Ecce now

Father, it took me so long to learn to call me beautiful. Not because I am not messed up and scarred and sinful when it comes to the looking - without the blood. Without you.

But then, with you... the wonder of it is, with you, I am beautiful. These children are beautiful. These ugly, painful stumps of people are beautiful. These arguments and dissensions - they dissolve into your holiness. I wish I would remember to see everything in the light of you. Everything. Because you are so beautiful - that it hurts to gaze on you. And yet not looking upon you, not having the wonder of you before me - God, that hurts far too much for me to let it be that way.

I hate that I forget this. Hate that I can, for the space of one breathing moment, forget the immensity of your love in my life. How can I forget you? When with every day, every sunrise and storm, reminds me of the glory and the majesty and the wonder that is you? When every cry, and every broken plate, shards of glass on the wayside, lonely people remind me of the brokenness of you? That you took it all?

And yet, we turn away. How?

How? Why? When with every breath that we take, we are reminded of God in the stillness. The same raging, consuming, passionate God in the storm. With every breath, I breathe and I know that I began because of your Spirit. And I live because of your love.

Donne: Batter me, three-person'd God.
Yes, ravish, take entirely, consume me. And forgive my forgetting. And bless my remembering. Here we come, broken, needy, struggling to be proud. And waiting on we don't know what. And suddenly in the stillness, in the singing and the clapping, and the hoping that something will happen - You. You happen. And all I can say is a broken 'God, you're beautiful.'

After the lull

In blogging, I mean. In life, there has been no lull. Just very exciting weather and very unpredictable too. I am struggling with what God has next for me, but while I struggle, I also bask in the luxury of knowing it's his job. Not mine! So much has changed. Externally and internally.

I have changed careers, given up a job, moved countries, changed my prayer priorities (!), learnt ten times more about relationships in one year than in the past 8 or 9... It feels like I am doing more growing up now and learning about myself than I did when I was a teenager, and standing on bright but hazy thresholds. I am still standing on bright but hazy thresholds... but I have grown up, and I am much more cognizant of all that the experience holds, much more critical of my own character and reactions to situations, much more objective, much more subjective.

Sometimes the older diary entries, the blog entries, the memories, the wispy pieces of dialogue preserved in affective memory, all of these seem like that of a familiar stranger. Sometimes my reaction is a sudden remembrance of me - that me. Oh, I remember me. But it is not me any more, is it? There are days when I want to scream this. Other days when I want to take this knowledge in my arms and dance with it. Other days there are when I smile wryly at it and refuse to let it hurt or amuse. There are other days when I am absolutely, gob-smackingly floored by gratitude to the one who will not let go of me, who will hold on to me while I stretch and grow... Sometimes I am so grateful for the growth, for sense and sensibility, that I want to cry.

It's a prerogative, they say, of the woman. I wonder if that is a compliment. I suppose it depends on the complimenter. But sometimes I want to cry, in joy, in absolute, gut-busting, body-propelling joy!

Do boys cry? Yes. And *that* is a compliment. I wish more of them would though.

I don't know

What is it about missions and worship that makes me cry? And hurt so much?

Hugs

I could do with a big, huge, I-am-never-going-to-let-go-even-if-you-fear-awkwardness kind of hug. There are hugs and there are hugs. Awkward side hugs, hugs with only one person kissing, the full, frontal-grab hug, the macho back-pat hug, the back-rub, the hey-look-our-noses-fit-into-our-shoulders hug... hugs at different angles... When you know someone is coming over to hug you, you switch into alert either welcomingly or with a mental uh-oh (you know what's coming: contaaaaaaact!) and bend over with gently bent arms to be ready. At this point, you and the other huger have both completed similar preparatory manoeuvres and are at a 135 from the feet. This is the bum-sticking-out hug. There's the you-can-cry-if-you-want-to-I'm-holding-you hug.

That's the kind I want today.

Father, forgive... again

Father, forgive us for those times when we don't know that you are at work. For those times when it is easier to be superficial than to be real. Forgive us when it's easier to be less passionate - easier to push it under the covers. Easier not to wear our hearts on our sleeves.

After spending all our time thinking about you... or worse still, not thinking about you for one moment of one day... when I am with people, I am the epitome of unfaithfulness. I do not want to look committed. I don't want my first meeting to look like I am unavailable. I will pander. I'd rather not be set aside, ostracised. I'd rather be flirted with 'harmlessly' than lose friendship with the world.

Father, forgive me.

There was a guy and I thought it miiight lead to something. But it's over - which is what I prayed for. That if this wasn't good and right and perfect, then he needed to stop writing to me. It happened. Now if I can just stop analysing...

Actually, I'm doing quite well not-analysing. And I am so grateful to God for keeping me for His purposes.

Memo to me

Well, it's time to confess my acts of infidelity. I have another blog.

Not that that means that I have been regularly blogging there... What's happened since then? A broken hand, a trip home, a long-drawn bureaucratic procedure-thingummajig at Uni, and a move. Another impending move soon - in a week, no less. But those are mundane details.

I bought a new camera :) I have no answers. I have more trust, I believe... although that's hard to quantify and never enough.

I came here to say how amazing it is to be in love with God. How love makes you smile and cry through your smiling and makes you hurt and laugh without reason. How you can have a moment when you're rushing on the way to work - and nobody else knows why you're acting silly... and you act even sillier and happier for that.

And if you could hear me say this, you would hear the glands at work: His timing is never anything less than perfect.