Thanksgiving

Thankful is a big deal, especially on a day like today. A day reserved especially for giving thanks. Who to give thanks to, well, I guess that's up to you, but for me, I have a lot to give thanks for, and it all goes primarily to my God and Father.

In no particular order, here's a list of what I'm thankful for:

BLT sandwiches, and dads who make them for you when he was only planning on making one for himself.

Friends who are awesome.

Breathing. This is good for living.

Family, that while they are crazy, make things interesting.

College, that has taught me a ton.

Good music that inspires me and makes me feel like laughing, crying, dancing, and sitting still all at the same time.

Food. The end.

Grace. In the form of a sister. Especially when I need it.

Michael.

And definitely for my Savior. Because He died for me. Because everything I have comes from Him.

I'm thankful, basically, for the life that I have. It's strange to think of a different life. It's easy and probably very true to say that if God had put me in a different life with different parents, I wouldn't be what I am today. I've told people that if my parents had been any less caring and nosy about my life, I probably would have gotten seriously messed up with my relationships and possibly ruined myself first year of college. Because of God's care for me, every single thing that has happened in my life has been for my good, even though some of them have not seemed good in the end. Today it is easy to say "God is good." Tomorrow it might not be as easy, but it definitely still applies. God is good.

My challenge to you is this: How is God good in your life?

[edit] I'm also thankful for KB and spleens. [/edit]

...wha??...

Life continues at a relentless pace. I am constantly shocked at how fast things go.

The summer is already more than half way over. Just two days ago, I was hiking up through the Wilson's Creek Wilderness area with Michael. It was hot, it was sunny where there was no shade, and, gracious me, was it gorgeous. It was his birthday on the fourth, so I felt it only appropriate to see what I could do to make it to his place for his birthday.

Also, I've been reading through my old posts. I started from the beginning, in October of 2008. As I was reading the posts that seem to carry some deeper turmoil, I was trying to figure out just what had happened to make me so emotionally despondent. It was then that I remembered that I had lost a friend to a broken neck in August of '08, so of course I was going to be despondent.

It's amazing to me, and a product of God's amazing grace in my life. There have been times where I look like I have been moving on my own actions. I haven't given my whole thought and being towards pursuing God. It's really very easy to get bogged down in the emotions of the day and time that you are in, and it's easy to forget that our God is completely outside of space and time. And yet through everything, God has reached into my time and place and lifted me to him, showing me grace and mercy beyond measure.

It's a struggle to lift my head above the whirlwind of every day, to glance around me for a brief moment to realize how finite my life is, and to turn and face the God who created me, the God who loves me, the God who has adopted me and called me as his person. By God's grace, I've gotten better at this, but I still have a very long ways to go. O, the blog posts to come.

Jack Sparrow Foolish

Note to self:

Blowing on cabinet doors does not shut them. Nor does puffing on a sail in a sail boat move the boat. It just makes you look a lot like Cap'n Jack Sparrow trying to put out a fire.


Looking silly is never a very good thing, but feeling silly, feeling foolish never helps one's countenance. I'm feeling a little bit foolish. I suppose though, that comes from being tired and human. My last post, you know, the one about being nervous? I'm still nervous. But, I keep forgetting that I don't have to do it all on my own. I get most nervous when I think I have to do everything on my own. When I think I have to face each day by myself, I get very very nervous. Everything I do is like blowing on a cabinet door to get it to shut. Thank God that I don't have to blow a cabinet door shut. Thank God that I don't have to blow myself along in a sailboat with just the weakness of my breath. Thank God that He is my strength, that He is the one who scatters the wind on the earth, the one who creates the storm and calms it all at the same time.

I forget to pray that He would calm the storm in my heart, in my stomach. I'm so weak, weary, and utterly vulnerable. I have to believe that He's doing this for a reason, but I so hate being human, especially when it means that I can't take care of the problem myself. One would think that I normally style myself as a god, if suddenly feeling weak and vulnerable, helpless, makes me this uncomfortable.

God, please help me. Give me the strength to worship you with everything I have. I'm so human. But you made me this way, and you made me this way for a reason. Please help me to glorify you with my weaknesses. I love you in my tiny selfish way, I love you because you loved me first, and I don't know how to love you any other way, but please, please, let me radiate, shine, glow with your radiance, with your Glory. I want to be like Moses. I don't know what I'm doing, but I want to be like Moses. Please.

2 Corinthians 4:7-12 "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. ⁸We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. ¹⁰We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. ¹¹For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. ¹²So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you."*

May God use me to shine His light on the darkened mountains around me.

Th-th-that's all folks!
~H

*Thank you, Patrick, for the verses that helped me pull myself together.

To worship a God...

There's something strange about the word, "crush." Many guys will shy away from a girl who has a "crush" on them, or will even turn away (it seems like it) if a girl says that she has a crush on someone. If one girl tells another girl that she has a crush on someone, the second girl will automatically squeal in a very high-pitched annoying tone that some how all of us manage to do at some point in our lives, and then automatically demand to know everything. Pushy girl. The girl with a crush, if she is 12, will think it's amazing and that she couldn't possibly fall "in love" with anyone else, ever. If the girl is 16 or 17, she will feel silly for having a crush (possibly), and feel like she's in middle school again, discovering the fact that boys really don't have cooties.

As long as I can remember, I've always been told, by my parents, to guard my heart, so that when the right guy comes along, I can give him my whole heart. When I turned 12, I had my first recorded crush. I was certain that he was the one! Since I'd been a little girl, I'd read stories of princesses and their handsome knights in shining armor who worship the ground they walk on. Somewhere in my future there was going to be a fantastic wedding, I would be the one wearing white, and at the end He would be standing there, ready to pull me into His arms, to love me for who I was. Surprisingly enough, the person I had the crush on at age 12 is Him. Every young man who was remotely good looking, or had a good disposition and manners, or even possibly liked me, was considered. I pined, I dreamed, my imagination sometimes pushing me to tears. Why didn't any of them like me?

I was 18 when a young man who had entered my life several years earlier, declared that he really liked me. Unsurprisingly enough, I really liked him back. He was cute, he was funny, that crooked smile of his charming birds out of trees, my heart from its chest, and he, at the time believed in the same God I did, and was willing to ask my dad if he could date me. He had put off telling me that he liked me and wanted to date me for a long time because he knew about my parents dislike with the word "dating" and how they would rather I "courted." Then he did something that no one else ever had: he went to my daddy and asked him for permission to date me. My parents were reluctant, and it took them a whole month to get back to him, but in the end, because of many persuasive arguments that started and ended with, "Because, I just want to date him. Do I need a reason?", they gave in and told him that we could date. It was on my 19th birthday that my daddy called him up and let him know.

I was on cloud nine for three months, during which we went on dates, held hands, went to homeschool prom, but never kissed. I told him I was saving that for the man who married me. He respected that. Towards the beginning of the third month, he called me (we had a long distance relationship) and told me that he'd realized that I was more emotionally involved then he was. He said he didn't want to break up with me because he still liked me, but that he didn't want to break my heart, because he realized that I'd given it to him. He was right. He tried to hand it back on a silver platter, the way I'd handed it to him. At the end of the third month, something wasn't right. He was distant. I knew something was wrong, but he wouldn't say anything. I had to ask him if he still liked me. When he said no, I broke up with him, and told him we could go back to being friends.

My parents were worried about me. My best friend, who had steadfastly warned me against dating him, was relieved. I was glad I hadn't had my heart broken, and proud of the fact that I'd not shed a tear over any of it. I told my mom that I didn't regret any of it, because it was a huge learning experience. I told her the truth.

At the same time, I was left with thoughts running through my head. They were the same thoughts I'd had before I had a boyfriend, but now they were intensified. "Why did he tell me he loved me one month and then not mean it the next? Is something wrong with me? Why doesn't he like me anymore? What's wrong with me?" It took my conscience probing deep, asking some questions that he didn't realize hurt, to make me realize that I was feeling these things.

I swore off boys.

The end.

Ok, not really, but I did for a while decide that the only safe place for me was a nunnery...or rather a home with the nuns. (I can't think of the word right now.) Then I stumbled across a saying, on, of all things, a facebook bumpersticker: A girl's heart should be so lost in God, that a man must seek Him to find her. That completely changed how I looked at relationships.

While I had been told all my life that Prince Charming would come (dude, Cinderella's had come hadn't he?), I had also been told that God should be the center of my life, and that he would write my love story. That's what Eric and Leslie Ludy had said! I had read the books that they had written, and come to the conclusion that if I pursued God, that if I tried to bury my heart in God's, romance would come blooming into my life, instantaneously, like those funny little sponge animals that you could buy in plastic capsuls and then drop them into a cup of water and they'd expand instantly. I was convinced that if I just found the cup of water, my romance would blossom instantly.

I'd missed the mark again. I was still focused on the word "romance." I was ready to drop everything if a guy that loved God came waltzing into my life and declared his love for me. It wasn't until last semester, a mere 3 or 4 months ago, that I realized I had a "crush" on a guy again. I hadn't had a "crush," really, since that disastrous three month relationship. I'd been denying the crush for a while, I'd been fighting, because I had told God that all I really wanted was to know Him better. I wanted to bury myself in God. In todays terms, I wanted God as my boyfriend, as my husband, my lover. Even though, I'd been doing this to subconciously to find romance, God had been faithful, and honored my feeble attempts to draw closer to Him. He wrapped me in arms as large as...well, as He is, and drawn me towards him. When, in about November, I finally admited that I liked this guy, I struggled with it for about a week because I didn't want a crush. It was a hinderence in my trying to bury myself in God. I wanted romance to hit me over the head. Then, at the end of the week, I realized that I didn't have to struggle with my "crush." I could ignore it and continue to pursue God, because, God was the creator of the "crush."

I decided to sit back and go along for the ride.

What a ride it's been. I've sat back and watched as the "crush" on this guy is put on the back burner and God has put Himself front and center in my life. Every time I approach a guy, I approach him now, with prayer, asking God to lead our relationship. It has done wonders to me and my relationship with my champion, my knight in shining armor, my savior who died for me, saving me from the jaws of the dragon.

One last thing before I sign off. In answer to the questions I asked myself before I had a boyfriend and afterwards. "Why don't they like me?" My answer is, "Who cares? If they had shown me that they actually liked me and done something about it, I wouldn't have even considered God. I would have shoved Him on the back burner and forgotten about Him. Instead, God, in His sovereignty, knew exactly what I'd need to pull me towards Him, and gave me the yearning for romance, but made sure that there was no romance in sight. Instead, He stood there, waiting patiently for me, holding in His hands a white dress that is more beautiful then anything that I could ever imagine, dressed as a groom, waiting for me, His bride. Why He would choose me, me who would easily chase after something that doesn't fulfill is beyond me, but He has. It doesn't matter whether or not the guy next to me, or the guy who I am/was "crushing" on likes me. All that matters is that He adores me. He does."

I don't want a man who worships the ground I walk on. I want to worship the God whose ground I walk on.

As I end this post, Phil Wickam is singing in the background,

For You I sing, I dance,
Rejoice in this devine Romance,
Lift my heart and my hands,
To show my love, to show my love.

Amazing Insecurites

It's kinda odd how life works. I think God was confirming that it was okay to be content with my insecurities. Sunday morning, after I wrote that last blog, my pastor talked basically about loving people.

I was all concerned about what people thought of me, and as a girl, I'm concerned, worried about how guys view me. People have said that, in order to be lovable, you need to love. Pastor Berry said something similar, yet more profound on Sunday. His basic point was that my ability to truly love, depends on how dependent I am on God. If I combine both ideas, in order to be lovable, I need to love, and in order to love, I need to be completely dependent on God. I need to constantly remember how Jesus loved me, and that God provides for my every need. If I try to love people, I'm only human. I will fail to love people unless I love with the love that God gives me. God's love is infinite, and as I am filled up with His love, I am filled up to love others. As God pours into me, I can pour into others.

My insecurities are amazingly helpful in this too. The reason is because when I realize that I'm not right, when I'm not perfect, I can realize that He is right and perfect, and that He is the one that I am representing. The fact that God chooses to use broken, insecure people to show His glory among the world, the sinner reaching out to the sinner, saying, "I might be insecure about myself, I might not like myself very much, I might think I'm not great, but God, He's--He's, like, WOW. He's powerful and mighty and He loves me, even if I don't love myself, and He thinks I'm great because His son died for me! DIED for ME! Me who decided before I was born that He wasn't worth my time. Me who killed him through my sin. He died for ME. God's amazing."

Thank God for His mercy and grace, because I don't have much or any of it.