New Years Resolution 2012

I’ve fallen subject to cliché: a teenager with a mission. But I am just that, a teenager on the borderline of adulthood with a desperate need to find her own path in this life. I am approaching 2012 as a journey, an adventure, and a time of growth. I am setting out on the journey of this New Year with a task at hand; to find myself, to further discover God, and to forge new friendships.
I’ve reached a place in life where I had become complacent with ineffectiveness. I had allowed the fact that I was trapped in the same state day after day to emotionally and spiritually trap me as well. I am approaching this year with the distinct mission to break out and create a new life fueled by God and knowledge found in the details of life.
I am facing this New Year with a new attitude of acceptance and learning. I will accept anything God has to through at me through this life and use it to learn more about Him and more about myself.
This is my New Years resolution, but unlike those in the past, I have passion fueling my need to accomplish this mission and hold tight to my promise to myself to complete this journey and accept with open arms the things it has to teach me.


“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” -Marcel Proust

Love Without Fear

Love is something that is contemplated, dissected, longed for, and feared by people everyday. Four letters arranged in a simple pattern create a word that has captivated the world’s attention since the beginning of time. Yet still not a single person can tell the true definition of love. No one can explain how it happens, why it happens, why it ends, why there are so many sides and colors of love, and why everyone craves for it. There is no lack of theories wafting through the minds of us all by means of infectious thoughts fueled by romances, movies, and the internet. Someone can devote their entire existence to this one concept, this four letter word, and still never fully comprehend it. But my issue is one that thousands face everyday for a variety of reasons: the fear of love.
I’ve been a person scared of love. Not only because it was so lacking in my childhood, but because the relationships I’d built later in life to compensate had ripped me apart in their dismantling causing my heart to turn callous and for me to cringe at the mere mention of the word. It even reached the point I’d banned it from my vocabulary receding within myself when anyone would point the word in my direction and chastising those who used it as if its meaning held no depth. To me love is something to be shared with someone special, to be cherished and constantly renewed. To this day that outlook has not changed, but rather expanded to a comprehension and exploration of the varying sides of love.
While talking to a friend tonight I had an epiphany about the way I react and communicate love to those around me. I asked her a simple question that opened up my eyes to something I had never examined before: Why not? Before I would simply give excuses of all the ways love had hurt me and stripped me of my ability to love, but excuses are just that; excuses. In asking her why not, I was also internally asking myself. And my answer was one that surprised me. It wasn’t the usual, “I loved him and he did this so I can’t love now because I don’t want to go through that again.” but instead it was something deeper. I told myself, “Why not?” Stripped of all my excuses, left to answer to my conscience I was encountered with the reality that there is no reason not to love.
Granted you are stepping out on a very short ledge with both feet when you dare to let your guards down long enough to take a chance on love, but if you have the chance to love and be loved, even if for a little while, why not? Yes, it may end in pain, but I can tell you that loving each person who has entered and then proceeded to leave my life has taught me lessons and given me memories that I’m happy to have in the recesses of my mind. I have been a victim of unrequited love, but am I really a victim when I can say that at least I was brave enough to love in the first place, and strong enough to maintain that love even when it wasn’t returned. Isn’t that what love is in the end? Self sacrifice?
Or perhaps you don’t want to fall in love; then love a friend by doing them a favor without expecting it to be returned. Love a stranger at a gas station by holding the door open for them. Love someone having a bad day by offering a smile. Love someone struggling by lending an ear.
I want to encourage you to take a leap of faith and to love, regardless of the consequences.

I am young, single, never been married, and am not expecting it in the immediate future but I have a prayer even now that when my time comes I won’t hide behind my walls of self-preservation and I fully embrace falling in love and continue to fall in love with that person year after year. I pray that I find new things to fall in love with each passing year and that when life gets hard, when love get hard, those things are what I hold onto the get me through it. That love, that renewal, a fuel that continues to burn under my relationship to keep it from falling into just another statistic, and I maintain faith.

God has given us a magnificent gift through the act of love. God communicates love to us each and everyday, so why then are we so shy to distribute it back to the people we come in contact with? Are we so greedy for this one thing that we soak up every ounce we are lucky to receive and hold it deep within us as to keep ourselves feeling loved? What about those who feel no love, who ignore the love of God and go through life feeling unloved and ultimately unlovable? You don’t have to devote your life to someone to love them; you simple have to take a step of kindness and humility. God gives us this gift to spread to others, so take a chance and ask yourself, “Why not?”.

Musings from the Imperfect

I’m infuriated with the way “Christians” treat people who don’t fit into their criteria of acceptability. The word Christian means Christ like. Jesus spent his life with sinners-loving them and reaching out to them while society disowned them.
Matthew 9:12 “When he heard this, Jesus replied, ‘Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do.’”
I’m sick of people acting like the Christian life is all sunshine and cupcakes. They confess that they’ve been saved but won’t say from what. They’ll tell the nations how God has changed them, but shy away from how they’ve been changed. We as a Christians have had the enemy tattoo a target on our backs. We are attacked, tempted, we fall, we regret…we need to start being real with one another, and with the world.
Stop pretending everything is okay when you’re really falling apart. Stop acting like you’re a cookie cutter Christian who has never, or will ever mess up.

MY CHALLENGE TO YOU IS THIS: DARE TO BE REAL. DARE TO BE HONEST. DARE TO BE OPEN.

If we can’t trust the church to know our pain and our hurt, how can we expect anyone else to? We have to be open and honest with one another and the world. We have to show one another that we are struggling so they can help us. And we have to show the world as an example of what we’re offering.
Churches now are promising a giant genie wrapped in a bow: all you have to do is close your eyes and bow your head and your wish will be granted. We’re promising them a counterfeit God, and many have caught on to the fantasy we’re offering. It’s time we start being real: sharing the real Jesus, and offering the real God. Not a God who fixes everything, but the God who suffers with us holding our hand all the way.

Challenge

My challenge to you is one that I myself have taken. It is this: take all the items that you’ve held on to that remind you of the past, weather it be relationships, something bad that you’ve experienced, something symbolic or connected with some kind of pain AND BURN IT!
I know that this challenge seems extreme, but the strongholds it will break off of you are amazing.
My two best friends and I took this challenge tonight. We’d done it before with the youth group back in ’09. But even then I didn’t burn everything that I should have. The things that I held on to seemed to be apart of me, so if this is something that you face trust me I understand what you are feeling. But one of my best friends challenged me to let this stuff go because she knew that things from my past could be hindering my relationship with God. I fought her but ultimately I saw the point she was making, so I pulled out all of my old photos and my box of memories and went through it to see what things I needed to get out of my life. I ended up with a shoe box filled with roses, photos, poems I’d written, stuffed animals, letters…all of these things I’d held on to from my ex’s because they reminded me of the people they were related to. But tonight I burned them all, and the release I felt made me understand that I really needed to get all of those things out of my life. My friend made a valid point when she was trying to convince me to do this, she asked me “what are you going to do with all of these things when you get married, even though it’s in the future think of how your husband will feel when you move into a new house that is filled with all these memories of other men?” This made me open my eyes and see that until then all these things are doing is reminding me of people who are no longer a part of my life and relationships that stole things from me. But when we burned them I could feel the weight that was lifted from my shoulders. I burned things that I have been holding onto for more than five years.
I give you this challenge now because the New Year is upon us, and with a new year you can make a new you! So think about it, you can even do it with some of your friends like I did.
I read this scripture around the fire tonight, “But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14) I realize now the true importance of letting things go. Even if you don’t realize it, these objects are holding you back. When you pull them out you will instantly start remembering the life you lived when the memories attached to them were created. They are holding you back from your total potential in God.
Consider my challenge wholly before you dismiss it. Burn the bridges you’ve maintained to pain and sin. Let them go and give way to a new life of God.
“…freedom reigns in this place, showers of mercy and grace, falling on every face, there is freedom…” –Jason Upton freedom
This is one of the songs we sang after praying and burning our past. It helps you feel the weight of the bondage you’re letting go.