Waiting

I feel like this post pretty much will write itself. The title was on my mind the second the page opened. I am struggling with having patience, with being patient for God to give me the things I desire. I want to list them out apart from the fact that I also don't want to sound like a demanding ten year old writing a letter to Santa. I have these list of demands, things I am putting my hope in, and if these demands are not met I will continue to hold my joy and gratitude ransom. It's pretty crazy to be able to process this and really see before my eyes the depths of my ungratefulness. I really want this promotion and I really want to have the honeymoon at Hamanasi in Belize and I am holding my worship hostage unless God grants me these things! Wow. The Holy Spirit really spoke to me the other day about my issue with patience! I feel like I'm impatient, not only in waiting for the specific things I want, but also in His power to change my heart about these things. I get resentful at God for not changing my heart when I've been praying for patience for the last week or so! I just want to FEEL patient! I want to be content with where God has me and be so incredibly grateful that I have a job and that I am getting married and that I have an incredible family and future in-laws who are incredibly loving and supportive! I can mentally comprehend the good things around me but they just don't feel like they are enough! These good gifts are not enough to satisfy my longings for intimacy, to FEEL fully known and fully loved and to FEEL great about it! When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within UPWARD I LOOK and see HIM there, who made an end of all my sin. Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted FREE; for GOD the just is satisfied to look on HIM and pardon me! If I could bold every word in that last line I would just so I can ensure it's truth impresses upon my soul for long enough to feel that it's true. It is God who is the answer to my sin, my impatience, my longings. There is no other fountain to drink from that will truly satisfy my soul. I am drinking toilet water like it's meant to nourish me. The function of toilet water is important and I can be grateful for it, but to drink from it like it will heal and/or save me is entirely wrong. I love running through sprinklers in the hot summer sun and allowing the water to evaporate off my skin in the heat as I enjoy lemonade, but sticking my face in the sprinkler to find nourishment is a terrible idea.

To move from an understanding of truth, to understand that I am worshiping God's good gifts and demanding that they operate according to my rules, instead of being grateful for the opportunity to enjoy work, enjoy Michael, enjoy my friends, enjoy my family, enjoy wedding planning, all things that are good gifts from a good Father, to move from idolatry to praise will take grace and the power of the Holy Spirit to move in me to confess my idolatry and repent of my demand for control. I may not get the job I want and I may not honeymoon in the exact spot I want, but if not He is still good. What an incredible gift on a Sunday to be drawn to confession and repentance!

Cannot Control

I want to remember all the things God can control and is wholly sovereign over. He is sovereign over traffic. He is sovereign over reception venues. He is sovereign when I feel alone. He is sovereign when I feel insecure. He can control the weather, the beautiful sunset, the cellular processes currently going on inside me. There is a sense of wonder I want to learn with regards to my physical body. I can't remember a time in my life when I spent consecutive moments living in grateful wonder of my body. All that it can do, all that it does, most of which I can't even see or explain. Every breathe, emotion, thought, sight, all are incredible gifts! This body God gave me can hug, hold, run, bike, eat, laugh, mourn, hurt, learn, grow, swim, all things that require energy and life! What an incredible gift to be grateful for tonight. Oh and SLEEP :) and enjoy a beautiful day off to remember the lives of men and women who gave their lives for the freedom I have to worship and sleep in safety. Thank you, Lord for this day, for your new mercies that have existed since the earliest moment on earth.

Can You Help Me?

Ask. Just ask. What question? Where do I even start? Can you help me? please? Can you restore to me the joy of my salvation and renew a right spirit within me? can you help me see today as a gift? can you grant him a deeper sense of Your love?
I can feel my soul thirst. The longing is clear but the solution is hazy. I want to immediately seek another. I am restless, irritable, discontent, and have a perceived solution holding me, a soul that I care deeply for, but who is not the answer to this restlessness, irritability, and discontentment.
I know there is a solution outside myself and outside of any gift You have given me. I want to appreciate the gift without being consumed by it, overwhelmed by it, placing my hope, purpose, and past all in a single thing, something not meant to carry the weight of my worship. But I cannot without You.

Can you help me seek to be satisfied in You before I turn to enjoy these wonderful gifts you have placed in my life for today?

Lunch Break

To get to sit in the midst of a work day and rest. I am so grateful for today. I'm thankful for the opportunity to ask for grace, for the opportunity to see the evidence of grace in conversations that weren't forced. I love him. So much. Yet there is a surer love that must remain our focus, a deeper well we must continue to draw from for our love will fail. It already has for goodness sakes. And yet I know it will fail again, soon. Yet as we know this, I want our hope to be in Your return, Jesus! I want to love well in light of eternity. Your eternal promise that our Father will not let a single tear fall without His knowing. That regardless of my love for You, the love you have given to us in your life, death, and resurrection will remain the foundation of my identity. 

Growing UP

There is something about making a new decision on your own for the first time that is exhilarating. There is power in this perceived freedom and a sense in which your actions are now your own, your future is in your control. oops. Yeah this is already not going well. :) I didn't want to be an adult today, I didn't want to leave napping to make lunch for this week. First off, thank you Lord for the time to make lunch. Thank you for the gift of food and to take time in silence to use my hands to create. I miss certain things about home, childhood, and Seattle, but the theme of these is the perceived freedom I had from worry and duty. It seems as though I traded one freedom for another, yet this definition of freedom is a lie. Freedom is not the ability to do whatever I want, when I want, and never having to deal with the consequences of choosing to act immaturely or irresponsibly. Freedom is found in Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross, when He took upon Himself my sin, including the selfishness behind the desire to be autonomous and have freedom from responsibility. There is freedom in knowing that God's design for me is to live in utter dependence and reliance on Him, knowing that in Him there is rest, duty, responsibility, and the freedom to be broken and in need of His love.

I don't want to assume or overcomplicate this. To presume upon these artistic and creative feelings that I now understand God, how He works, all that He does, and to present myself as one completely fine with the idea that He is sovereign over all things. I feel that way right now because I feel that we have weathered a big life event, yet if I'm honest, it was easier to love him in that moment because he wanted to be loved, cared for, and encouraged. It was easier to see the physical temptations because God was good to point them out to me. Even now, I started writing as if I was the one who handled the situation so well

Cold Tangerines Part Three

You are good

Yes this book will end and I will lose recollection of the beautiful lines my soul is moving to; the best tune is yours, the perfect harmony and melody of all.

Cold Tangerines Part Two

Keep writing, preserve this movement that is flowing from a place of acceptance, carrying the weight of a wedding, feeling that will be the moment that defines me, my identity. 

Lord, you are so sweet to us, sending your only Son. 

Jesus, holding us with both hands and calling our name. 

This country home feels so free from anxiety, busy, noisy, sin. That's the allure of going away, being absent from responsibility and commitments. It is a gift but the sin exists here just as much as when I am in traffic, sitting at my desk, working when tired. Here is quiet but there is noise, a void of the people who love me, replaced with a false silence. To escape these relationships means shallow tracks through the wet grass, twirling around with my eyes blinded by sunlight, unaware of the bee hives and potholes. To enjoy now is to breathe deeply of the fresh air, knowing that today is better because God's steadfast love satisfies my soul, Luke 12:7 "why even the hairs on your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows." 

Cold Tangerines Part One

Feeling blessed

Overwhelmed by the beautiful nature

Of sunshine

Open fields

Donkeys and honey 

While mundane is beautiful 

Big cities

Traffic

Potholes

Dirt roads

All create the beautiful world God has given us to care, create, and cultivate. 

Thank you Lord for quiet mornings, long drives, big blue skies, and rest. 

Swimming

Puppies

Old houses

Roses

Island 

Waiting

Resting in anticipation of exploration

Mundane days like lead, ink in a pen

Written to decorate the pages of our stories

Written to create a beautiful story. 

her smile

two hours of such sweet conversations. I am so thankful for the opportunity to be reminded of old friends where we can just pick up right where we've left off and share everything God is doing in this season. There is such beauty in laughs, tears, and squeals. I love getting to hear what Jesus means to her and how there is clear work He is doing, slowly but surely!
Thank you Lord for good conversations, for slowly moving in our time to grant us clarity to move beyond the surface to reach the struggles of our hearts, the joys of our souls, and the delights of our lives.

Shepherded

My cup overflows
overwhelmed
dumb sheep
holy shepherd
surely goodness and mercy will follow me
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever
keep going
keep typing
preserve this sentiment
this feeling that is the product of
result of
tears
lots of them
exposing myself
selfless is from Christ
in the house of the LORD is my shepherd I shall not want.
Selfish is two sheep, one seeing myself as important
entitled to
peace
calming sanctuaries
intimate friendships.
Grace is seeing other sheep as souls
longings
hopes
fears
brokenness.
I cannot demand rest in church,
silence is better
but I cannot demand it.
Sheep who are lost, but are brought in together
All shapes and sizes
pasts and presents
all brought together
bloodied wool
that is not our own.
this is not our home.

his smell

I love being creative and with him it is such a beautiful space to let my heart and mind run passionately and colorfully through fields of sunflowers and down hills of snow and over mountains in the springtime, when everything and everyone has found the sun again after a cold winter.

his smell reminded me of a cabin in that moment and it was a beautiful place full of safety, comfort, and warmth, a place I would want to invite family and friends, a small, simple, and warm home full of humble love.

dating has made selfishness and hiding difficult, it has meant being honest with fears and sins I would rather leave hidden in the dark, their lionesque roars kept me fearful and anxious, yet in the Light they are small, scrawny creatures that cannot touch my salvation nor the love of my Father.

he cares for me in ways I never expect and silences my frenetic energy. he calls my bluff when I hide real fears from him and they have yet to surprise him.

Forever

Forever.
First?
The Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures
He leads me beside still waters
                               waters of rest.
There is an importance to the progression of this psalm. I want to jump to forever. I want to rest in God's eternal presence and skip over the good reality that He is fully forever just as He is shepherd, just as He fulfills, satisfies me when I am thirsty and hungry, lonely and distraught, angry and discontent. There is beautiful things about God I want to skip over because I want to move toward something. There is no physical movement in rest, yet even in this reality there is a more beautiful truth, that emotional and spiritual movement so often are most real when I am on sitting down, kneeling, or face down, in total weakness and need.

Rest

I woke up this morning earlier than I expected, with a fog of uncertainty around me. There is no greater gift than the presence of God. To be aware of it when little things uncover rotted soil, where little can grow and what can take seed is soon crippled and withered by light. 

God is good to uncover rotten soil. His presence reveals just how wonderful, full of life, full of air, His love is. The tilling, the waiting, the planting, the waiting. All of it speaks to how good God is, how sovereign He is, mercy boundless, yet mercy might come in the form of drought, to expose the rot. Rain, that it might seep into the soil and quench a thirsty land. 

Let it be. 

Thirst is a feeling of want, a desire to be satisfied. 

Grace to welcome desire, thirst, and longing, and grace to understand that you alone satisfy. 

Let it mean more to me than ever before. 

Light

Dispelling darkness, light has a powerful effect on the unknown. There is darkness in not knowing. Sin lurks, but there is also God there, allowing the darkness to shake us, move us onward to warmth, light, where we cannot see what is beneath us, yet by His grace we move toward His life, trusting by grace, believing by faith that these seemingly tiny, slowly plodding steps are bringing us deeper into the Father's heart. How deep is your love toward us. How unfathomable, none can comprehend.

Forward

forward marching
chasing perfection
a different word that fills this space, feeling thirsty by His grace
for acceptance, love, faith that grounds
faith in seeds, I hear no sound
growing silently in the windy plains
isolation has found me here
staring at dirt with manicured hands
out dang spot! but it will not leave
apart from Christ's blood dropping on these
underserved hands who can create no growth
only wreckage,
slowly blinking, breathing weakly
a heart so feebly facing resistance
flesh so strongly craves perfection.
But in the silence there is hunger
desire draws my eyes up yonder
to an eternal rest
I can feel toward me
with blood stained hands by grace through faith I cling to thee.