Feet On the Ground

I’ve been kind of numb the past few weeks. I think it’s a combination of dealing with the most epic heartbreak of my life, being lonely and getting thrust into a new, draining, full-time job out of nowhere. I’ve read little and written less. I haven’t talked to my best friends much because there’s nothing to say. I can’t even really get involved in my TV shows as much as usual. I can’t connect. I can’t feel.

Part of it is welcome. I can’t feel anything bad, and when I do I just shove it aside and return to the numbness. But that also means that I can’t feel anything good either. I usually love Christmas, but it feels dead to me. It’s a celebration of life and I feel none of it. I miss God’s presence and the anointing flowing in my life. Whenever I listen to a Bill Johnson sermon, I no longer feel like all he discusses is attainable. It’s foreign and I wonder how the heck I’m supposed to get there. I don’t feel the passion and the power of God in my life anymore. I miss it. I miss Him. I want it back.

I struggled for a long time with thoughts of suicide. Up until a couple months ago, I was having an onslaught of random thoughts and dreams about killing myself. It was so weird because I knew I had no real intentions of doing that, and I would never follow through on those ideas. Yet they flowed into my mind with frightening regularity, and it was a painful struggle. A direct reflection of how much I did not love life.

Somehow, though, I could handle it. I could press into that anointing and feel God’s love and know that I would have to struggle with it forever. And when it fell away after a very emotional week, I rejoiced. I thought it was over for good. Then little by little everything else started falling away too, until now I stand here feeling empty and forlorn. Then last night, I had thoughts of cutting, which is something that I’ve never really had the interest in pursuing seriously (cause like, it hurts…). This is why it doesn’t make sense to me- I don’t do it, I won’t do it, and any attempts in the past (very few) have been half-hearted indeed. Even now, my rational thought process is so much more stable than it used to be. I’m not going to do it. But there’s something that wants me destroyed and it doesn’t really care if it’s in one fell swoop or proceeds gradually.

I used to be equipped to fight against it, but I don’t feel that way anymore. It’s probably the most terrifying part of this whole mess. Maybe, though, this is what I needed to get back to the right place. It’s certainly motivating, but I’m not sure how to do it anymore.

Tags: discomfort, fail, pain, silence

The other day, I was at prayer service and just as I was getting ready to leave, a familiar song came on. The line that stood out was, “You won’t relent until You have it all, my heart is Yours.”

Hmph.

I really feel like I have nothing left. Life seems like it’s such a strange dance with God. Seeing how much He’ll let you have before everything gets yanked away. I don’t feel like that’s His goal or that’s what the end result will be like, but I feel like I have been given very little my entire life and when I really start to appreciate it, it’s yanked away. I don’t understand. I know that God needs to go first and right now He is all I really have going for me, but it’s frustrating because I’m not sure that my motivation to go hang out with Him is really all that pure. I feel like I’m praying and reading the Bible out of obligation.

I mean, I want to do those things. I want to be close to God. But how much of it is out of complete terror that He’ll make something worse happen?

Most of me just realizes that really can’t happen. I’m already too low. This is a really good time to go to God because I don’t think things can get worse. Honestly, I’m at the point where I don’t really care if they do.

Then I get a little convicted because I know that God isn’t the one making these bad things happen. But He sure is allowing the enemy to let them happen, and that’s not putting Him on my favorites list right now either. I realize that this is heading dangerously near a tantrum thrown by a spoiled little girl…or maybe just one that has been abused for way too long. I want to see God as a loving father and I want Him to help me through this because He is the only one who can. But I’m just not able to make that picture in my head of what should be fit the reality that I see in my life right now. I know that He took this away because it was in danger of taking His place in my heart, but I don’t feel Him trying to replace Himself there and I’m afraid that the big plan really isn’t working.

I know in my heart that this happened so God can put me on a new course. In all honesty, I feel like the new course is not going to generate as much happiness and peace and joy and fulfillment as the last one would have had it all worked out “like it was supposed to.” I feel like I’m settling and that this is the next best thing because I couldn’t get the real thing. I feel cheated and robbed and frustrated.

But I can’t get any lower, and that is really the only thing that gives me any hope. It’s freeing. Whoever is doing all of this to me can’t take away anything else, and it’s a relief. If you have nothing of value, you’re not afraid of getting robbed. I don’t feel like my heart is really even of any value, so I can just toss it to God and it really doesn’t feel like a big deal.

I don’t think this is what I was meant to feel from this, and I totally don’t care.

Tags: fail

So. Bianca asked. Most people didn’t ask, just said that they’d pray. But she did, and I feel like she asked because she wanted to know how to pray most effectively. Not only that, she wants to grieve with me as I grieve. I’ve honestly never really had many people who considered me that important.

It’s an extremely personal matter, and I don’t feel comfortable putting many details on here because of how personal it is, how much I’m grieving, and also because it doesn’t include only me. I don’t want to hurt the people who are killing me. I don’t want to trivialize what I’m going through by putting it into mere words.

It was a romance. A romance that hadn’t really happened yet, but that I’d had a very small taste of, and something I believe that God was working out to give to me in the future. I believed and I labored in prayer over this like nothing I’ve ever prayed for. I put my soul into this. I was willing to hang on and believe for as long as it took.

And I just found out last night that it will never be mine. I didn’t even know that he was dating her. I feel so foolish. Completely duped.

It’s one of those situations where you can’t even think beyond, “What the hell?”

Because it is hell. What I’m going through right now is the most torment I have ever experienced in my life.

And now I know why tragedy inspires most writers. All I want to do now is write out everything I feel even though it doesn’t make sense. I think I could write forever out of the pain.

I loved him more than I have ever loved anyone in my life. He was the first person I loved, and he taught me that I could actually love someone and that I wasn’t too broken to feel like this. But he doesn’t care, and he’s killing me. He broke my heart and then sent it back.

I don’t want to write forever out of the pain.

I don’t want to grieve this. I spent a very, very, very long time believing for this and I am so not okay with giving more tears and more space in my life to pain. I’ve lived a life of pain and heartache and abandonment and hurt and rejection and I don’t want it anymore.

I’m constantly nauseous. I haven’t slept. I’ve never cried that hard in my life. Of course, finding out on Facebook that the most noncommittal man in the world got down on one knee for someone else didn’t help. He gave her a ring and asked her to spend the rest of her life with him. They’ll recite vows and kiss and she’ll bear his children.

Not me.

It’s a stark reality and I have to accept it and get used to it. I feel like I can’t function. I can’t breathe right. I can’t think straight. I just can’t do anything right now. I want to stop and sit and take comfort in familiar things.

Yet somehow, in all of this, God has been here. He knew that it would happen. I would never, ever, ever have believed for something so strongly had I not believed that it was His plan and His voice and His hand involved in every single aspect of it. I believed for the hugest miracle ever. Now I realize that I didn’t hear His voice at all, and I’m terrified of the implications of that.

But He picked an unlikely source to use to speak to me since I apparently have no idea what He sounds like personally.

David Crowder Band recently released a new CD called Church Music. Ironic title considering that it’s basically techno praise and swine flu will have to manifest in actual flying pigs before we’d ever play any of those songs at my church. Yet it’s basically the best CD I’ve ever heard, and definitely the best thing I’ve heard from DC*B. I got hooked with the album A Collision and was sorely disappointed in Remedy because it was really tame and “normal” compared to A Collision. But Church Music is just on a whole other level of weird. By weird, I mean awesome.

There’s a song called Church Music – Dance (!) and you can listen to it by going here and scrolling to number 13. It has a funky beat and really does make you want to dance. But the most important part of the lyrics are:

Dance if you’re wounded
Dance if you’re torn in two
Dance broken open
Dance with nothing to lose

Perfectly free
Dance if you want to be

It’s SO amazing that God knew that I would go through this and exactly when. The CD has been out for a little while but I just got it and listened to it this morning. It is the only thing that really got me through today without being catatonic on the floor.

You know how yesterday I said that I’ve given up on being happy? The song doesn’t ask me to be happy. It just tells me to do exactly what you don’t want to do when you’re wounded and broken open – dance. Just enter into mindless movements of celebration, even if you’re like me and have no coordination whatsoever.

I’m broken. I’m wounded. I’m not sure if I can live through this. But I can be free from the grief and heartache and all I have to do is live. I don’t have to figure it out. The situation tells me that I’m worthless and will always be a reject and that my hardest efforts will grant me nothing. But God says that I’m perfect in His eyes and that His Son made me perfectly free. To be wounded and dance, and it’s beautiful to Him.

(You know, all of that sounded great, but I’m still terrified and in more pain than I can imagine. It’s 2:41 AM and I can’t sleep and my stomach is completely empty but I feel like I’m going to hurl. And I keep watching the sneak peak video of Glee where Mr. Schu raps Bust a Move. I have serious problems.)

Tags: fail, heartbreak, men, pain, romance

Facebook has become almost as annoying as Myspace was before I stopped logging into Myspace. There are ads and apps and bogus friend requests and emo song lyric statuses. But what annoys me the most are the hyper-religious statuses talking about Jesus and God and Christianity and how great their lives are because of God. I will be hugely judged for this statement, and I am totally beyond caring.

The thing is, I love Jesus with all of my heart and I am in no way ashamed to admit that. I become very territorial when He is reduced to a simple line on Facebook that someone writes in passing. I know that they’re probably well-meaning, but in my opinion they come across the same way as someone does in church when I ask how they’re doing and they smile fakely and say something ridiculous like, “Blessed and highly favored, praise the Lord!”

I DON’T CARE.

If God has performed a huge miracle in your life, like healing you from cancer, I will hallelujah dance right with you because that totally takes faith, prayer, and perseverance and you probably have something that I need to learn. But if you are just saying something about how great Jesus is just to say it, to show how good you are or perhaps just to gain some favor with God, you are doing it for the wrong reasons.

I expect my pastors to put stuff like this in their tweets and statuses, but I’m more pleased when they update about things that are really going on in their lives. If something good happens and they actually say what it is, I’ll smile. If they’re open and honest about something bad that happened, I’ll pray for them and grieve with them. It’s the same for anyone else. But if you’re just throwing random Pollyanna Jesus statements up there, it makes me roll my eyes.

“Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.” – Matthew 6:16

The reward is only that people think they’re a little more holy than the next person. God isn’t pleased with it, and this so-called sacrifice will glean no reward from Him. One of the most eye-opening comments I’ve ever heard from someone that I respect but doesn’t believe in God was when he mentioned that he thinks I’m wise because I understand so much about something he understands nothing about. I just kind of sat there with my mouth hanging open because it was so honest, and so humble, and it made me realize that if I only ramble on about my relationship with God, people who don’t know Him really won’t understand me. It’s something so basic, that God even tells us in the Bible- that people who don’t know Him will not see Him and will not understand His Word. The only way that people will come to God is if they feel a longing for something more, something greater in their life…and they won’t get it if you just walk around saying how wonderful Jesus is. You have to live it, and show why He is so wonderful.

It’s a literary technique- showing vs. telling. If you tell everything that happens, every detail about a person or situation, the story is dull. Some things have to be told because they’re either too complex or too unimportant to show. But the power of most scenes lies in the showing of how the character is the way she is, or how he figures out that he loves her, or how the single mother breaks out of poverty.

I know that Jesus is great. I don’t need to be reminded on my news feed that you know it too. Neither does anyone else, because if all I know about you is that you love Jesus you’re really just like half of the other people on my friends list but one of the more annoying ones. I have absolutely no proof that your faith is real and substantiated, or that you’re anything more than a church-going robot.

Your Facebook statuses won’t get you through the pearly gates.

Tags: change, discomfort, fail, risk

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Therefore by their fruits you will know them. – Matthew 7:18-20

I started to write this post all riled up by someone who well, gets me riled up. Hank Hanegraaff wrote a book called Christianity in Crisis that was recently re-released as an updated version for the 21st century. In it, he attacks a number of preachers that he believes are affiliated with a recent (in the context of the age of the religion) movement in Christianity called “Word of Faith.” Now, I’m not here to debate the intricacies of the WoF movement because…ugh. Makes my head spin.

I will readily admit that the overall Pentecostal/Charismatic/WoF/whateverit’scalledthesedays sector of Christianity can get dicey. There are all sorts of scandals and sketchy characters involved. In these circles it is so easy to over-spiritualize everything that happens and people get easily tripped up by Satan. Pride runs rampant because people think that they are “closer to God” for whatever reason and then they begin pointing fingers at other denominations because they are apparently slacking. It’s not pretty.

Hank calls this movement a cult, but it’s SO ironic to me that he does the exact same thing that a cult does. First off, this is a huge movement- too huge to be called a cult. Snake handling churches? RUN AWAY! But…what do cults do? They take a part of a text or larger belief and blow it out of proportion. Jesus said that believers would be impervious to snakebites or the effects of poison- as a part of persecution. He did not say, “Handle snakes for teh lulz.” He DID say not to test God. However, the point here is that one verse of scripture is interpreted out of context and with complete disregard for the rest of the Bible.

When Hank does his research (term used loosely here), he takes comments that preachers make out of context and completely disregards the rest of what they say and, most importantly, what they do. This is ultimately what caught my attention and made me not be so upset about what Hank is doing. As followers of Christ, our ultimate ministry is to love others to show them the love of Christ and to be a witness for Him. He is love! That’s what we’re supposed to show. Hank is not pushing people toward Christ- he is pushing them AWAY from Christ. His deceitful words and biased arguments are rooted in bitterness and, I would argue, fear. Because what if we ARE supposed to enjoy a blessed life and what if God really did want us to believe that we would receive what we’re praying for? He’d be missing out.

A few ministries that have helped me are the ones that I’ll mention here. Again, I don’t want to get in depth with everything, because the intricacies aren’t the point. The point is stated in the verses that I posted above. If the “rightness” or “wrongness” of what is being discussed is hard to discern just by looking at the topics, God said to look at the evidence of what that person’s actions are birthing- their fruit. Joyce Meyer’s ministry has reached thousands of people both locally and through missions work. She is practical and teaches from her experiences and hardships and has not just waited around for God to hand out blessings. She works hard and with dedication because her calling is important to her. Her ministry has helped so many people get through emotional issues (raises hand) and depression (raises other hand) when they thought that no one understood or cared or that there was no way out (waves frantically). Not only that, she is helping so many people in poverty stricken places in other countries where people don’t even have food or water. Ken Copeland has a huge prison ministry where they offer resources to inmates to help them spiritually. Jesse Duplantis’s current vision is to share the gospel with one billion people. 1,000,000,000 people. So that they can know what Jesus Christ did for them and how much He loves them and what kind of glorious life they can live, both here on Earth and in heaven. None of them get everything right, and I don’t hang onto their every word or approve of or agree with all of their methods. I don’t put faith in man. But their fruit? Countless people who have found Christ and have their names written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Satan hates that.

Apparently, so does Hank.

So Hank goes around attempting to destroy the reputations of people who are bringing the gospel of Jesus to those who are hurting and in need. He is pulling people away from the love of Christ. In my opinion, that makes for some pretty rotten fruit. Fruit that I don’t want to touch. But Hank can keep going, because their ministries are still growing- probably thanks to his words. God likes to bless people when they’re persecuted.

Hank isn’t perfect. Joyce, Jesse, Ken, Noah, Moses, Peter, Paul, and Mary aren’t and weren’t perfect. Only Jesus Christ is perfect. But as long as we point to Him and His love, glory, and power…we’re covered. And fruitful.

Tags: controversy, fail