There are certain things that always make me feel like I'm reuniting parts of myself. Scents, sounds, etc....
Scents: Patchouli and Lavender (mixed too), the smell of White Linen or Estee Lauder's Beautiful. The smell of a flooded river mixed with grass.
Sounds: Any kind of Baroque Music.
Authors: T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound
Art: Cassatt or pretty much anything in the Western Wing of the Indiana University Art Museum.
These things are usually influences that have made me much of what I am. My comfort time sometimes is Bach cranked (Tocatta and Fugue to be exact) while curled up in a chair with The Complete Works of T.S. Eliot as I try to take apart either "The Wasteland" or "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". ("Do not do not ask what is it. Let us go and make our visit")
Soooo Mrs. Mannix, 11th Grade Honors English. For some reason.
Lately I've been seeing things in muted shades, which for me is odd. I'm vivid, creative and see things in unusual forms most of the time, but I've been trying to get my depression under control again and it's been rough.
But something else can bring me back to myself. Being flat on my face at an altar sobbing my heart out. As I had doubted that my prayers were going to be answered and then I look up and see the answer in front of me as two friends are praying at the altar with tears running down their cheeks.
All I could do was throw myself on to my face and sob as I just said "I'm sorry I doubted you God. I'm sorry I doubted."
So many times, we clutter our brains with our human thoughts and our knowledge of human failures that we limit what God can do with what WE can do.
I'm blessed. So blessed to serve an awesome God that will answer prayers. In spite of my very tiny amount of faith sometimes. He's still faithful to me.
"Though in my heart I have questioned, even failed to believe yet he's been faithful, faithful to me."
When I left Idaho Falls almost five years ago I left part of my heart here. A sliver of it with a friend that probably didn't realize it (and neither did I until later) and part of it in downtown IF. I feel as if I have picked my pieces up anda put them back together. As if I'm whole unbroken here except when I am broken before God.
So now the sight of mountains and the smell of sage and sitting on a chunk of basalt overlooking the river and the sight of so many things mean that I am home.
And that God is good. He ALWAYS answers prayer even when it looks impossible.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Interdependency and frustration...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEKGp6WO9fU
"I am here
You don't have to worry
I can see your tears
I'll be there in a hurry when you call
Friends are there to catch you when you fall
Here's my shoulder you can lean on me..."
The ongoing thing with having an Mp3 player is that I have filled it with the world's wackiest mish mash of tunes, including ones that got me through some rough times in college. Including this Kirk Franklin tune, which I caught myself PASSIONATELY mouthing the words in the middle of WalMart LOL.
Bishop Rice told me two weeks ago that I needed to take care of myself to be of value to the church, because I'm a cog in the machine and it will skip if the teeth are broken. Probably not the best analogy to use on the mechanically ungifted, but I got the point.
Right now, I'm watching friends and family doing things I don't agree with. Or not knowing what they are doing. Or what they are thinking. Of course, I'm spending some of my days wanting to completely hide in the sound booth (Don't go too close, I'm not going to be happy. It's a new set of walls) I find that I am still fairly open with my pastor and his wife as well as Bishop and Sister Rice. Lying to my pastor or to the bishop and saying everything is ok when it's not is pointless. They WILL call me on it. (Bishop will usually be like "Quit lying, how are you really")
The problem is that noone else sometimes feels the interdependency or knows what it is about. Maybe because I am in leadership that I feel things so keenly or maybe it's that I'm very sensitive. (sometimes not one of my more endearing qualities)
When someone is not there, it's heartbreaking and things aren't the same. But with my sensitivity I do wonder what I did. It's not the best thing in the world, but frankly it does happen.
My brother Matt and his wife are backslid and I am thankfully spared the weekly heartbreak of that except any other moment I think of my wonderful wreckless brother and his wife and their wonderful little boy. Then it's like a knife turning again.
Then I have other friends, maybe not backslid, but working away from their first love in many ways. Not sure where to go. It is heartbreaking to watch and NOTHING I can do. I want to yell, I want to scream "don't you know what you are doing?" "Don't you know the church limps without each and every member of the body in its place?"
But I can't do anything. Nothing but ignore the lump in my throat when they are not there. Put my head in my hands and pray. Pray that they are miserable when they are not at church. That God draws them to him. That God reminds them when they feel far from him, they moved not God.
It's frustrating. It's heartbreaking. Watching friends that I've made over the years turn away from God. Why would anyone want to leave? Or as PfR sings "I don't understand how you can walk away from love"
Granted, over the years I am not the biggest fan of Pentecostal culture in general. Thank God, it's not the case out West as much as it was back East. I'm a firm fan of home missions churches and that feel. Many times larger churches try to eat each other alive and spit each other out if they are not careful.
I've heard it stated by friends that Pentecostals kill their walking wounded. Let that never be me. Let me fight it with every breath I have.
This is so rambling I know. And it's not something I would've even been so passionate about two years ago. But I'm here. I see how much we depend on each other. So to any of my friends that are looking to walk away, please remember this...
"Friends are there to catch you when you fall
Here's my shoulder you can lean on me..."
"I am here
You don't have to worry
I can see your tears
I'll be there in a hurry when you call
Friends are there to catch you when you fall
Here's my shoulder you can lean on me..."
The ongoing thing with having an Mp3 player is that I have filled it with the world's wackiest mish mash of tunes, including ones that got me through some rough times in college. Including this Kirk Franklin tune, which I caught myself PASSIONATELY mouthing the words in the middle of WalMart LOL.
Bishop Rice told me two weeks ago that I needed to take care of myself to be of value to the church, because I'm a cog in the machine and it will skip if the teeth are broken. Probably not the best analogy to use on the mechanically ungifted, but I got the point.
Right now, I'm watching friends and family doing things I don't agree with. Or not knowing what they are doing. Or what they are thinking. Of course, I'm spending some of my days wanting to completely hide in the sound booth (Don't go too close, I'm not going to be happy. It's a new set of walls) I find that I am still fairly open with my pastor and his wife as well as Bishop and Sister Rice. Lying to my pastor or to the bishop and saying everything is ok when it's not is pointless. They WILL call me on it. (Bishop will usually be like "Quit lying, how are you really")
The problem is that noone else sometimes feels the interdependency or knows what it is about. Maybe because I am in leadership that I feel things so keenly or maybe it's that I'm very sensitive. (sometimes not one of my more endearing qualities)
When someone is not there, it's heartbreaking and things aren't the same. But with my sensitivity I do wonder what I did. It's not the best thing in the world, but frankly it does happen.
My brother Matt and his wife are backslid and I am thankfully spared the weekly heartbreak of that except any other moment I think of my wonderful wreckless brother and his wife and their wonderful little boy. Then it's like a knife turning again.
Then I have other friends, maybe not backslid, but working away from their first love in many ways. Not sure where to go. It is heartbreaking to watch and NOTHING I can do. I want to yell, I want to scream "don't you know what you are doing?" "Don't you know the church limps without each and every member of the body in its place?"
But I can't do anything. Nothing but ignore the lump in my throat when they are not there. Put my head in my hands and pray. Pray that they are miserable when they are not at church. That God draws them to him. That God reminds them when they feel far from him, they moved not God.
It's frustrating. It's heartbreaking. Watching friends that I've made over the years turn away from God. Why would anyone want to leave? Or as PfR sings "I don't understand how you can walk away from love"
Granted, over the years I am not the biggest fan of Pentecostal culture in general. Thank God, it's not the case out West as much as it was back East. I'm a firm fan of home missions churches and that feel. Many times larger churches try to eat each other alive and spit each other out if they are not careful.
I've heard it stated by friends that Pentecostals kill their walking wounded. Let that never be me. Let me fight it with every breath I have.
This is so rambling I know. And it's not something I would've even been so passionate about two years ago. But I'm here. I see how much we depend on each other. So to any of my friends that are looking to walk away, please remember this...
"Friends are there to catch you when you fall
Here's my shoulder you can lean on me..."
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