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What do you do when you don't like yourself, but cognitively know you are a child of God?
What do you do when you hate your past and the hold it still has over you?
What do you do when you feel so unbelievably bitter towards those who have hurt you that even the mention of their name sends stings of anguish up through your stomach?
They are unaffected. Of course. That's the poison of unforgiveness.

I know the truths of the Bible. I know that "I am God's creation" and blah blah.
But I do not believe it. Fully, anyway.
If I did, I would not come back to this sickening pit of worthlessness.
I do not own the truths that I am okay, that I am good, that I am beautiful, and He loves me-because of Jesus.
No, I cry for freedom from the lies that I am too bad for grace to heal.
That this pain will never go away.
That my life is too shameful, too dirty, too much.
The church throws the examples of David and Rahab in my face.
But what does that help me?
This is a heart and soul issue.
I do not believe.
And if God is so sovereign, and His grace only can help us believe, than what do I do?

I'm waiting.
Been waiting for a long time.
Previously in the wrong waiting rooms of alcoholism and promiscuity.
But now, I'm waiting for the salvation from the Lord.
There is nothing I can do.
I literally have nothing to offer.
All I do is cry. And press in to His word, and praise regardless. And remain open to the pain that gushes from my wounded heart.
That sounds dramatic, but that's how it feels.
The old song goes, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen..."
And it's true.
Even your best friends can't fully grasp the weight of injustice done to the wounded soul.
Words are not enough to express the depths of spiritual, mental and emotional strongholds.
But God knows.
He became man, died and rose for that apparently.
But UGH, if only I could believe that as fully as I am quick to speak it.

Lies flood around and some creep in, and I take every thought captive to Christ.
He fights for me.
But I am afraid.
Because I do not own that Perfect Love my King speaks about.
I do not trust that it is for me.
I speak it to so many: friends, youth, my co-workers.
But for some reason, I am not good enough for it.
There is a disconnect. And I don't know what the connector is. Maybe cognitively. But not wholly.

I wasn't planning on typing this out. It's extremely raw, and potentially blasphemous.
But I don't care.
It is what it is and I want it documented.
So when my Lord DOES heal me and DOES free me and DOES show redemption of my pitiful life, I will look back on this and sing all the more and proclaim His love to anyone willing to listen.

In the mean time, I will wait. And sing and dance continually. And praise Him regardless of what I feel/believe about myself. I trust my God. And He DOES hear me. The promises of Isaiah 30:18-21 and ch. 41-44 are so hard to cling to when I see nothing. But I will cling.

I sent the following in a text message to my best friend some weeks ago when I was facing some unrelenting spiritual warfare. She said, "I don't understand why this is happening..." I replied:
"He's bringing me to total&complete healing and freedom. I know it. His Spirit was working in me last night as I met with some women..and gave me clarity on hope and His purposes for this time. I'm not discouraged. Tired...but pushing through the fire. And going to sing&dance in the midst. I love Him so much. If this is where He has me, I'll be patient and obey with joy just to please Him and get more of Him. And when it's time, He will release me. Freedom from my past is coming."

Jesus, hear my heart. And have your way with it. Amen.

Oh No.

It has literally been months since I've posted on this thing. 6 months to be exact. Which doesn't really matter to others, but it does to me. It's not that I haven't been writing. I've just been...well writing, not typing. Well, for a while I'd been typing on a typewriter that I got from my sweet grandmother. I learned two things through that experience:

1.) I love typewriters. They type slower than computer keyboards and are more of a pain to delete, which forces me to think more diligently about what I'm actually writing. While at the same time, it gives me more time to creatively "flow" since the words come out quicker than writing by hand (though most writings in the past months have been via hand).
2.) I'm terrible with ordering ink. I used that typewriter daily. And then the ink ran out. I kept saying I was going to order more ink but then I couldn't find the manual that showed which kind I needed. If I could search as well as I typed though, I'd be back in typewriter heaven.

Moving on, I've decided to carefully tackle the job of re-recording the past few months by transposing writings from my journal to this blog. For the sake of clarity (mostly for myself when I look back on this in a few months) I'm titling each entry with the date it was actually written. It's kind of nice to look back over months at a time and laugh at how young my writing was. So, if I put it here on this blog, I can have it all in one place rather than 3 different journals/compilations of scrap paper. :)
This post literally has no other purpose than to state: wow it has been way too long and to continue "blogging" and pretending it's the next day. A lot has changed since the former post. And I'm excited to write about it.

The last post was September 27, 2011.
My eyes widen and my mouth puffs out air as "oh my yikes, I had no idea what was coming next" slowly escapes.
This truly has been a journey...