he will bring me to his next step and lead me hand in hand, step by step, never ahead and never behind.
live everything.
“I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
beauty for ashes.
I’ll be the first to admit that not everything in my 22 years so far has been all sunshine and roses. I’ve had hard times, made bad judgements, put trust in people who could care less and found out the hard way that I’ve got a long way to go from having it all together.
Some of these times could have been averted, or skipped or replaced with better things, but the fact is that I would not be who I am today had any thing in my life been different. And as awful and heartbreaking as these times of life are, in the long run we learn that sometimes the outcome of the burden we are undergoing will turn out better than we could have ever imagined.
We discover that our hopes and dreams are exactly that, just hopes and dreams. After we pick our head up from being denied we can move on to bigger things than we had ever planned.
We find that people we once thought would change our life, do indeed change our lives, only not as we had hoped. We learn to walk along, and grow stronger, even if it means leaving them behind.
We learn that when we think we’ve planned something flawlessly and have our final result in the bag, that we are still imperfect and in need of grace daily, if not every minute of the day.
I’m gradually learning that life is more beautiful than I have ever imagined it could be. Whether it’s the laughter resounding from a table of friends at brunch or the quiet whisper slithering through tree limbs, there is beauty and evidence of God’s creation everywhere.
My most personal reminder of God’s beauty is in my own life. My pile of trash and worthlessness is anything but that to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. When I feel as if I’m falling apart, I know that there is someone so much more powerful than I am that can hold it all together and make my mess look more like a work of art.
And in the moment when we’re down and out, broken, exhausted and refuse to go any farther, we find a new hope, a new desire and a new passion that revitalizes us and give us a purpose to live, a purpose to love and a purpose to spend our entire life with the only one who can take our ashes and turn them into a beautiful masterpiece that only the most talented artist could create.
To give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified. Isaiah 61:3
