wednesday

is blogging
exhibitionism?


at night
sometimes
i sit outside and look inside my home


and i love it


and i feel more love for my 'stuff'
from being outside
looking through the glass
than i do
being inside 


it's like it's beauty is lost


but i don't feel the same way
when i am inside
looking out
at the world


outside is the world
and the world
doesn't seem
so large

friday

another day.  His grace, His mercy.


it is all to His glory.
it is all His will.


i have willed other than His will.  and maybe while i am in this body and trying in my way to convince Him of my 'need' for this and my 'need' for that, He is patient with me to see His will in my life in amongst my 'needs' or above my 'needs' or instead of my 'needs' or sovereign to my 'needs'.  yes, He is most patient with me.  and i see the cross.  which saves me from His wrath.  His Son has borne the judgement due me.  judgement which most assuredly is mine.  


i remember a time when i was a teenager.  i arrived home one evening to find my younger brother and a friend had taken dad's work van out for a joy ride and were now struggling to back the van in to the exact place my father had parked it so as not to be found out.  they couldn't do it.  i feared what would be my brother's 'deserved judgement' from dad if he ever found out, so i said i would park the van for them.  just as i was climbing into the van, to park it where it should be, my father came home.  i remember his face.  he was livid.  he was aghast.  he looked at me and at my brother, who had guilt and fear written all over his face while searching my face as to what i was going to say.  i give my dad credit for calmly asking me what i was doing.  i took the fall.  i said i took the van out just to see if i could drive it and i couldn't park it properly so i was just going to try again.  he was angry but i could see hurt in his eyes more than anger.  he didn't really say much except to say something like, i had no right and told my brother to get inside and walked passed me without another word.  judgement had been passed. on me.  


i see Jesus and i see the Cross and i understand fully.


my brother carried on that day and days after that day free.  free of dad's judgement, which would have been a sore penalty.  he even reveled in his freedom. rolled in it as a pig in muck even telling my other brothers (i had five in all) how dad had caught me driving the van.  dad did not speak to me for a long time.  i wanted to tell him, just for his sake, that it wasn't me, but i couldn't.  the penalty on my brother would have been too severe.  i kept quiet.  


i wish i had recognised the 'cross' then and had carried it with me since.  i didn't.  i was just trying to save my brother.  i wish i had understood what He was asking of me sooner and realised my failure to do so just about every day before that day and since.


i wish it hadn't taken me my own experience to see His loving kindness to me and everyone to my left, to my right, to my front, to my back, above me, below me.


my brother owes me nothing.
i owe my brother and his kin everything.
Christ has done no less.
He took the fall for me.

broken on the rock

the sun is warm again.  


i am thinking of 'right' God and 'wrong' God.  i don't know which is which.  i have enjoyed and been most hopeful when i have considered what has been said of being made complete, lacking nothing, once acceptance of Christ as one's Saviour is complete within one's heart.  i have been most hopeful when i have received word that His death has freed me from all things, ALL things, evil and harmful to myself.  i have been most hopeful when i have received word of His double-fold return of all things stolen by evil.  i have been most hopeful when i have received word of prosperity, health, riches and glory and promises made of beauty for ashes and mending of brokenheartedness, freedom from captivity, two-fold recompense instead of shame, that my heart shall thrill and tremble with joy.  this speaks through all things known to man and grabs my heart and allows me to consider that He knows my pain.  i am fully hopeful that His love for me is this wonderful.  this is recorded as His love for those who turn back to Him with honest repentance and honour His place as Lord.  (i write only from my own experiences. not to inform, reform, or misinform or to dally about what i may have right or wrong.  i write.)


so this is it.  i consider this truth.  i look in the mirror daily and i see the life being sucked out of me and i remember nothing more than being and having been the brunt of evil.  i have inner scars of terrible abuse and shame unimaginable.  i have outer scars and broken bones.  i have pain daily as my body fights to adjust to the cold, the heat or the fight for survival.  i am mind weary of getting up and fighting to see a hope for more for me.  i have deep pain in my heart to have had to go without the only man who truelly loved me.  i have daily battles to consider His love for me as i see the results of evil upon myself that i can't begin to talk about.  i see evil upon myself.  it is in my face, my skin, my bones and it battles for my mind.  i am out of strength.  


i cry out to Him.  this is not my evil.  this has been put upon me.  his sexual depravity was his and somehow it has become my shame.  the ugliness of pride and hatred were hers and she found peace in putting it upon me.  my presence revealed ugly hearts, lies and destruction so they spat on me and put me out.  i could not bow to mammon, so they ridiculed me and took what they could.  i cannot idolize the distractions so common so i am made a fool and cast out.  


i have tried to save myself.  to close my mind off and join with self gratification to ease my pain.  to be fitted among men and be counted as brother.  to gather to myself idols of prosperity and blessedness. to ingratiate myself to those who might better me.  i finally let go.  i try to accept my lot.  i am rejected by the world.  i am rejected by His people.  


there is no worth in me.  but to ask Him to allow me to be of service to Him.  to wash me clean Himself as others fail to come forward and wash me.  i am but filthy rags.  


so this i am left with.  if i see no promise manifest, does He reject me?  if i see no manifestation of His love for me do i doubt the words of others and struggle on trusting Him.  do i go and ask Him again.  Lord use me.  strengthen me.  befriend me.  wash me.   


i shall count it joy as i am tested more than others.  i shall count it joy that i have seen and felt evil more than others.  i shall count it joy that my self-serving has come to nothing.  i shall count it joy that He trusts me to suffer and feel His heart towards those who have hurt and do hurt.  i shall count it joy when He turns His face from me.  i shall count it joy that His thoughts are not my thoughts, that His ways are not my ways.  these are my thoughts.  


the sun is still warm.  upon evil and good alike.   

a little distance

the sun is warm. old fashionably warm.  quietly, lazily warm.  i'm thinking about my life. a life.  a life i've lived fearfully.  ducking and diving and doing what i can to miss the next bomb.  it has been a difficult story to tell.  mostly unloved and worth not more than i deserved as far as i can tell.  


i've contemplated deserving more.  and some days i have near bust a valve fighting for it.  in the back of my mind a rat has gnawed at hope for as long as i can remember. ( oh rats, you poor things, why must i use you as the villian of me rather than a cat?  i have given my cat a personality very similar to mine so of course, she is innocent of such behaviour as that.)


i often wondered if they wished me dead.  was i locked in rooms to die.  put away.  shame upon shame that i should stay in the room and remind him of his guilt.  was i ever a child.  a child's face flashes into focus.  i wish some days that i had been that child.  flashed across the screen so everyone was made aware that i needed help.  but i wasn't.  i am not that child.  help was not an option.  


i sit and wait for help to come.  it doesn't.  not help. he is gone and another comes to take his place.  to hold the vigil in case i escape and be free.  i dare say it must be humourous to watch me fight.  to consider being free.  


but i am free.  i have found a loophole.  there is an escape hatch they haven't considered.  and i  am gone.  


now the vigil is mine.  i am older.  and this lazy warm quiet sun reminds me that things are being renewed.  i am going through the tunnel once more for the last time.  not to address the evil as i have been led to do so many times before.  but to encounter the beauty of me i left behind.   

monday

if you ever the desire to read the complete works of c.s.lewis - disregard it as you would the desire for a swim in the ocean on a beautiful winter day.  


i have spent quite a bit of time to-ing and fro-ing to and from my computer to find the definitions of so many words so that i am able to keep up with mr lewis and his command of not only english, but latin, greek, and so on, and his amazingly well read mind, that i am dithering.  he is not being a clever dick.  he is so likable, so human and honest.  he needs the words and uses so many to allow us to read what he has to say without actually saying it,  so that, i fear, only the most dedicated of readers would persevere.  and, he does change how i write, or how i think about what i'm going to write anyway.  he says much.  and it is worth pondering.  as writers of old are. 


if there is something i know about me, it is this.  i did not learn to do what i do.  i just do it.  the only instruction i had was learning to put the 26 letters of the alphabet into the appropriate order in which i could then put down on paper anything i wanted to say.  i don't know if it's writing as such as i would say i am a writer.  i write.  


so monday is this.  i discover that nowadays i am flummoxed with too many words.  i am impatient with myself and most patient with mr lewis.  i see how he says things.  and i am delighted to know i say things differently.  in the past, i have been scared off by writers such as mr lewis.  they are masters.  so this is it.  i accept it.  but as mr lewis so generously points out - to have the high, one must have the low, for the low is as important as the high, for without one there would be not the other. 

friday

it's amazing how a little sunshine on an otherwise cold morning can lift your spirits.  i sat outside this morning, having a cigarette, (a 'lover' i pray God will totally demolish before my eyes as He has, other 'lovers', who have sought to come between me and Him) and reading the last chapter of 'the four loves' by c.s.lewis.  his writing resonates in me.


resonates: produce or be filled with a deep, full, reverberating sound.


i include the definition of resonate to fully explain how lost i am to everything else while i am reading his words.  it is only while taking a break, to make a coffee or to let the cat in or out, that i notice the silence of my home.  i have been in conversation with this man and myself and my God, as c.s.lewis himself tends to do while writing.  it seems almost glorious.


as i sat outside enjoying a little sunshine on an otherwise cold morning, smoking a cigarette and absorbing the last of 'the four loves', a bee flew out of the air and 'plonked' dab into the centre of the ashtray. it fell 'plonk' out of the air.  just fell.  plonk.  a honey bee.  absolutely amused me.  i saw that his wee legs were laden, totally laden with pollen.  large dots of yellow pollen that almost swamped the poor honey bee.  i realised aha...the plonk.  with shake of his legs and a minute of respite he was off to continue his journey home. 


the lessons of the birds and the bees are never lost on me.


'the four loves' unties my tangled mess of longing for lost love, of God, of love, of God's love, i sense the Holy Spirit and His personal reworking of half-truths and semi-truths and the dismantling of me and thoughts i have held as holy.  i see the burden of what i have believed, or held to be true, is false and the carrying of such for so long has landed me plonk, in the centre of an ashtray.

thursday

i have another cold.


i was thinking yesterday about how mind and heart seem to travel different roads.  my thoughts (my mind) tend to travel toward the desire for understanding in ways that will comfort me.  my heart tends more to travel toward the desire for understanding in ways that will comfort others.


i realised that the two do collide.  it is when they do, that i feel at my most alive and at my most of service. i have done what He has called me to do.


each morning of late, i have reminded myself, that this day i am of service to Him and as yet i haven't felt His call.  i have gone about my business of tending to things asked of me daily in the most trivial of ways, but service nonetheless; making the bed, feeding the cat, tidying the kitchen, putting the rubbish out, with the expectation that at any moment He might call me to service of delivering His love to another.  His silence upsets me and has me in tears.  i consider i am an unworthy servant.  


i remind myself that trivial service is still service and continue on my way.  my mind has found me comfort.  i take a trolley back to the trolley bay for a lady at the supermarket.  i am closer to it than she. this is an act of kindness.


at the waipuna hospice shop, i give a lady who has no money, a dollar, to buy an earring which, her son, she says, will make into a brooch.  as she walked out of the shop, i realise i have seen her heart.  i will never know why He expressed His love to her this way.  i know not to ask.  this was an act of kindness. to me.  


to be of service to Him is difficult when He is the master and i am unaware of what He is doing.  my mind seeks to comfort me.  my heart seeks to comfort others.  


it is today as i write in my diary that i realise that it is Him that connects the two and a miracle has been performed. 


i relish the joy of being a part of His service, but as with any occupation, there is much for me to learn and much more for me to unlearn.  i must learn to mind my business and to be of service to Him, i am learning He will make me do just that. 


so the day is cold and i am not overjoyed to have a cold again.  outside it all speaks of the coming of spring and the end of winter.  i have the works of c.s. lewis keeping me company.
i have much to learn.