Find me on rainy days with soft crowning frizz
Cracked
weary hands pressed against cool glass windows
Searching
searching searching for my lover
He saunters across hissing clouds of precipitating spitfire nonchalantly
Italian suits would be incinerated through the heat of his glory
His wear is of majesty and splendor
Great worldly men sprawl before him in submissive terror
Kings of majestic purple now are clothed in white surrender with soiled yellow stain
Words flounce their syllables and in one orchestrated cadence cease to breathe in total silence
When he
exhales the planets are swept to the far end of the universe
When he breathes in he consumes everything in one swift zip
Only lonely nonexistence remains when he’s through
Nothing is constant
When I was in elementary school, I was a pistol. I relished in the disapproval of others and lived to bear my own unique flag of pride and arrogance. Despite my veneer, I was probably ten times more insecure then than I am now. Then, I wore a mask of confident self-identity to hide who I was. Now I just try to remain invulnerable. Ever so slowly, the accumulated words of disapproval, gossip and light bullying took deep root as verbal cuts dug their way deeper and deeper into my mental skin, penetrating my hardened facade. I've become increasingly more and more antisocial this year. As someone who once naturally gravitated towards lonely awkward teenagers and did her best to make them feel welcome, I have become the lonely awkward teenager, who despite the most extensive of efforts refuses to feel welcome. While most kids are coming out of their shell, I am exploring mine more and more, a dark cave that echoes, dark,cold and humid- a whole new world of undiscovered biosphere. Funny how a strand of Ebola was traced back to a cave in Africa. Hmm...
1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
I read my Bible a lot. Not to feel good about myself for being such a "good Christian". But because I literally go insane otherwise. For someone who naturally and deeply bases her worth and value on of her performance and never finds rest in her achievements (no matter how much crummy advice people give me), it is a necessity for me to affirm the message of grace I so deeply claim to believe in, which releases me from my bondage of performance and fleeting pleasures that never truly satisfy me. Grace liberates me to love God and others, as I was created to, joyfully. And so, in this season of isolation, I find myself in Psalms, a large book filled with raw feelings and inexpressible groanings and inconceivable anguish and uncontainable joy, laced together by the promises of God, from the moaning of exiles in a foreign land to the wisdom of kings. The authentic, intimate words of people living out their faith in the Creator through the mercy, strength, kindness, and compassion he bestows upon them. Many times, his greatest mercies to them are allowing them to walk through the deepest waters of sorrow for a season, or maybe even a lifetime, under the promise that one day they will come home to him, where they belong, day by day, granting them just enough strength to make it through until tomorrow.
Psalms includes the prayers of David, a king, after God confronts him for cheating on his wife with another woman, whose body he impregnates and whose husband he deliberately kills, as he repents and mourns. In the lifespan of the same man, are songs of joy written as he delighted in the laws of his god that he loved so much and walked so closely to. More closely than any human-crafted relationship is the intimacy with him who provides the very bonds that hold our atoms together.
And so as I go about through a season of isolation and difficulty, these words don't just stare blankly back at me from the page of my mom's old NIV Bible. These words are alive and tangible as the God of the universe continues to be enough for his people, no matter what does or doesn't come...
Psalm 42
For the director of music. A maskil of the Sons of Korah.
so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One[d]
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.
5 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
6 My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
8 By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
11 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
When he breathes in he consumes everything in one swift zip
Only lonely nonexistence remains when he’s through
Nothing is constant
When I was in elementary school, I was a pistol. I relished in the disapproval of others and lived to bear my own unique flag of pride and arrogance. Despite my veneer, I was probably ten times more insecure then than I am now. Then, I wore a mask of confident self-identity to hide who I was. Now I just try to remain invulnerable. Ever so slowly, the accumulated words of disapproval, gossip and light bullying took deep root as verbal cuts dug their way deeper and deeper into my mental skin, penetrating my hardened facade. I've become increasingly more and more antisocial this year. As someone who once naturally gravitated towards lonely awkward teenagers and did her best to make them feel welcome, I have become the lonely awkward teenager, who despite the most extensive of efforts refuses to feel welcome. While most kids are coming out of their shell, I am exploring mine more and more, a dark cave that echoes, dark,cold and humid- a whole new world of undiscovered biosphere. Funny how a strand of Ebola was traced back to a cave in Africa. Hmm...
1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
I read my Bible a lot. Not to feel good about myself for being such a "good Christian". But because I literally go insane otherwise. For someone who naturally and deeply bases her worth and value on of her performance and never finds rest in her achievements (no matter how much crummy advice people give me), it is a necessity for me to affirm the message of grace I so deeply claim to believe in, which releases me from my bondage of performance and fleeting pleasures that never truly satisfy me. Grace liberates me to love God and others, as I was created to, joyfully. And so, in this season of isolation, I find myself in Psalms, a large book filled with raw feelings and inexpressible groanings and inconceivable anguish and uncontainable joy, laced together by the promises of God, from the moaning of exiles in a foreign land to the wisdom of kings. The authentic, intimate words of people living out their faith in the Creator through the mercy, strength, kindness, and compassion he bestows upon them. Many times, his greatest mercies to them are allowing them to walk through the deepest waters of sorrow for a season, or maybe even a lifetime, under the promise that one day they will come home to him, where they belong, day by day, granting them just enough strength to make it through until tomorrow.
Psalms includes the prayers of David, a king, after God confronts him for cheating on his wife with another woman, whose body he impregnates and whose husband he deliberately kills, as he repents and mourns. In the lifespan of the same man, are songs of joy written as he delighted in the laws of his god that he loved so much and walked so closely to. More closely than any human-crafted relationship is the intimacy with him who provides the very bonds that hold our atoms together.
And so as I go about through a season of isolation and difficulty, these words don't just stare blankly back at me from the page of my mom's old NIV Bible. These words are alive and tangible as the God of the universe continues to be enough for his people, no matter what does or doesn't come...
Psalm 42
For the director of music. A maskil of the Sons of Korah.
so my soul pants for you, my God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?
3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One[d]
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.
5 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
6 My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.
8 By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
11 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
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