Life

Lately, life's got me feelin' just plain tired.

I'm not recovered from being sick yet but I'm hoping I'm past the worst of it now. Yesterday was the worst day of it so far, with having to take my runny nose and fever infected self to work and have a million people pulling on me just to come home and attempt to take good care of myself. I guess the first step to being an adult is um....not being one.

I'm having a hard time discovering my place at work. By place I mean identity. I'm not sure who I am at my job....and I'm not sure who I am in San Diego. A lot has happened this year. I left Arizona when my parents divorced and I ended up out here and now....now that the bad dreams are less and less and I'm *settled* I just don't know. I think of the people I hold dearest in my heart and wonder if now or even a couple years from now they'd even know me. I feel so far from them.

For awhile now it's like I've been on the lonely trail with Jesus, camping out every night with a fire before us and the stars above us. There's been this transition from camp fires to steady walking....walking, walking, and more walking in the wilderness. I'm not sure what were doing out here Lord. I'm not sure what you want from me. I'm not sure who I am. I feel disappointed. I feel hurt. Why do you allow the things you do? Why is it the moment we come to revelation of your promises is the exact same moment we relapse into these wretched creatures? It's like I'll do everything in my power to make sure that good thing doesn't come to pass.

I don't know. I like my job. I like my co-workers. We joke around about smoking and drinking and whatever and I try to remind myself to just be me and don't try to impress but more and more I forget who I am and I just feel tired. Sometimes I'll just be talking to someone I know and it's like I leave my body and I'm watching it happen. I'm watching myself laugh and talk. Talk about moving here and not knowing where anything is. I leave my body and I watch myself and other people and time just...

Passes.

She's a Hurricane in All Kinds of Weather

Yes, it's going around again. As it turns out my supervisor has the flu and I've got sick people coming through my line all the time. My little cousin is sick here at home as well, and I don't know why I still call him little, since he's in high school. But any who, here I am congested as ever and trying not to talk to anyone since I sound like a creepy old man whenever I speak.

Last night was rough. Technically I'm still considered "in training" but man, I make a lot of mistakes. Whoever says they love to learn is lying. I just really hate feeling stupid all the time. I was thinking of that quote from Anne of Green Gables, where Anne says "I never make the same mistake twice" and I thought of how much that is so not me. I love to beat a dead horse. And beat it more and some more until it's basically a zombie horse. Whatever the case may be, I can honestly say yes, I do make the same mistake twice, and not just twice, but roughly 1,023984,000 times. But thinking of this makes me think of my own testimony, and then similarly, the testimony of Brennan Manning.

Now Brennan Manning passed away earlier this April, but in a nutshell he was this really cool dude on fire for Jesus who lived by the saying "All is grace". No matter what sins he committed he had this radical trust in God that he was loved and that that love never quit. Brennan Manning is in some ways a controversial subject for Christians because even with his role as a preacher he struggled with
alcoholism his entire life and his marriage totally failed. Some people look at these things and say, "Man! what a shame. If only he wasn't an alcoholic and an asshole, he'd have touched sooooo many lives with the love of Jesus."

But I feel differently about it. At the end of his life all Brennan could say was, "All is grace". Does that mean his sins weren't sins and so he was excused from them? No way. But he knew, man. He totally knew how much his Heavenly Father loved him. He grasped it all the while knowing he couldn't comprehend it. If anything, Brennan's testimony was this: God loves you because of your sin. Not in spite of it. He's crazy about you because you're a dork, and you make mistakes. He loves you because you're real and you're His.

I don't know. My sick brain just felt like sharing today. The Lord told me earlier this year that if I never ever changed, he'd still be my God. That if this was it and I never learned another thing about Abba's love and I just stopped growing right here and right now, he'd still love me and bless me and be my Jesus forever. For this, I am thankful.

Because of this, I want to change.

Thorns

Alas! A day off!

Today is my catch up day from work. It's the day I do laundry and vacuum and make iced coffee and spend time with my cat and work on my blog and read my Bible and get on the elliptical and...

You get the idea.

Two revelations are heavy on my heart today.

Lately, as in this past year, the Lord has been teaching me that he wants to fill me. Fill me so he can empty me so he can fill me so he can empty me all over again. And then fill me some more. It's hard because it feels like a rollercoaster, with the ups and downs. But back in the day the Lord looked at what he'd made and said it was very good. There's joy in that. Sometimes it's good to want. To dance. To have sex. To smoke. To sleep in on Sunday. It's good to be in a place of want and need and need and want with your Savior.

The other thing I've been pondering is prayer. I think sometimes as believers we pray for other people, that their hearts would change concerning this thing or that thing. Lord, make that guy less of an asshole. Lord, give him a revelation. But what happens here, at least for me, is that while I'm praying for another person to change, I'm the one who's being changed instead.

In the book of Galatians it talks about bearing one another's burdens. It says in 6:1-2, "Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

Lord, help me to respond to this calling with a willing heart.

I've been having these dreams lately of former things. They disturb my mind but have this odd way of kick-starting my day. Everyone has a thorn in their side.

For the Longest Time

It's a lovely Saturday afternoon.

I've almost survived my first week of work, almost almost almost!

So far I like it. I'm mostly just checking people out (no pun intended) and talking to customers and learning where everything is. I feel like as soon as I learn one thing I'm tackling something else. I just hope I can learn everything anyone has ever had to learn ever in the history of Cost Plus before the holidays are under way. One of my co-workers was showing me how to do something and I kind of took the something from him and said I wanted to do it by myself, lol. Maybe I need to not be so dominating.

There just so happens to be a Walmart next door where I work that offers eye exams and coincidentally everything is so blurry lately. Bah! I've had perfect vision forever. Forever being 21 + years. But I don't know, all of a sudden everything just seems so far away. I don't want to wear glasses but who knows, they might be my ticket to a real date, lol.

It's definitely humbling, being here at my aunt's. I'm realizing I'm not the greatest person to live with. I'm realizing that being an adult means you still ask for help like you did as a teenager. Even when you avoid it and say no no no, I'm going to be an independent woman about this, God always has another plan. He constantly has me on my knees about this or that. I think that family is a ministry unto itself that I forgot about. I'm so used to loving strangers that I've forgotten how to love those closest to me. I don't know--my pride hurts. And, to quote Mr. Spock,

"I am conflicted as I once was as a child."

And for good measure,

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one."

One of these days I will meet a man (besides my father) who can quote Spock like I can.

XoXoXo

Dreams

Such strange dreams as of late. They're becoming more vivid, more mixed up, always speaking of a birth.

Something is coming. Something is getting ready to be born. I can feel it. I think others in the spiritual community can feel it too.

And it's got me thinking, like, in the midst of the crazies, it's real easy to lose your joy. But I think it's okay--more than okay--to go ahead and reclaim that joy.

Some people struggle with fear. Some people don't. I'm someone who's struggled with it my entire life. I literally have the same dream at least once a week of me boarding a plane. The plane gets ready for take off. It is taking off. And it just keeps taking off. It never settles in the air, nice and smooth and en route. It just keeps taking off...

Stuck.

The Lord knows what were like. He knows what I'm like. I can't do anything that will make him go, "Wow. Girl, I did not see that one coming." I mean, seriously? I guess my point is this:

It's really okay to hope for things unseen. It's okay to be afraid, if you're willing to be obedient. The Lord gives me courage to go on and on and on....one day at a time. One hour at a time. One minute at a time...

The Lord knows what were like. He knows you're afraid of being stuck.

"Write the vision; make it plain upon tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end - it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay."--Habakkuk 2:2-3

"Woe to him who says to a father, 'What are you begetting?' or to a woman, 'With what are you in labor?'"

Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and the one who formed him:
"Ask me things to come; will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands?"-Isaiah 45:10-11

Getting the Ball Rolling...

Gosh I'm beat!

Today was my first day working at World Market. All in all, it was a good day. I had plenty of chances to make an ass out of myself and well, you know me, I can't resist chances like that.

I get twenty percent off everything (kimchi noodles...MmMmMm!!)
I don't have to take my nose ring out. I can wear clothes I like. One of my supervisors is covered in tattoos and he's super bubbly. Everyone said hi to me today, and I admit I felt out of place yet home at the same time.

"How old are you?"

"Do you go to school nearby?"

"Are you just passing through, here?"

These were questions I answered all afternoon and yet I felt like a fish. A bloated, swollen, fish. I don't know. When I got off work I felt this need for a cigarette and I don't smoke. I felt sad. Not just tired and in desperate need of a foot massage. But sad.

I got home earlier and started watching Criminal Minds. In the background noise I heard this quote:

"I have found the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love"

which, in case you're wondering, is by Mother Teresa. I'd heard the quote before. Seen it before. It's actually been my cover photo on Facebook, lol.

So the Lord knows. After these hurts there can only be more love. That love will beget some love, and that love will beget some too, and the begetting will continue and the love will continue and as we go on we'll just see glimpses of love.

The best love ever.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."--I Corinthians 13:12

I Was Thinking...

Earlier today about how we see ourselves as children of God.

I was thinking how I've seen myself in the past and how I see myself now.

It occurred to me that the thing we think we'll never be is the thing that the Lord wants to make us.

The thing we say we're not is the thing he says we are.

Over the summer I met up with a couple girlfriends for dinner. It was a few days before coming to San Diego. I confided in them that when I compared myself to other women I only saw how fearless they were--full of confidence, total trailblazers. It made me feel awful I couldn't be like them.

One of my girls piped up, saying she'd always seen me possessing these qualities. She'd never NOT seen me as fearless and bold and wonderful.

And so today I got to thinking, the moment I say I'm not a thrill-seeker, Jesus is right besides me saying....

Yes you are.

And the moment I say I'm not a risk-taker, the Lord reminds me in a dream,

Yes, I am.

Can you imagine? Someone who loves you so much?

Things aren't always as they seem. Some of the people I know, my only wish for them, is that when they look at themselves they'd see the men and women I see when I look at them. Life really would be different then.

Where It Takes Place

I was on my way to an interview the other day when, as luck would have it, my car wouldn't start. I ended up calling my Grandpa who lives down the street from me and asking him to be my ride. He was a good sport about it--more than that. He was my knight in shining armor that day. I should have told him. He was joking in the car how his AC didn't work so I had to deal with natural air. I asked him if he liked my new bangs and he said he did. I don't know--it was a good day.

Sometimes life is just so damn ordinary. It's getting a pedicure, courtesy of your aunt. It's tweezing your cousin's eyebrows. It's taking your Grandma's clothes and tearing them to pieces and designing a new outfit from the mess. It's going for walks every day. And getting a farmer's tan. It's watching your hair grow a little longer each day It's not always going to the beach like everyone suggests. It's not always serving. It's nothing special, but it's there, it's active, and it's happening.

I believe my God has called me to live in the ordinary because that's where the extraordinary happens. I think my gift may be to love others, and I'm dying to love. Just dying. I burst with it. I ooze with it. I marinade with it--ok, ok, you get the idea. I'm dying to love.

But how can I do that, without first seeing how deep the Father's love for me?

And yet I cannot grasp it. Its gravity, its weight.

Where it all takes places.

What else? I'm getting ready to sew my Wilma Flintstone costume together for Halloween. I'm continuing to look for a job that I like (piercing friendly, sleeping in the mornings). You know I don't worry as much as I used to. It's weird. I used to worry about a lot of things. It's not that I don't care about things, because I do. I think I'm just starting to believe what it says in I John about being anointed. You know what you know, you know? It can't be taken from you. It can't be taken from me. This hope for things unseen.

A good friend told me recently that sometimes it's okay to be afraid. Don't be crushed by it. Its gravity, its weight. Just trust. You are anointed. You are His.

This is where it all takes places.