At the end of the day, I am just a girl. A girl with tousled hair and no makeup, in sweats and fleece, a tired soul in a tired body. And that's enough. There is beauty in that, in the plain me devoid of decorations and trends, when I am not clothed in attempted style, attempted perfection, attempted self-redemption. There is beauty in being just what I am and nothing more. There is beauty in just being me. There is beauty in not pretending.
There is freedom in trying to be the best human I can be, and no more.
I cannot be reconciled to the world through any means. I am not meant to be redeemed by it. Every part of my life holds some sense of dissatisfaction or disappointment- in every avenue I am imperfect somehow, with branches of cracks and splinters rooted deep into who I am. Somehow it is beautiful to me tonight, even though it still hurts.
Right now I miss a place I have never been.
At the end of the day, I am a wreck. No amount of hiding or secrets or acting changes that. And even though I hate it, there is some peace in admitting it. There is peace in knowing that the answer to me is bigger than me, beyond me, beyond you, beyond whatever you think or say or do in relation to me. There is peace because in being honest with myself, I see that I need Him. There can never be another- there is no one like Him.
God, I am so tired. So tired I'm about to give up. I'm quietly suffering in here, silently bleeding in here, but I am still Yours. Will always be Yours. Please don't let me quit. Please don't let me give up hope, please don't let me forfeit the faith I had. So many things get in the way, including the things that are supposed to help me talk to You. Those things don't matter if they don't bring me in closer to You.
Promise me Jesus, that You'll be the first one to usher me in? I can't even imagine.
I feel a bit wobbly. Knees not working right. I feel tired. I feel eaten-away at. What's happening? My spirit feels wounded and disappointed. My life should not be led on my own. I should not be in control of my life, ever. I only end up slipping and barrel-rolling down the side of a hill, eventually becoming nauseous and sick and disoriented from the uncontrollable spinning. I don't want to be sunk. I don't want to feel like I am losing myself like this. I feel like my home is slowly being taken from me, slowly getting a step or two further from me, slowly losing its detail and its warmth. I don't want to wake up one day and realize that I traded my home for a cardboard box.
But I can always go home. It will always be MY home.
Oh, rest- come to me.
My name is Katie, and I am a ruiner, a wreckage of misplaced intentions, a submitter to pain and fear and dismay, a perceiver of intuitions and impressions, a deep feeler with little restraint. I am a worn-down lover, a peace-needing negligent prayer, a sensitive receiver of constant information and feedback, a daughter looking for the sunset through the cornfield, a soul both tortured and redeemed, a believer always struggling to believe.
When we create, we are imitating our Creator. We make Him proud- He is proud of the things that I spend my time creating. And while sometimes creating something can be so frustrating, it's because we are imperfect beings creating imperfect things- sometimes we create things we don't like, or things that didn't turn out the way we wanted. But God, who is perfect, created each of us perfectly- and so He has no regrets- He can only look on His creation with love...because it is part of Him, because we are a part of Him- an extension of love itself. And the intense admiration I feel whenever I come across a song that deeply touches me, I am hearing an echo of what God made. And I feel so blessed to hear it- so blessed and privileged to be someone who really hears it, not just listens to it in the background of life. I feel joy when I feel this blessed.
And no one needs to understand it for me to know it. I don't need someone else's acknowledgment of it to know that it's real. There is no theology, no discrepancy, no debate. It just is. And I feel joy and love and rest and beauty because it exists. It's like finding a piece of someone else- another piece of God's creation- that sounds like me, that sounds like home.
I hope heaven feels like this. I hope heaven feels like how this sounds.
The past couple weeks have undone me, I think. I really haven't been able to sleep well, despite being exhausted for most of the day. I think I need a deeper kind of rest. I think that I have absorbed a deep blow, and am feeling it deeper than even I realized. I do not feel at peace with myself. I feel a need.
I feel a strange sort of hurt, the kind that makes you run home. I feel an injury that follows me in blood as I go. The kind of hurt a human can't comfort. I feel as though my equilibrium has been knocked off balance, and I don't know quite exactly how to walk upright now, but I must try- must walk on, because the world demands that I go on like nothing is the matter with me.
How desperately I hate to be found in the wrong. I hate to make mistakes. I hate to do anything wrong. I know I'm human, I know that I'm not perfect- that no one is, but I still hate to feel in trouble. I think that somehow, when I find myself in that situation, I look up with innocence at my accusers, feeling that I am innocent- that there has to be a mistake somehow. And I think about this feeling that exists so deeply within me, and I realize that one day when I have to answer for myself, I will feel much the same way as this- guilty but having the conviction that I am innocent- having the need for God to do what He did for me. Long before I ever knew I needed it, He did it.
I am tired. Within. Tonight I feel the way that the world is not enough, that my life is not enough for me. I know it will never be. I won't ever be content for long, for more than a moment or two at a time- because it isn't enough to make me feel fixed, whole, at peace. As wonderful and crazy and beautiful as it all is, the creation isn't what I need. And it wears me down. I need something not broken. I need something not imperfect. Nothing else will make me feel any better. Nothing else will give me the rest I need, the peace I am seeking. I make my life out to be about so many other things than what it really is- I make myself out to be someone I really am not. All this trying and trying and trying to be...what a waste. How foolish to make myself pretend that I am comforted by things, by possessions, by the idea that I am somebody. I feel sick with all these things instead, and worried about things that I shouldn't be worried about. I have more than I need, and I am lucky- blessed- privileged just to be alive to know more and more that God is not disappointed in me- that God did not make a mistake in creating exactly me- that Jesus is the center of everything, and that I matter to Him.
Sometimes I feel like life here on earth is some game that I am forced to play. I am forced to go about bound by gravity with a soul full of unfillable holes. I am forced to go around breathing and beating, stepping forward and running, falling down and getting up; playing by the rules of government, money, and the psychology of our fallen nature. Sometimes I feel like I am sitting at a table, forced to play whatever hand was dealt to me- as equally involved in the turns as I am uninvolved and separate from them. I watch the world revolve on its axis of physics, as the turn changes hands because it has to, not because we want it to. Some would pass, if they could, but no, the game forces us to go with whatever best we can do, and disciplines us when we cheat. And the more I play the more I realize there will never be a winner. There is only the next turn, and only an end to the game when our time has run out.
I hate this. I hate feeling like that I have to go along with this strange game, when I would much rather be free from it. I would much rather quit this table and talk to my Father about it. The game makes me hunger to no longer play it- makes me long to engage in whatever "real" life is- the life outside of the game I know so well. One day I will know. And on that day, though I will be guilty of cheating my table-mates, of slandering them, of wishing them ill, I will look up and find that I am yet innocent, forgiven, accepted, loved beyond the confines of death. Because of Jesus, I can approach God. Because of Jesus, I can play the game knowing that one day it will end, and when it does, I can lay down my cards exactly where they were given to me, stand up, and go outside to walk in the garden with my gracious God, knowing that I am living for the first real time. And I will finally know the kind of rest I find myself seeking at this hour.
Oh it's been a rough week. Twice the amount of work and a handful of personal issues and three friends' birthdays and a cold....yeah, glad that's over. A friend of mine told me about this place in Isanti, it's a hermitage, I guess, and I'm thinking about going there this month if I can afford it (it's funded by donations, so it's technically free, but I'd like to at least give them something). I think I'd like to go just because it sounds cool, not as much that I feel like I need to (or want to, to be more truthful) go and be alone with God to try and tackle my own issues. I feel like my issues have become less and less powerful over me lately, and I'm glad for that. Maybe that's reason enough to go. Isn't that when our problems get the best of us? When we think we've got of the best of them?
Anyway, at church yesterday I spent the whole time journaling. Some Sundays I don't focus on the sermon and I find myself scribbling in my notebook the whole time. I was thinking about love, I guess, or more specifically, marriage. Two of my best friends got married this past summer, and because of that, marriage has been on my mind more and more. I guess I've always dreamed of getting married- always longed for that closeness with someone- that mutual place of acceptance and love and dependence. But in the last year or two, another sentiment about marriage has tip-toed its way in. And that is: fear. Horrible, awful, terrorizing fear. Mostly, I think, because I am very scared of vulnerability, and it seems the older I get, the longer it takes for me to trust people enough to let them close to me.
I guess I'm realizing though, that I don't actually want the relationship part of marriage- that's the part that's terrifying- I just want to feel valued, chosen, important, loved, validated. And marriage can't give me those things, or if it could, not in the ways I would want it to. Because obviously, Jesus is the only Person who can validate me. Literally. The only Person ever.
Problem is, I don't know how to do a relationship with God any more than I know how to do a relationship with anyone else in my life. But I like that He knew what He was doing when He created me the way He did- He knew He was taking a risk by making me so deeply set within myself. It might take me my whole life to trust Him and let Him in all the way, but so be it. He will wait.
Ultimately, if I didn't have to be close to people I probably wouldn't. People are scary. This week was an exception, for the most part, though. I missed my friends like crazy this week, and felt so grateful to know them and be known by them. I think that is starting to become a rarity for me, so I have come to appreciate it more and more in the places I do have it, even though those places are all over the state.
I've had a lot of different experiences this last week and felt a lot of difference emotions and learned a lot of different things. When it rains it pours, right? Maybe I need the hermitage more than I think. I'm tired. But, curiously, haven't been sleeping well the last few nights, and despite the hours I've spent awake in the middle of the night, cannot sleep past eighty thirty in the morning.
So, here's to sleep, binding up of wounds, and truth being revealed. Cheers.
I've had a rough couple days of it. Before that I was doing great, but it seems that right when I feel the best about myself and about my life, that's when I fall the hardest. Not surprising I guess, but well, that's what's happened. I fell off the horse. And the thing that made me get up again was remembering that passage in...um Kings? Here it is: 1 Kings 19:11-13
[The Lord said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.]
I thought of this today and realized that when I had expected Him to roar and wield His power to smite my sinful, measly life, He instead whispered a simple "I love you." Once. In the middle of my self-loathing, that's all He needed me to know. He doesn't waste words, and He doesn't baby me. I appreciate that.
I felt like Adam and Eve today. Betrayed, tricked, deceived by satan into disobeying my God. I felt fallen, struck down, weak, human. I think about Adam and Eve eating the fruit, feeling so much bewilderment that they couldn't have imagined how their lives would change- how everything would change- if they ate. Little did they know that eating the fruit would cause their fearfully and wonderfully made bodies to rot around their souls- that they were essentially choosing their own deaths by disobeying. Little did they know that this fruit would become a part of them and rip them away from the physical presence of their marvelous God- that the second it touched their tongues, their bodies were as good as dead and their relationship with God altered for thousands of years- not to be repaired for thousands of years until Jesus died.
I think Adam and Eve get a bad rap. I think most of us look at them and what they had and not be able to understand why they did it- how they could trade a piece of fruit with its promise of wisdom without the consequences God had said it had, for Eden and God Himself, their creator- their companion- their friend. But honestly. I am every ounce as human as they were and I have traded other things for God over and over again, no matter how many times I learn that God is worth more than anything else. How many times have I stood on the edge of paradise and chose the wasteland? Almost every time. And this saddens me.
Now, in the midst of my sin and my sadness, I have a whisper of God's presence in my life. Though I am saved and redeemed, I am not at Home. Though my body is a temple for God, though I am His dwelling place, His home- He is a Person I have to fight to love, fight to know, fight my very self- my very nature to be with. Still, I am grateful that He has even made a way for me to know Him. What a seriously miraculous and undeserved thing that is.
He has bound up my loose ends. Though my body will be marred and aged by the time I die, it won't matter then. How interesting that my body will return to dust because it came from dust- but that my soul will return to Jesus because it came from Jesus. All the mess I have made will be left behind and is already forgiven. I have recently been very thankful for the life I have- I don't want to take for granted these times in my life that I may look back on and think "I didn't know how good I had it!" I guess I should have the same attitude with God, right? So that one day I don't look back and think "why didn't I love God more? why did I take for granted His grace, love, mercy, forgiveness? why did I think He didn't matter as much as the other things in my life I was busy being thankful for?"
And even though I long for the things in my life to at least feel resolved, I know that is asking too much. Everything on earth is open-ended. I think God intended it to be that way. Otherwise, our flighty decisions would be final and irreversible. But God has made me feel, because of this lack of resolution- this open-endedness- that there is always the possibility of change. Good change. It's also more difficult this way, but it makes us trust Him. Just because we have to.
I'm comforted to know that when God looks at me, He sees me in every age of my life all at once. He sees the childhood me who didn't know restraint, the high schooler who didn't know anything but restraint, the college student who didn't know anything but heartache and desolation, and the me I have yet to become at age 30, 40, 50, 60...the elderly me who I have yet to decide the character of. But He knows. He sees me all the same, in one moment, sees me as exactly who I am- and can only love. He looks at me and sees my whole life, my whole existence, whereas I look in the mirror and just see the present and the past, which for me have been dismal at times. He has hope for me, and faith in me- the kind that I don't have in myself. He is confident in me, believes in me- that I can become the person He intended for me to be- the person I was at the dawn of creation- the person I would have been had I never sinned, never left Him, never disobeyed. This is who I am to Him, and this is who I will strive to be. Despite the fruit I have eaten, I will strive to hear Him in the whispers and trust in His resolution.
It's a strange thing to feel that while I am sitting in my sin, I am also sitting in forgiveness. In love. In mercy. I can't make myself understand this love I don't deserve. It's so hard for me to believe, to accept. But I want it... And everything else I've been striving for and longing after just...doesn't need to even be on my radar. I long after a love that can't fulfill me like I want it to. And I know that. Maybe that's why I'm so scared of it. More and more I've been feeling like I need to put down my arms, stop reaching and pining and holding my grudges and my disappointment...and just stop. Just sit quietly at my desk, put everything out of mind, and read. Get to know this crazy Person that has saved my wretched life from my wretched hands- until He becomes a person and not a set of beliefs or ideas.
I started the day weeping about this. Feeling terrible about myself and realizing and feeling and knowing that I can do better- and yet feeling this sense that I am loved. If there's anything that can produce true sorrow, true regret, true contriteness- it's love despite mistakes. I am only responsible to Him. I answer to only Him at the end of the day. He's the one I need to explain myself to. Humans are just humans- as flawed as I am. It doesn't matter what they think. My worth and self-esteem are not decided by them. Trying to please my coworkers is doing me no good.
Everything on the outside is falling short- everything is leaving me wanting more, and I'm tired of it. It's time I turn inward for those needs. I want to want to do better. Not for them. Not even for me... For Him. This man Jesus. I don't want to let Him down anymore.
