Seen Ways, Counted Steps

I have a little free time on my hands at work, so I decided I would get this blog rolling. I'm sitting in the Director's Office..."filling in" for whenever they officially hire someone for this position. I'm not really looking forward to spending the next four weeks here. I shouldn't complain about it - it's experience. And I'm getting out there. Just hard to see the good in it in a time like right now, though.

So, Nena, what's up, girl?

I ask myself that question a lot. Maybe it's kind of silly, but I'll just look at myself in the mirror and ask myself that question, and feel like I can be completely honest. There's a part of me that is so ruined and devastated, and then there's a part of me that just knows that there is something bigger and greater out there for me. It's funny how often you can see yourself in two different ways.

I tried to make it a point to spend time with God before I went to work this morning. With me taking Christian to daycare before I went to work for the past couple of weeks, that's been one of the things I've missed out on (unfortunately). I didn't get to spend as much time as I wanted to with Him this morning, though. I wonder sometimes how cheated God feels when I don't spend the time with Him that He deserves, and I wonder why it doesn't bother me more.

I am so selfish. When it does start to bother me a lot, when it feels like I can't breathe if I can't get alone with Him - that's when I make it a point to spend my mornings with Him. It shouldn't be that way. He deserves all of me, all of the time.

But, like the sun, He is faithful, and He takes whatever time I give Him and still shows up, even when I don't deserve it. I know that if a guy only spent time with me when it was convenient for him and he felt like it, and not when I wanted to...we would have a problem. But God isn't prideful that way, and He doesn't hold grudges. He doesn't hold Himself back from me, even when I hurt Him.

I cranked up some Hillsong while I was driving to work, because I didn't get enough time alone with Him at home, and Brooke Fraser's version of "Nothing but the Blood" came on, and I started boo-hooing the way I always do when I hear her sing that. "What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus..." always gets me. Because I don't feel whole inside...I feel like there's this big, ugly, jagged mark right down the center of my heart. It's the first and only thing you see when you look at me. "She's jaded."

But I know that no matter what things look like, or feel like, I'm whole...because He makes me whole. He fills in all the empty places with every good and perfect gift that COMES from God. Grace, love, mercy, joy...

"How precious is the flow..." comes on, and all I can think about is Jesus on the cross, blood flowing and dripping off the woodwork and onto the soil, and Him thinking of me as it happens. Him dreaming of me, of my love...like my love is worth all of that suffering. And that blood flowing over my heart, breathing life into my veins, cleaning and washing away all of my self-induced pain. All of my sin that causes me suffering. My own mistakes, my own anger, my own choices...and all of it gone, like it was never there.

"How precious is the flow that makes me white as snow." I try and think of white things, and I suddenly get a visual image of a pearl in an oyster. The meaty part of the oyster is all corroded and twisted, scarred and forming around that beautiful, clean, white pearl...and I think of my heart. How deformed it is, how often it is changed and driven by emotion and not by love. And then something is inserted into it...maybe something hard, something small but aggravating to the flesh of that oyster.



It isn't pretty. The only thing pretty about that picture is the pearl itself. And God speaks to my heart and tells me suddenly that bad things happen to me, and they hurt and they're uncomfortable, but something so beautiful is formed in the midst of all of that destruction. What I go through becomes something beautiful...becomes a ministry, a testimony, or makes me a little bit more like Him...and ME, all of that flesh in ME gets torn up and wastes away in the process, and I have to learn to get used to that. I have to learn to get used to sacrificing pieces of myself so that I can be more like Him.

And I'm alright all of a sudden, and all of the chaos in me is resolved for the moment...just because I was alone with the Lover and Adorer of my heart. And I wonder how I could ever take moments with Him like that for granted, how I could ever think I could find joy and peace and love like that from anyone or anything else. I wonder why I waited so long to be with Him, why I didn't do this everyday.

If I could just learn to shut my stupid mouth and quit speaking so much negativity...complaining of how much it hurts, how betrayed and angry I feel...and if I could just learn to be still and know that He is God. So, that is my goal. To shut my yapper. To trust Him and know that something good - something precious and rare and beautiful - is being formed in me.