..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.