The act of confession.

This blog is suppose to be a place where I expose my heart, so maybe I should try and do that every so often.

This week has been really weird. I think I am beginning to hit walls…finally running into the very things that I have been trying to run away from. and it sucks.

But deep inside my heart I have known that I needed this to happen. I have been running from and avoiding myself for so long though, that it hurts to stare straight at all my junk.  And then, taking it one step further, it is a really hard thing to actually admit to anyone exactly what I am feeling and where I am spiritually/emotionally.

To admit that I need community desperately.

To admit that I am finding myself thrown into a confusing place, which is sort of scary territory to be in once again.

And then to admit that I feel distant from God…and that I miss him a lot. I would do anything and go anywhere if it meant I could find him once again.

Confessing all that is hard. Its sooo hard, because everything in me is screaming to run and push away. But to open my mouth and admit those things to a sister anyways is very freeing at the same time. Because I am not carrying it alone anymore.

Yeah, I dont have it together one bit right now. I have cried and cried today.

I don’t care if this post makes sense. Im not even going to edit it.

This is just me being vulnerable, in the broken state that I’m in, hoping that God will show up.

Runner

I am a runner by nature. When I am faced with a problem in my own life, I will try hard to avoid it. I am deeply afraid of pain and failure and I will pretend like it isnt there for as long as I can. But guess what. You cant run forever. Eventually you hit a wall. And sometimes, as much as it hurts, that wall is grace.

I dont know how to stop running, and sometimes I feel like God has to throw me down on my butt. Not in a mean way, but it is the only place where I will have to reach out for help. And it’s the only place where I realize that I can’t do this alone.

It’s a scary thing to let someone into the very places you are trying to run from. Trust me!  But I guess this is why God gave us brothers and sisters to take this journey with us. We need each other to be the body of Christ that we are designed to be. Unless we own up to our own brokenness and lean into one another, we wont truly be functioning as a body.

And so, instead of running, I reach and lean, and trust in the Lord’s faithfulness.  No matter how messy life may become, He is always faithful.  Always.

Letter

God,

Please keep healing me. I’m letting you come in and have your way in my life. I want to know your love and learn to love myself. And I want to learn to love others well too. Please don’t let me become cold and hard. Penetrate my heart. Break through everything I build up. I become too easily calloused and numb, but I am praying that you will continue to work on me. Please don’t give up on me. I want to live. I want to walk in your freedom, though I don’t always choose to get off my mat. I have actually grown quite comfortable on that mat, though I hate it at the same time. Its really easy to stare at my wounds. It’s easy to hold on to the pain, and let unforgiveness and resentment grow in my heart towards other people.     But I don’t want that for my life. It just hurts. I want to let go. I know you’re moving already, but I just pray for reconciliation. Make me new. I pray for child-like faith again. Move in my life in a new way this season. Teach me to trust you.

Though I am much more aware of my own brokenness now, and feel much more broken in this time, I pray that you would use me in this place. I want you to move through me to touch other people. You are the reason I live. Thank you for pursuing me, and calling me lovely. You gave me hope, when everything seemed hopeless. And from that point on, you have changed my life. You have never stopped working in me or pursuing me. And I know that one day I will stand whole and healed, because of your action in my life.

Thank you for loving me. Move as you will today. 

Love.

Lex

Feeling a bit like Don Music.

Don Music: “Oh, I’ll never get it right! Never!”

I still have a long road ahead of me with this perfectionist/over-analyzing business that seems to keep a tight grip on me. But, I will continue to take one step at a time, and try to offer myself as much grace as possible along the way.

Less beating myself up, and more grace. Less taking life so seriously, and more grace to enjoy it. I am capable.

Come on, Lex!

 

Immanuel

OH the joy! We have finally reached the new year! 2010 is over and done with, which I am really happy about, because that was one challenging year for me.  But I know that the struggles I faced in the past year were necessary. Through all of the hurt and confusion, I think I became human again. I was brought low, and I became deeply aware of my own brokenness.

I have changed a lot. A year ago, I was numb, and hardly ever cried. I really thought that I had forgotten how to cry or that maybe my tears had all dried up. Either way, I didn’t think I would cry again. I just went through the motions of life, moving, and moving, and trying to avoid His loving touch. But then I began hitting walls. There was no more running. There was no more hiding. God has a way of getting to us. And it hurt when I finally stopped fighting Him and faced how wounded I was. It stung. The wounds from my past were just as fresh as when they were first inflicted, and Jesus wanted in. To touch and to heal.

This year, I have seen how God longs to get in our mess with us. He is a God who weeps for us—and then—eventually with us. That was my journey. I slowly became more and more aware of my brokenness, and eventually, the tears started to come..little by little, like a leaky faucet.

But then, the stripping away began. It began in the summer and lasted for months. God slowly took away the things that I valued too much in my life, and found too much identity in. And it hurt a lot. It hurt more than ripping a bandaid off of my skin. Because, in a lot of ways, the things that I gave to him/ he had asked for had become who I was. And so as I layed down some of the most precious things that I had, I wept, but I knew He was worth it. He is, and always should be my first love.

Immanuel–”God with us”. Even through a season where I felt depressed, and sometimes alone, there have been moments where I have felt his touch and nearness in the most intimate of ways.

I am learning to lean. Lean on him and those who he has brought along side of me. Through this season He has given me a family, an odd collection of people who love me for me. People that  are deeply aware of their own brokenness and stand with me in mine. They have been a gift, and they have helped me push through the messiness, and see the beauty of God’s action in my life.

And now, here I stand. I am at a completely different place than where I was a year ago. I’m headed in a new direction, not really knowing where I am going. But he is with me, and that is enough.

I am entering this new year with a new hope being birthed inside of me. This is a new year, new season, and a new chapter of my life. And I’m entering into it. No more looking back. No more dwelling on how hard things have been. He is doing a new thing! Watch out, 2011 is going to be great!

Embracing Weakness

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecution, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  –2 Corinthians 12: 9-10

I want to let go, but I hold on tighter. I want to show my real feelings, but I wear a mask. I constantly find myself building up walls when I face hardship as a way to protect myself from getting hurt any further. But God is working in me, and changing me, and I am trying to embrace my weaknesses.

Before I was a Christian, my inability to show how I was really feeling lead me down a very dangerous path. I was completely broken, and hiding behind a smile. No one knew what was happening, the pain that I felt, until things were completely out of control.

I have been a christian for almost three years now, and I still have to choose to be vulnerable. It is something that does not come naturally to me.  I have to choose to take off the “funny girl” face in each situation. And I don’t choose to every time. But God has shown me how powerfully he works when I lay down my pride, and show my weaknesses. He gives me strength to become vulnerable with those around me. He is teaching me to trust Him. I am learning to come to the Lord with an open heart, exposing all of me. Being real with my emotions. It isnt healthy for me to bury my true feeling inside of me. He is breaking down walls that I have built up for years, and I have to choose not to build them up again.

I am broken, imperfect, I have no idea how close or far I am from graduating college, I spill drinks everywhere, I’m messy, I am insecure, and I am NOTHING without the Lord. I really should not be here. I was saved in His perfect timing.

But through all of this, God is glorified. As I lay down my life, mess and all, and allow him to use His imagination for my life, he shows up in such amazing ways. The exact places that were once weaknesses are the places that he wants to use. My story, my struggles, my walk is what allows me to meet people in the midst of their struggles.

“Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.”   –Acts 4:13

Without Jesus, I shy away from this call to boldness.  It intimidates the heck out of me, but as I am still before the Lord, I gain strength to do anything.  I don’t want to get in God’s way of bringing heaven to earth.

I have to surrender complete control and that is when he makes me stronger than I ever thought possible.

And so I embrace all of my weaknesses because he works mightily through them. His light shines through them. And the weaker I am, the more I really know who is carrying me through it all.