Oh boy, it’s been a long while since I have been here. I think that its because I have been a long while from being in close relationship to God. Looking back on the last month of my life I see a whole lot of nothingness and apathy and laziness. I barely pulled through the end of the quarter and stumbled through Plunge and spring break in a daze, confused and asleep. It has really really sucked. Last night I cried about it and I have felt uneasy about 'it' for a little over a week.
Honestly, I like that it sucks. I like that all of my life feels like shit when I am not okay with God. It would terrify me to think about what it would mean if my relationship with Jesus went down the drain and my life remained stable, completely unaffected. This proves to me that it’s real. The fact that I suffer in its absence is proof that it is absolutely legitimate. Being in love with someone affects every dimension of my life and if I am actually in a 'romantic' relationship it should have that same, deeply penetrating presence in my life.
So here it is: I have been looking for God. Basically my whole life and I will be until I reach heaven. It’s at the very core of my being and that longing for God will never go away, whether or not I am conscious of it. Before I came to know Jesus I was looking for him and when I am choosing not to follow him I am still looking for him.
I look for him in other people, in experiences, in who I am and I am so frustrated all of the time because I can never ever be satisfied. I look for unconditional love, complete acceptance, deep understanding, unending compassion and peace in so many of my human relationships. I get so frustrated and depressed with they can't do this. When they basically just suck at life and I stand there and am so dissatisfied with their failure. When I am not satisfied and following Jesus, I look for him in others and hate life because they are human beings.
I am searching for God. Letting this be a fact that defines my life makes me so much more serious about everything I have in it. The one thing that God plays over and over and over and over in the Old Testament is the role of false Gods. God warned Israel so many times not to create false Gods and I have always thought that he repeated himself too much. You think that they would have gotten the point after a while and I get bored with reading it over and over again. I think that I kind of understand why the same point is brought up so many times. Being both a person made in the image of God, I am looking for him and at the same time I am a person of free will, with an endless selection of gods that I could choose from. This situation is the most dangerous and serious one in my life.
If I am honest about my faith journey passion and tension and faith have all played key roles but the role of idol worship in my life have been the one thing that is consistently crippling to my relationship with Jesus. It is the easiest thing to fall into and I do it all of the time, every single day of my life. That fucking sucks. I would vomit, or at least I hope I would vomit, at the ration of God worship to idol worship in my life.
If I look at the past and let it predict the future, as I often do during these times of 'drought', I get really, really discouraged. I think that the fact that God's grace is new every morning forces me to make a decision every morning and every moment of my day as to whether or not I will allow God to be God in my life or if I will try to awkwardly stuff a friend, experience, personality type, or fantasy into that place in my life. I am a thinking and rationalizing human being and I praise God that I am. It makes this life with him so much better because it is so real. In the midst of my thankfulness I must always remember that I am a person of free will and I am person born after the fall and in my nature I choose idols over God.
What is it going to be?
3.31.2007
3.03.2007
..radical
I am moderately certain that I am allergic to 1/2 and 1/2. I have a rash right now on my knee.
In my relationship with Jesus, I find out more and more of who I am when I fall more and more in love with him. I feel like seemingly cliché when I make statements like this but I will unpack it in a little soapbox scream. So much of my life can be wasted on defining who I am. It finds its way into everything; my clothes, music, eating habits, media intake, social dialog, and spiritual rituals, absolutely everything. It is truly amazing for me to sit down and think about the amount of time I spend trying to define who I am through activities and parts of my character and personality. It can become an all-consuming task that avoids total submission to Christ because; I have it all in control, thank you very much. The problem with this is that it is such a shallow and hollow way to spend my time. For every minute I have ever spend weighing the pros and cons about something in my life, whether or not it will make me cool or accepted or different, but in a cool way. I feel guilty about thinking about things like this but they consume my life and that consumption is so natural, such a normal state for my being to dwell in, that I wonder if I can know anything else. I think that this predicament has a direct correlation to my intensity in my relationship with Jesus. The more of myself I recklessly give to him, with only a few strings attached which are only broken through me asking Jesus Christ to break them, the more I become who I am. I scream with Paul when he says 'I WANT TO KNOW NOTHING BUT CHRIST CRUCIFIED'. If I 'know' myself, it is the greatest facade to avoid my purpose that I could ever muster up.
Some people spend their whole lives creating themselves, to realize that when they die, it’s all gone. Perhaps are they not let into heaven because there is nothing of them there on that day? I don't know.
I think that that the point I am at right now is maybe not the surrender point of this process but the acceptance point. Am I going to allow myself to be whom Jesus made me? What if I don't get to share my deep, epic thoughts with others, but listen the rest of my life? What if God want me to be ridiculously wealthily? What if he wants me to do things that 'I am not called to'? What if I am supposed to die slowly? What if I am suppose to stay in shitty mediocre Christianity and find out some way to be of one pure and holy passion in this lukewarm sinkhole? What if I don't like what that Lindsey looks like? It's a promise that I will be hated and spit on and mocked and that I won't be thought of highly and that my humility will be painfully present in everything I do. This is what I sign up for when I flippantly say that I am child of God, trying to follow Jesus. These words fly out of my mouth so easily, perhaps they should come with far more reservation and weight and joy and passion.
There is so much release when there are moments when I am absolutely living in the spirit. They are the heights and depths of my soul and they are the moments when I am truly living. They never fail me even though sometimes I feel as though I am going to explode. It’s the moments when I avoid living that I hate life the most. It’s when I slip into brainless mediocrity and myself that I implode with tension and sadness and apathy.
So what does all of this verbiage actually look like in my life? Most of the time it is simply left in the moment of tension and never actually explored in reality. I usually sit and scream at people and events and conversations and ideals, but not audibly, in my soul. In these moments all I want to do is go to a mountain and scream until I have no physical strength left and then I want to lay down and sob until collapse and then I want to scream pray and then fall asleep for a long period of time. I want to be with other people like me more than anything. I want to be the people that want Jesus 24/7 but are completely honest with their humanity and live in the tensions of a Jesus in human skin. I want to leave everyone I know. I want to meet a monastery or a nunnery or a radical community where Jesus isn't a pet side project, he is an obsession. I want to be with people who encourage my faith, push me into God, and force me to image the impossible. I don't want to suppress it all, pushing it down to make room for lame ass conversations that rot at the very meaning of life. I don't want to be frustrated with Christians, I just want to be obsessed with Jesus and be with people who are completely obsessed.
I realize that all of these words might sound selfish, but future self, know that I love people, dearly with most of my heart, but Jesus is always more beautiful and always more perfect and I trust him so much more.
I don't know what to do with this mess of it all.
If you are creepy and read my blog, whatever, but if your heart aches for this same experience, lets run away to a mountain or a cliff or a beach and scream, cry, pray and sleep in the crazy vastness of God, forgetting all that we are because we are so wrapped in his presence.
In my relationship with Jesus, I find out more and more of who I am when I fall more and more in love with him. I feel like seemingly cliché when I make statements like this but I will unpack it in a little soapbox scream. So much of my life can be wasted on defining who I am. It finds its way into everything; my clothes, music, eating habits, media intake, social dialog, and spiritual rituals, absolutely everything. It is truly amazing for me to sit down and think about the amount of time I spend trying to define who I am through activities and parts of my character and personality. It can become an all-consuming task that avoids total submission to Christ because; I have it all in control, thank you very much. The problem with this is that it is such a shallow and hollow way to spend my time. For every minute I have ever spend weighing the pros and cons about something in my life, whether or not it will make me cool or accepted or different, but in a cool way. I feel guilty about thinking about things like this but they consume my life and that consumption is so natural, such a normal state for my being to dwell in, that I wonder if I can know anything else. I think that this predicament has a direct correlation to my intensity in my relationship with Jesus. The more of myself I recklessly give to him, with only a few strings attached which are only broken through me asking Jesus Christ to break them, the more I become who I am. I scream with Paul when he says 'I WANT TO KNOW NOTHING BUT CHRIST CRUCIFIED'. If I 'know' myself, it is the greatest facade to avoid my purpose that I could ever muster up.
Some people spend their whole lives creating themselves, to realize that when they die, it’s all gone. Perhaps are they not let into heaven because there is nothing of them there on that day? I don't know.
I think that that the point I am at right now is maybe not the surrender point of this process but the acceptance point. Am I going to allow myself to be whom Jesus made me? What if I don't get to share my deep, epic thoughts with others, but listen the rest of my life? What if God want me to be ridiculously wealthily? What if he wants me to do things that 'I am not called to'? What if I am supposed to die slowly? What if I am suppose to stay in shitty mediocre Christianity and find out some way to be of one pure and holy passion in this lukewarm sinkhole? What if I don't like what that Lindsey looks like? It's a promise that I will be hated and spit on and mocked and that I won't be thought of highly and that my humility will be painfully present in everything I do. This is what I sign up for when I flippantly say that I am child of God, trying to follow Jesus. These words fly out of my mouth so easily, perhaps they should come with far more reservation and weight and joy and passion.
There is so much release when there are moments when I am absolutely living in the spirit. They are the heights and depths of my soul and they are the moments when I am truly living. They never fail me even though sometimes I feel as though I am going to explode. It’s the moments when I avoid living that I hate life the most. It’s when I slip into brainless mediocrity and myself that I implode with tension and sadness and apathy.
So what does all of this verbiage actually look like in my life? Most of the time it is simply left in the moment of tension and never actually explored in reality. I usually sit and scream at people and events and conversations and ideals, but not audibly, in my soul. In these moments all I want to do is go to a mountain and scream until I have no physical strength left and then I want to lay down and sob until collapse and then I want to scream pray and then fall asleep for a long period of time. I want to be with other people like me more than anything. I want to be the people that want Jesus 24/7 but are completely honest with their humanity and live in the tensions of a Jesus in human skin. I want to leave everyone I know. I want to meet a monastery or a nunnery or a radical community where Jesus isn't a pet side project, he is an obsession. I want to be with people who encourage my faith, push me into God, and force me to image the impossible. I don't want to suppress it all, pushing it down to make room for lame ass conversations that rot at the very meaning of life. I don't want to be frustrated with Christians, I just want to be obsessed with Jesus and be with people who are completely obsessed.
I realize that all of these words might sound selfish, but future self, know that I love people, dearly with most of my heart, but Jesus is always more beautiful and always more perfect and I trust him so much more.
I don't know what to do with this mess of it all.
If you are creepy and read my blog, whatever, but if your heart aches for this same experience, lets run away to a mountain or a cliff or a beach and scream, cry, pray and sleep in the crazy vastness of God, forgetting all that we are because we are so wrapped in his presence.
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