You betta, you betta, you bet.

At church today, I was feeling a little discouraged. A little angry at myself for failing to be more outgoing this weekend. It's like...well, it's like what he said at church today, "I'm an introvert who pretends to be an extrovert." And sometimes, that really does not work out. So, the thought has been rolling around in my head (for awhile now, actually):

When am I going to get better?

You see, it's really easy for me to buy into the lie that my life would magically be better if I was more outgoing / confident. If I was different or if I was more like some of my friends who make it look so darn easy or if I could just get over whatever the heck is keeping me from being a normal human being, THEN my life would really start and I wouldn't have to worry about anything.

Dumb.

But I do it all the time! I have SO much trouble accepting that God didn't screw up when he made me. And this leads to lots and lots of sin. There's no weaseling around that. Being bitter about the way God made me (cuz that's really what I'm doing, isn't it?) is sin.

I love the way the end of Romans 12:3 is written in the Message Bible:

The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

When I look at myself with a judgmental, sinful, human perspective, I feel like I'm failing. And you know what? Maybe from the world's view I am. But when the LORD looks at me? He sees my heart. He sees my love for him. He sees the cross, the blood that was shed for my sin. And he says, "It is very good."

And there's more! The areas in my life that need some work are places where my Father's light is BURSTING to shine through. My sin is ugly and there are pieces of my heart that are broken, but still, the LORD is enthralled by me [Psalm 45].

How? Why? The distance between my shame and his glory is unfathomable. But this is the thought that crept into my mind this morning:

Where I see failing, he sees opportunity. He sees spaces in my heart he longs to fill. He sees mountains he's aching to climb with me. He sees depths of my soul that no one else can, and his voice is calling out, Come be with me.

I feel like the prostitute in Hosea. She keeps turning away from LORD. She's doing things her own way, placing her worth in everything but Him, losing sight of who she is meant to be. But he waits for her. He allures her. And then, he betroths her to him forever. 

He wrote those words for me to read, for each of us. He is faithful, he is patient. And he is waiting for each of us to take his hand, to lose our broken selves, and to gain him instead. And when we do that, when we take his mighty hand, we are not our own. We are his. And how beautifully does that change things. I begin to transform. Not by my own doing, but by his love. In seeking him and desiring him, how can I not start to be better? By letting Christ compel my life, how can I not accept who I am?

Oh golly. God's grace is a perfect conundrum. But the best part is, each time he reveals (and re-reveals) it to me, I catch a new glimpse of who He is. 

Breathtaking.

In a breath, the world finds its place.

You teach the stars how to shine

and the oceans to meet the coasts.

From the dust you form me,

you exhale life into my lungs.

And the sun rises and sets

as you wrap its warmth around me.

A whisper in my ear turns my face from yours.

My hands reach for the alluring piece of fruit

as yours fall numbly into your lap.

Your footsteps are soft,

and I don’t notice your figure slowly disappear

until a gust of chilling wind makes me

gasp and I take my first breath alone.

I lose myself and start to run –

my feet blistering as they tread upon the broken earth.

Tears of shame stain my face.

I swallow the voice that longs to call your name.

In my solitude, frustration erupts into anger

and I abandon my desire for you.

Lust and greed consume my dry spirit in a fire.

Among a throng of hatred,

I find my home.

We scream and curse a man on a tree,

sweating, drowning in blood.

I watch him take his final gasp of air.

As I turn to leave, something

in the lines of his lifeless face

nails my feet to the ground.

My heart breaks when I remember you

and I can faintly feel your arms around me.

I collapse at the foot of the cross

for it was I who took your breath away.

Wowzers.

Something truly amazing happened to me last week. And I've been waitin since last Friday for the blogger bug to bite me so I'd be in the right state of mind to really give it justice. Ohhhh boy.

Okay, let's start off by saying Blue Like Jazz is possibly the COOLEST book I've ever read. Don Miller is such an interesting writer! He says the most astonishing things. Like, I have to stop and reread things because it sounds like he's speaking directly to my heart. It's awesome. Read it.

So anyway, I had just finished the chapter about loving others. He talks about a lot of cool things. Like livin with hippies. But the most amazing part of the chapter came at the very end. He pointed out that there are always two conversations going on when we talk to someone: one of words and one between hearts. And to genuinely love others, we have to feel something in our hearts for them, something deep and pure. The last words of the chapter are:

"When I go to meet somebody, I pray that God will help me feel His love for them. I ask God to make it so both conversations, the one from the mouth and the one from the heart, are true."

I thought that was truly beautiful.

I want that. I don't even know how it can happen, how I can feel God's love, but I want it!

Now, for some background information:

The day before I read that chapter in Blue Like Jazz, I wrote "I miss being in love, God. I really miss it." That's it. And the thing is, I didn't really expect anything to come from it.

But then, I met this boy. His name is DeMarco. He's very sweet and very loud. He was really early for his class and he just started talking to me about school, life, even Blue Like Jazz which was sitting beside me on the floor. At one point he said something like "Why am I talking to you? I don't even know you!" But he said that I seemed very nice and that he was glad to meet me. After we said goodbye, I was in a state of...elation.

That's when all this clicked.

I realized that I can be in love. Yes, in a relationship with a boy and someday my husband, and the people in my life like my family and friends. But SO much more so than that!

By asking God to let me feel his love for everyone I meet, I can fall in love -- a giddy, joyful, crazy, unexplainable kind of love -- for everyone he loves. Even those who are hard to love. Those with flaws, those who have made mistakes. People filled with hatred and brokenness. With heavy hearts, secret pasts, lonely existences. People who don't want anything to do with God. People who hate Christianity. And people I happen to meet in the hallway at Heavilon. ALL OF EM.

See, I didn't write "I miss having a boyfriend." I wrote "I miss being in love." And the LORD showed me that I don't need a boyfriend to fall in love. I just need HIM.

Gosh He is so darn faithful! He answered my prayer in such a beautiful way. I think I'm different. I think I want to be in love with the world as much as I want to be in love with Jesus.

WOWZERS so that was my amazing moment of late.

My God is so good :)

Dance with My Beloved.

The fire of a deep yearning

and the coolness of a numbing pain

are at war within my soul.

Come you speak over me.

But I don’t want to dance today.

Your calm smile and the twinkling gleam

in your eyes pull me, unwillingly, to my feet.

You gaze at me

like I’m dressed for my wedding day,

and I feel suddenly shy.

Our fingers intertwine.

My limp hands seem unworthy

in the cradle of yours.

My clumsy feet begin to move

in time with your perfect rhythm.

You hum the melody of my favorite song.

Your strong arms spin me around,

and you paint a breathless smile

on my sullen face.

We pause.

I take a breath and nervously offer

my jagged pieces to you.

Blood rushes to my cheeks

as you press your lips against my hand,

and whisper you are mine.

Gracefully,

you make the stars appear and

restore my sweetly broken heart.

Vows.

Their fingers lace,
their eyes sparkle, like diamonds,
as they wait, quietly on the wooden bench.
The rose in her cheeks warms the solemn room.

You can come in now, says the judge.
They exchange an apprehensive smile,
tears pool in her freshly lined eyes.

He hands her a simple bouquet of yellow daisies,
and she delicately holds them in her small, shaking hands.
Well, do I look okay? she asks,
as she smoothes the wrinkles from her worn ivory dress.

He pulls her close and kisses her sweetly on the temple.
We’re ready he whispers.
She nods, and they follow the judge through the open door.

I have a thing for stars...

I love em, I love em, I love em.

That's probably why this is one of my favorite parts of the Bible:

Lift up your eyes and see,

who created these?

He who brings out their host by number,

calling them all by name,

by the greatness of his might,

and because he is strong in power,

not one is missing.

Isaiah 40:26

Goodness. It blows my mind imagining God calling out the stars by name. It's so beautiful to think about! Because, really that's how the stars appear you know? You notice one, and then another one, and pretty soon they're everywhere! And of course, what we city folk see isn't even the half of it. The darkest sky I've seen was in Arizona and that wasn't even the half of it! It makes me smile to think that's the kind of God I love, the one who created the stars and calls them all by name.

This verse makes me think of two things:

1. The part in The Magician's Nephew in the Chronicles of Narnia when Aslan is singing Narnia into existence. That seriously made me cry (C.S. Lewis has some serious power over my tear ducts, let me tell you).

"In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it...Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by the other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale; cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leapt out -- single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves that were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing."

Perfect.

2. Something that God shows me about himself again and again and again. It's the fact that he is LORD of the universe. He created everything, he holds it together. He gave us breath, and he can take it away. The earth and everything in it is HIS. And yet, he loves each and every one of his creations. Intimately and overwhelmingly. He carved the mountains, he molded the trees, he paints the clouds, he calls the stars. And he loves us. It's like...hmm. A giant funnel (stay with me here). All the power and strength and fierce, fierce love of the LORD of the UNIVERSE is funneled down into the hearts of each of his children. This makes me feel unbelievably happy, but also completely dumbfounded. How do I respond to that kind of love? How do I even understand it?

Well, I can't. But that's another thing God shows me. He's so much bigger than my tiny little noggin can fathom :) And, that's pretty awesome. You know, that's another reason stars are so cool. He uses them as a colossal I LOVE YOU shining in the sky each and every night, just because he can.