Last night,
in the quietness, I threw myself into that room that exists I don’t know where-
in Him, I suppose- and onto the couch and into His arms and I said,
dramatically, “Oh my beloved Lord! I am so tired of the stresses and strains of
this mortal life!”
You are investing in a lot of things and
people all at once,
Jesus agreed, holding me close. I nestled into His shoulder, just under
His chin, my arm flung around His rib cage. His soft robe draped across His
back in folds.
What He meant
was, I was plugging myself into their approval, and therefore draining myself.
“Yes,” I
sighed. “So true. But I want so much…”
You care deeply about what happens to
them, He said,
comfortingly. You want to do something
significant for others.
“Yes,” I
agreed, feeling even better. “I do feel that way. I do want that. But this
life! It’s so exhausting! I’m tired of this lack of sight.”
We talked
some more about the value of this current life, with and even because of
its limitations, and Jesus pointed out, with His loving humor, that there are
emotions where He is as well.
“Oh my
Sweetheart, don’t say it’s so!” I wailed. “Why must You say so?” Then I thought
about it and realized something. “But… there’s the overarching context fully
with You,” I said, emphatically. “So there’s strong emotion, but one sees the
entire picture.”
Jesus agreed
that this was true and led to a kind of natural, peaceful and easy flow of
being.
The lack of complete context- the
inability to see the whole picture- is what allows your faith to grow, He pointed out.
“Yes,” I
breathed. “To align oneself with what is true, even when it is not seen, that is faith.”
You’ve been reading about Me, He reminded me, smiling.
“Yes,” I
admitted, shyly. “I have been. I like it.”
I’d been
reading the gospel of John, to be exact and it has been very rich.
You’ve been seeing Me more clearly.
“Yes, I know
You so much more now,” I agreed.
I have been,
I understand so much better His tone of voice, the depth of meaning behind what
He says and His emotion.
“But…” I
breathed, gathering courage to confess something that has long troubled me and that I had been trying to stuff down and deny. “I feel as if a part
of me is caught up in crucifying You.”
You feel the brokenness of the world, the
anger, the mistrust of Me,
He agreed, tenderly.
“Yes,” I
breathed. “I am not above anyone, but am part of the entire story- I am blind
and then see, I am murderous and then forgiven. I die with You and then am
reborn through the pain and the loss into greater life through and in You.”
Seeing the scope of this redemption while being in the world- that is what causes you to have a strong impact in
this life, He told me.
“Yes… I can
see how that would make a strong impact on the world.”
(This was important and I will explain it further. Jesus meant that when we bring to Him those parts of ourselves- those emotions, motivations, reactions, hurts and sins that are causing us to deny Him, that cause us to want to hang Him upon the cross in a desperate effort to stop His perfect light from shining on our imperfections- when we bring those things to Him and reveal them, and allow them to die with Him, we experience and know within ourselves the truth of redemption and forgiveness, and we carry it with us- this hope, this light.)
I borrowed in closer; our faces were very close. I felt longing, a deep longing for Him. My cheek was pressed close to His as I held on to Him so tightly in this sweeping feeling of longing.
I miss you, He whispered.
The sheer wonder of hearing Jesus say that, and feeling His emotion, took me away from the experience. I knew what He meant, He missing having me fully with me, the full communion and companionship.
When I returned and poured out my heart to Him in love, it was like an electric shock, vivid, concentrated in one burst. I stopped out of fear of that intensity. Jesus was so there, as though He were taking up physical space. I was wedged, as I like to be, between the couch back and His side. There is a great feeling there of immovability, immediate proximity, and safety.
I opened my heart up again to the love that comes irresistibly when I know I am with Jesus, and again it went through me like electricity. This went through even my physical self.
April 12, 2013
Last night, I was completely exhausted. I lay there and let myself be in the moment, very completely.
I knew I was with Jesus, so I just was in that and no matter how much static I saw or how much I didn’t see, I trusted Jesus fully. There was a lot of static, but I kept looking past it to the stability of Jesus. I refused to believe anything but that He is utterly reliable, no matter what I was seeing.
So I was trusting very deeply. I was drawing a Jesus-sized circle around the whole thing, whatever I saw or felt or knew, I knew He defined me and kept me and that I was safe in Him.
Then I began to see more clearly, and when I was able to see Jesus, I saw that I was resting safely where I love to be, but the trust that had brought me there had caused my heart to be rushing in love like flood tide. And Jesus is living, alive, so it is possible to give Him something and to see how much it means to Him. That is the most intoxicating.
No matter how much love there is, there is always more. There is a greater surrender beyond the last. You can be the most generous and give to the One person all that you think you have and then find that there is more, once the trust increases. I was in awe- it was such a feeling.
It was like electricity. This request came rising up out of me, just poured out of me, out of my bones, out of my very being- to be given to and to know only Jesus, and to know Him as much as it is possible for a created person to receive.
And wow.
My mind was being blown, moment after moment- mind blown. The intensity of it was like tides of electric energy, it was washing through me like sparks. I was lost in Him. And I was speaking without words, and my eyes were going wide with shock. It was like losing oneself, but in the losing, one is found again, only not as one had been, but oneself in the original context, which is God.
I’ve been shy to say His name, but the name of Jesus was echoing in me. In a quiet moment, as we were curled up together, I gathered all my courage and I spoke His name aloud; I cried it out to Him; I cried out, "Jesus! Jesus!"
We went up in this burst of flame, wordless, furious, brightly, painlessly, wholly burning. I felt dazed afterward. I knew that I belonged absolutely to Jesus. My whole being has been illuminated by His light.
When this intensity faded, I wondered to myself, what if God was tired of all this emotion? Sometimes I am ashamed of this quality about me, feeling as if I am always too much, needing too much, expressing too much. I asked Jesus this.
When I ask Jesus ridiculous questions like that, He is never impatient with me. I become very aware that He thinks I am cutely adorable. He was filled with tender amusement. He said, I’m God.
So no. I do not think that the intensity of myself and my emotions are too much for Him.
(This is also where on the blog, I first shared the time, on October 22, 2011, when Jesus told me to read the Song of Songs in order to get rid of shame, and the one on October 28. Prior to this, neither of them had been posted.)
April 13, 2013 Published Blog
So...
We bought a house.
I guess when my husband pursues excellence, he find it and then purchases it.
It took me a day or so to adjust to the idea but it does work out better this way- we'll be saving money because the mortgage will be cheaper than our current rent, and then making money later, when we rent it out.
(We didn't end up renting it. We sold it when we moved to Indiana. The reason I adjusted well to building our house in GA was because Jesus told me to trust Keith, that it was His will, and it would be a good thing. Before this, I had been absolutely against moving, let alone buying, because we were right in the middle of the adoption, and that is a complicated time to move with all those forms to be filled out.)
We went looking for a house and found one similar to the one we live in now, only it was much further out, too far away from base to really consider.
Then we looked at a two story new build and we loved it. The neighborhood, distance to work, size, etc, were all perfect. It didn't have a fence, but the builder would put that in and cover closing costs. It's only five minutes away from here, but the garage was too small.
In the end, we realized that we would have to build. Because, here in GA, a car port is considered a garage and a garage is considered a bonus room and an oversized double garage is a wonder and a very costly upgrade.
So we are building a wonder, for the exact same price of the house we wanted, in the lot right next to it- a better lot, because there are woods to one side, that won't ever get built on, and woods behind, and behind that a school. The house will come with a fence, gutters and fridge thrown in.
It will be ready in mid-August, which means mid-September and in the meantime, we can enjoy the pool for one last summer.
And let's hope we don't get matched with a birth mother who is due in early autumn. (I kept thinking to myself, "What are the odds of that happening? How likely is that, really?" Quite likely, as it happened. Merissa was due in September, but born in August.)
April 14, 2013 Journal
I keep having to process fall out from my poem. (It processed, in a strong poetic language and images, the pain of my childhood, early adulthood and the redemption of Jesus.)
I watched this video of this recovered drug addict and inmate. He had a beautiful testimony and I felt like mine was nothing at all compared to his. But Jesus kept telling me that his testimony was for some who needed to hear it, and mine was for others, who needed to hear mine.
I have the hardest time wrapping my mind around this. But people are wounded in all kinds of ways, by all kinds of different things. My testimony is going to be healing for specific types of people, and that is the way it’s meant to be.
This person said he could feel the Holy Spirit walking beside him, speaking to him. It was a wonderful thing to hear, because I know that feeling.Hearing it caused me to know again what a precious, wonderful gift that is.
Jesus keeps urging me to be emotionally authentic with Him, and I keep trying. But it’s hard to express anger to Him. Anyway, now I must go and get ready for this exhausting day.
April 14, 2013 unpublished blog
I am worn out.
Maybe I should pace myself.
This videotaping for the adoption agency is not going well. For example, we went to a baseball game. Our friend's little girl was playing in it.
It was adorable. The girls were about five years old, wearing red uniforms and blue and white polka dot knee socks, tumbling all over the field like eager puppies.
They ran this way, they ran that way, they flung the bats through the air in wild arcs, trying with all their might to make contact with the ball and when they did, sometimes they stood there, stunned, until the coach's shouts of encouragement got them moving, a bundle of feet and bouncing pony tails, toward first base.
They were adorable and my heart broke. I could see my daughter out there, her hair still smelling like strawberry shampoo, with pink sneakers, crouched down in the outfield, her eyes narrowed fiercely and then, eventually, her attention wandering away, until that one time, when the ball comes her way, she is watching the clouds and misses it.
Anyway. We were there and we needed video footage. But neither Keith nor I felt comfortable asking our friend to film us on the bleachers.
"We're supposed to have pictures of us at the event," I whispered to Keith, anxiously.
"I know, but I just feel weird having someone point the camera at us."
"I know, I know! I can't do it either!"
So we didn't. We have footage of the little girl getting a sweet hit and some nice throws, and video footage of us walking back to the car, but I doubt it's anything they can use. It's supposed to be footage of us, not the things around us.
And then we went and played miniature golf and got some good footage there, but the A/C units were roaring so unbearably that I doubt they'll be able to use any of it. The sound gives me a headache every time I try to play it back.
We have less than a week before we have to send it back and we have hardly anything done.
April 15, 2013 Journal
I’ve been so busy lately, so tired. This morning, Jesus came and surrounded me with His warm presence. I was loved and soothed. I had to lean against the wall and just let it soak into me, His love and ownership, remembering that I am His, always was His and always will be His.
Come here!
Come and arrive here as you are everywhere
and always becoming as you were and always are,
the beginning and end of everything
yourself unchanging.
You new, you ancient
Beloved, unseen.
Thrown out, these small words like stones
they glint and scatter-
Some dust spread out,
something left over.
Let me describe you!
you transcendent, ever present
intimate and unsearchable.
I know you.
I knew you before
And now also,
in the unbounded presentation,
impossibly placed amid the wounding
and enlarging of this quelled world.
But most of all-
beyond this point and in all points present,
where we are always,
found at the heart of everything,
where in you
my heart is presently beating.
I can’t see to write love poems. It doesn’t come out the way I want it to.
April 16, 2013
Last night, I was in the grip of severe longing, and I knew that Jesus wanted me to come to Him in the way He has shown me, but I was dissatisfied from the get go. My longing to be there fully broke loose and made it difficult to enjoy what was given. I didn’t want the symbols, the light frame windows, the give and take of mutual communion through the veil of moving water that sometimes blurs and distorts the experience.
I wanted it all consuming and totally present- I wanted to see Jesus and to be in His presence as He is.
Of course, that cannot happen until I have finished my time here, and I am nervous every time my longing breaks out like that, for fear of the pain of living in it when it’s fully expressed, but I let it loose anyway.
When I was there, immediately I went to Jesus and immediately I saw as though we were two flames that came together into one larger flame.
I felt His love very strongly, in the way He gathered me up. I poured out all my longing and dissatisfaction to Jesus as we were there. I was speaking to Jesus, and pouring my love and longing into Him, and it was so intense I had to keep taking breaks to let the energy dissipate, before again attempting to articulate the longing.
We rose up off the couch, at one point, and were hanging in the sky, as if we were in a flame. I realized how much Jesus loves to be loved, so I was saying to Him, “Come here, I love You, I’m Yours, be here with me, with my soul, with my spirit, which is Your resting place and belongs to You. Here is Your resting place, I love You.”
I called Jesus by His name and I wanted to call Him deeper, so I called Him the Word, which was the name before He was born on earth. I just wanted to love Jesus as much as possible, as much of Him as my spirit or understanding could attain.
I kept wanting to reach through the veil and grab Jesus’ hand, to take hold of Him, to see Him before me as I see things in this world before me. Jesus reminded me, many times, of how much life there was still waiting for me, how much love I could yet pass on, and that this present life was full of a joy of its own.
And I knew that was true, and that was calming.
Then later, I was telling Jesus that I couldn’t write any love poems to Him and He said, you did, with His usual loving humor- like, what do you think that poem was, that you just wrote this evening, you darling one, you?
I was cradled in His presence all night long, aware all that time of how much it pleases Him that I belong to Jesus. It is possible to move God deeply; it is possible to make His heart melt with love.
That’s what I would like to write a poem about.
Every time I go to write something, my hand moves instead as though to draw something and every five minutes I get distracted and want to log onto facebook to see what all is going on there and I just can’t write.
Fear will close the doorway down to you
The invitation is always there
You the inner fire
If you were here I would know everything that I’ve only half seen
or I might fall to my feet, blinded
That could happen too, but probably not
or if it did, You’d kneel down and pull me back up to meet you
See, I just can’t write!
Stone paved and pillared,
Seen through water
Draw me through.
I borrowed in closer; our faces were very close. I felt longing, a deep longing for Him. My cheek was pressed close to His as I held on to Him so tightly in this sweeping feeling of longing.
I miss you, He whispered.
The sheer wonder of hearing Jesus say that, and feeling His emotion, took me away from the experience. I knew what He meant, He missing having me fully with me, the full communion and companionship.
When I returned and poured out my heart to Him in love, it was like an electric shock, vivid, concentrated in one burst. I stopped out of fear of that intensity. Jesus was so there, as though He were taking up physical space. I was wedged, as I like to be, between the couch back and His side. There is a great feeling there of immovability, immediate proximity, and safety.
I opened my heart up again to the love that comes irresistibly when I know I am with Jesus, and again it went through me like electricity. This went through even my physical self.
April 12, 2013
Last night, I was completely exhausted. I lay there and let myself be in the moment, very completely.
I knew I was with Jesus, so I just was in that and no matter how much static I saw or how much I didn’t see, I trusted Jesus fully. There was a lot of static, but I kept looking past it to the stability of Jesus. I refused to believe anything but that He is utterly reliable, no matter what I was seeing.
So I was trusting very deeply. I was drawing a Jesus-sized circle around the whole thing, whatever I saw or felt or knew, I knew He defined me and kept me and that I was safe in Him.
Then I began to see more clearly, and when I was able to see Jesus, I saw that I was resting safely where I love to be, but the trust that had brought me there had caused my heart to be rushing in love like flood tide. And Jesus is living, alive, so it is possible to give Him something and to see how much it means to Him. That is the most intoxicating.
No matter how much love there is, there is always more. There is a greater surrender beyond the last. You can be the most generous and give to the One person all that you think you have and then find that there is more, once the trust increases. I was in awe- it was such a feeling.
It was like electricity. This request came rising up out of me, just poured out of me, out of my bones, out of my very being- to be given to and to know only Jesus, and to know Him as much as it is possible for a created person to receive.
And wow.
My mind was being blown, moment after moment- mind blown. The intensity of it was like tides of electric energy, it was washing through me like sparks. I was lost in Him. And I was speaking without words, and my eyes were going wide with shock. It was like losing oneself, but in the losing, one is found again, only not as one had been, but oneself in the original context, which is God.
I’ve been shy to say His name, but the name of Jesus was echoing in me. In a quiet moment, as we were curled up together, I gathered all my courage and I spoke His name aloud; I cried it out to Him; I cried out, "Jesus! Jesus!"
We went up in this burst of flame, wordless, furious, brightly, painlessly, wholly burning. I felt dazed afterward. I knew that I belonged absolutely to Jesus. My whole being has been illuminated by His light.
When this intensity faded, I wondered to myself, what if God was tired of all this emotion? Sometimes I am ashamed of this quality about me, feeling as if I am always too much, needing too much, expressing too much. I asked Jesus this.
When I ask Jesus ridiculous questions like that, He is never impatient with me. I become very aware that He thinks I am cutely adorable. He was filled with tender amusement. He said, I’m God.
So no. I do not think that the intensity of myself and my emotions are too much for Him.
(This is also where on the blog, I first shared the time, on October 22, 2011, when Jesus told me to read the Song of Songs in order to get rid of shame, and the one on October 28. Prior to this, neither of them had been posted.)
April 13, 2013 Published Blog
So...
We bought a house.
I guess when my husband pursues excellence, he find it and then purchases it.
It took me a day or so to adjust to the idea but it does work out better this way- we'll be saving money because the mortgage will be cheaper than our current rent, and then making money later, when we rent it out.
(We didn't end up renting it. We sold it when we moved to Indiana. The reason I adjusted well to building our house in GA was because Jesus told me to trust Keith, that it was His will, and it would be a good thing. Before this, I had been absolutely against moving, let alone buying, because we were right in the middle of the adoption, and that is a complicated time to move with all those forms to be filled out.)
We went looking for a house and found one similar to the one we live in now, only it was much further out, too far away from base to really consider.
Then we looked at a two story new build and we loved it. The neighborhood, distance to work, size, etc, were all perfect. It didn't have a fence, but the builder would put that in and cover closing costs. It's only five minutes away from here, but the garage was too small.
In the end, we realized that we would have to build. Because, here in GA, a car port is considered a garage and a garage is considered a bonus room and an oversized double garage is a wonder and a very costly upgrade.
So we are building a wonder, for the exact same price of the house we wanted, in the lot right next to it- a better lot, because there are woods to one side, that won't ever get built on, and woods behind, and behind that a school. The house will come with a fence, gutters and fridge thrown in.
It will be ready in mid-August, which means mid-September and in the meantime, we can enjoy the pool for one last summer.
And let's hope we don't get matched with a birth mother who is due in early autumn. (I kept thinking to myself, "What are the odds of that happening? How likely is that, really?" Quite likely, as it happened. Merissa was due in September, but born in August.)
April 14, 2013 Journal
I keep having to process fall out from my poem. (It processed, in a strong poetic language and images, the pain of my childhood, early adulthood and the redemption of Jesus.)
I watched this video of this recovered drug addict and inmate. He had a beautiful testimony and I felt like mine was nothing at all compared to his. But Jesus kept telling me that his testimony was for some who needed to hear it, and mine was for others, who needed to hear mine.
I have the hardest time wrapping my mind around this. But people are wounded in all kinds of ways, by all kinds of different things. My testimony is going to be healing for specific types of people, and that is the way it’s meant to be.
This person said he could feel the Holy Spirit walking beside him, speaking to him. It was a wonderful thing to hear, because I know that feeling.Hearing it caused me to know again what a precious, wonderful gift that is.
Jesus keeps urging me to be emotionally authentic with Him, and I keep trying. But it’s hard to express anger to Him. Anyway, now I must go and get ready for this exhausting day.
April 14, 2013 unpublished blog
I am worn out.
Maybe I should pace myself.
This videotaping for the adoption agency is not going well. For example, we went to a baseball game. Our friend's little girl was playing in it.
It was adorable. The girls were about five years old, wearing red uniforms and blue and white polka dot knee socks, tumbling all over the field like eager puppies.
They ran this way, they ran that way, they flung the bats through the air in wild arcs, trying with all their might to make contact with the ball and when they did, sometimes they stood there, stunned, until the coach's shouts of encouragement got them moving, a bundle of feet and bouncing pony tails, toward first base.
They were adorable and my heart broke. I could see my daughter out there, her hair still smelling like strawberry shampoo, with pink sneakers, crouched down in the outfield, her eyes narrowed fiercely and then, eventually, her attention wandering away, until that one time, when the ball comes her way, she is watching the clouds and misses it.
Anyway. We were there and we needed video footage. But neither Keith nor I felt comfortable asking our friend to film us on the bleachers.
"We're supposed to have pictures of us at the event," I whispered to Keith, anxiously.
"I know, but I just feel weird having someone point the camera at us."
"I know, I know! I can't do it either!"
So we didn't. We have footage of the little girl getting a sweet hit and some nice throws, and video footage of us walking back to the car, but I doubt it's anything they can use. It's supposed to be footage of us, not the things around us.
And then we went and played miniature golf and got some good footage there, but the A/C units were roaring so unbearably that I doubt they'll be able to use any of it. The sound gives me a headache every time I try to play it back.
We have less than a week before we have to send it back and we have hardly anything done.
April 15, 2013 Journal
I’ve been so busy lately, so tired. This morning, Jesus came and surrounded me with His warm presence. I was loved and soothed. I had to lean against the wall and just let it soak into me, His love and ownership, remembering that I am His, always was His and always will be His.
Come here!
Come and arrive here as you are everywhere
and always becoming as you were and always are,
the beginning and end of everything
yourself unchanging.
You new, you ancient
Beloved, unseen.
Thrown out, these small words like stones
they glint and scatter-
Some dust spread out,
something left over.
Let me describe you!
you transcendent, ever present
intimate and unsearchable.
I know you.
I knew you before
And now also,
in the unbounded presentation,
impossibly placed amid the wounding
and enlarging of this quelled world.
But most of all-
beyond this point and in all points present,
where we are always,
found at the heart of everything,
where in you
my heart is presently beating.
I can’t see to write love poems. It doesn’t come out the way I want it to.
April 16, 2013
Last night, I was in the grip of severe longing, and I knew that Jesus wanted me to come to Him in the way He has shown me, but I was dissatisfied from the get go. My longing to be there fully broke loose and made it difficult to enjoy what was given. I didn’t want the symbols, the light frame windows, the give and take of mutual communion through the veil of moving water that sometimes blurs and distorts the experience.
I wanted it all consuming and totally present- I wanted to see Jesus and to be in His presence as He is.
Of course, that cannot happen until I have finished my time here, and I am nervous every time my longing breaks out like that, for fear of the pain of living in it when it’s fully expressed, but I let it loose anyway.
When I was there, immediately I went to Jesus and immediately I saw as though we were two flames that came together into one larger flame.
I felt His love very strongly, in the way He gathered me up. I poured out all my longing and dissatisfaction to Jesus as we were there. I was speaking to Jesus, and pouring my love and longing into Him, and it was so intense I had to keep taking breaks to let the energy dissipate, before again attempting to articulate the longing.
We rose up off the couch, at one point, and were hanging in the sky, as if we were in a flame. I realized how much Jesus loves to be loved, so I was saying to Him, “Come here, I love You, I’m Yours, be here with me, with my soul, with my spirit, which is Your resting place and belongs to You. Here is Your resting place, I love You.”
I called Jesus by His name and I wanted to call Him deeper, so I called Him the Word, which was the name before He was born on earth. I just wanted to love Jesus as much as possible, as much of Him as my spirit or understanding could attain.
I kept wanting to reach through the veil and grab Jesus’ hand, to take hold of Him, to see Him before me as I see things in this world before me. Jesus reminded me, many times, of how much life there was still waiting for me, how much love I could yet pass on, and that this present life was full of a joy of its own.
And I knew that was true, and that was calming.
Then later, I was telling Jesus that I couldn’t write any love poems to Him and He said, you did, with His usual loving humor- like, what do you think that poem was, that you just wrote this evening, you darling one, you?
I was cradled in His presence all night long, aware all that time of how much it pleases Him that I belong to Jesus. It is possible to move God deeply; it is possible to make His heart melt with love.
That’s what I would like to write a poem about.
Every time I go to write something, my hand moves instead as though to draw something and every five minutes I get distracted and want to log onto facebook to see what all is going on there and I just can’t write.
Fear will close the doorway down to you
The invitation is always there
You the inner fire
If you were here I would know everything that I’ve only half seen
or I might fall to my feet, blinded
That could happen too, but probably not
or if it did, You’d kneel down and pull me back up to meet you
See, I just can’t write!
Stone paved and pillared,
Seen through water
Draw me through.
