Songs of the Heart #2 - 'Hard to Get'

That initial spark from a journal entry initiated another... See, most of the groundwork of my faith and what I know of God has come from songs. It's how He speaks to me. I just can't always explain how it works. 'Day by Day' started me thinking that I could turn it into a devotional-type series. I wrote two, back in June of '07, and just the other day got the idea for a third, which I am working on. Here, for your reading pleasure, is the second one in the "series", 'Hard to Get'. It's a little longer than the other one, but it's because there's more lyrics to this song than the other!!

June 15th, 2007

You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth
Who are afraid of being left by those we love, and who get hardened by the hurt
Do you remember when You lived down here where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread
Did You forget about us after You had flown away
Well I memorized every word You said
Still I'm so scared, I'm holding my breath
While You're up there just playing hard to get

You who live in radiance
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin
We have a love that's not as patient as Yours was
Still we do love now and then.
Did You ever know loneliness? Did You ever know need?
Do You remember just how long a night can get?
When You were barely holding on and Your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in Your sweat
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While You're up there just playing hard to get?

And I know you bore our sorrows
And I know you feel our pain
And I know it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained
And I know that I am only lashing out
At the One who loves me most
And after I figured this, somehow
All I really need to know is if

You who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time
We can't see what's ahead and we can not get free of what we've left behind
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All the words of shame and doubt, blame and regret
I can't see how You're leading me unless You've led me here
To where I'm lost enough to let myself be led
And so You've been here all along, I guess.
That's just Your way and You are just plain hard to get
- 'Hard to Get' by Rich Mullins

I love this song. I just can't help but sing along with every fiber of my being. It's the last few lines that get me every time. I can't count the number of times I've felt so lost that I gave up trying to find a way, only to find God waiting for me at rock bottom, shining light a few feet in the right direction. That's one of the more interesting things I've learned - that God does His best and greatest work at the lowest and most miserable moments in our lives. It's like that old saying; "You can't fix what isn't broken." I have a t-shirt with a great phrase on it - 'healing comes to the broken places first'. God can't heal us until we recognize our brokenness, and give it up to Him.

So when I feel like God is playing "hard to get" in my life, when I really need His direction, I remember that it's when I get completely derailed and I'm totally lost that God shows up, in all His Glory, with a road map.

And so You've been here all along, I guess.
That's just Your way and You are just plain hard to get.

Just plain hard to get.

Songs of the Heart #1 - 'Day by Day'

It all started with a journal entry...

June 12th, 2007

Day by Day, day by day.
Oh, dear Lord, three things I pray:
To see Thee more clearly,
Love Thee more dearly,
Follow Thee more nearly;
Day by day.
- from Godspell

This chorus has been running through my mind for nearly 24 hours now. These are the things I should be desiring most! To see You clearer in everything around me; to love You with all my heart, soul and mind; and to follow You so closely that I don't know where I end and You begin. That's what I should be praying for, not the frivolous crap I normally ask You for.

So forgive me, Lord, and help me to desire these things more than anything else. And because I can't state them any more eloquently, I will just repeat them in their beautiful simplicity.

Day by day, day by day.
Oh, dear Lord, three things I pray;
To see Thee more clearly,
Love Thee more dearly,
Follow Thee more nearly;
Day by day.

My Testimony for the Chic Application... **IT'S DONE!!!**

I don’t claim to have a fantastic testimony; I haven’t experienced terrible hardships or incredible miracles. But God has still left His fingerprints all over my life, and to me, it’s fantastic. So, here it is.

I was born into a Christian family and accepted Christ when I was four years old. I grew up attending the same church of which I am now a member. Up until recent years, my faith has been all mental - no heart. Throughout the years, I’ve caught glimpses, felt flashes of that fire in my heart, but it never stayed long. One of the highlights was when I went to Chic ’97, the summer between my freshman and sophomore years. I found my best friend there, a friendship that God has been using for the past eleven years to mold me into the person He designed me to be.

I started working with the Jr. High part of the youth group as a necessity. My church doesn’t have much for the college/career age group, so after graduating, there wasn’t any ministry for me to get involved with, other than helping with the youth. I was enlisted to help with music for the Jr. High in 2002, and a couple of the kids convinced me to stay for the entire time, instead of leaving after the music was done. In April 2003, I was asked to chaperone the Sr. High Spring Retreat (our 8th graders go on that retreat, as their introduction to the Sr. High group), and started working with the Sr. High as well. It was something else to keep me busy, back then. I thought working with these teens would make me happier and bring me closer to God.

Things went on like that for a few years: Breakaway (Jr. High) Wednesday nights, SNL (Sunday Night Live, for Sr. High) Sunday nights, leader’s meetings once a month, retreats, Sunday School, and such filled my calendar, but that fire was still missing from my heart. Even through the first half of this year, I knew something was wrong with my life. But I just couldn’t figure out what.

At the beginning of the summer, I had pinpointed the problem to not being where I should be in my faith. I felt like I was stuck in quicksand, but I couldn’t figure out how to get myself out. I was stagnant – I had stopped growing spiritually. But how to get moving again? I was hoping for something to happen when I went on my summer vacation at the end of July: Soul Fest. This was my fourth year attending Soul Fest (a Christian music festival located in New Hampshire), and has been the one place I’ve consistently felt God’s presence and inspiration in the previous three years.

Last year was different. The usual excitement was a fraction of it’s former self from previous years. I didn’t know what to do, why I couldn’t feel anything, even there, at Soul Fest. I couldn’t understand why I was stuck in the numbness. I drifted through Soul Fest, experiencing and enjoying it, but I never experienced the “something” I’d been hoping for. I went back home feeling somewhat disappointed and wondering how I was ever going to get out of this quicksand and shake the numbness.

I got home Sunday, August third, and called my parents to let them know I’d made it back safe. My Mom, who I’ve never gotten along with well, got on the phone after I’d talked to my Dad, saying she had something she wanted to talk to me about. Rolling my eyes, I listened as she took a deep breath. But her next words took my breath away: “I think you’re suffering from depression.”

What?? She kept talking, but my mind was stuck on those six words. Me? Depressed?? My brain didn’t want to accept it, but something about it just rang true. And as my Mom described how she’d seen the same symptoms in a coworker and friend of hers earlier that year that she saw in me now, I realized that, thought I hated to admit it, she was right.

Me. Depressed. I can’t describe the shock it was to finally put a reason to the numbness – a name to the pit of quicksand. It was also somewhat of a relief. Now that I knew, I could do something about it. I made a deal with my Mom, that she would give me the chance to work with God on getting to a better place. If that didn’t work, then I’d try “her way” – medication.

And so, with the help of my dear, best friend that I found at Chic so many years ago (who also happened to be struggling with depression at the same time), I set my sights on God and started clawing my way out of the quicksand.

Looking back, I can find evidence of my struggle with depression going as far back as high school – it just got worse over the years. Here’s an excerpt from my journal, the last entry before my Mom pointed out my depression when I got back from Soul Fest.

“But the feeling still isn’t there. Why do I feel almost… dead inside? Numb. And I’m realizing that maybe… if I’ve numbed myself to the pain, have I numbed my heart to everything?” 8-2-08

Over the past six months, looking at that entry (and writing more), I’ve realized that my issues with trusting people have filled me with that numbness. I’ve known for a long time that my inability to trust people extended to God. I knew it shouldn’t, but if close friends and even family have failed me, broken my trust time and again, how can I place my trust in a God that I can’t see?

Flawed logic, I know, but that’s just the way my brain works. Trusting God before I trust myself – that’s definitely been the hardest thing I’ve had to work on in the past year.

It’s been a difficult year, for sure, but hindsight is a beautiful thing. From here, I can see that God never left me, even when I felt abandoned. He was always there, just waiting for me to reach out to Him in my despair, so that he could scoop me up into His arms.

And that’s just the best place to be!

Thoughts on James ch. 1

So, as part of our normal weekly Bible Study routine, my best friend and I are trying to synchronize our daily Bible Readings. Me? I've been decidedly lax on this front, so I told him I'd follow his lead. At last night's Bible Study, we decided, at random, to start at James for now, reading a chapter a day. We agreed to meet up online at night, to basically make sure we'd both read it. I did not intend to really write anything, but just jot down a few notes to help me remember what I'd thought. Here's what I ended up writing.

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Thought One

How hard is it to face trials and suffering with PURE JOY????? How often do we actually do that? The bottom line is, trials suck. And it's not until afterward that we look back and can see the journey or maybe even glimpse the reasonings for the trial that we find, not joy, but satisfaction in knowing that we persevered. But, this passage is saying it should be otherwise!! We should persevere, knowing, without a doubt, that God will bring us through, and find joy (yes, JOY!) that this trial is happening to us "...so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." (vs. 4) Looking at this verse, it tells me that we are going through a trial because we lack something. And if we persevere through the suffering with an eye towards finding what we should be learning from it, we just might find that something we were lacking. But, we have to take ourselves out of the little pity-party we normally love reveling in, and realize it's not about our suffering, but about how these trials will make us a more complete person in God's eyes.

Thought Two

"Quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry." (vs. 19) Again, something of a rarity these days. It is so easy to be angry in situations we don't understand completely. And so, we shoot of our mouths with so-called righteous anger, never taking the time to listen to the other's viewpoint - to try and put ourselves in their shoes, so to speak. How much better would this world be if we stopped to think about any situation from someone else's position, instead of always leaping to our own, often completely wrong, conclusions? And this does not just apply to being angry... whenever we make judgments about someone, have you thought about why they act the way they do? I know I am exceptionally guilty of judging people's character, even though I try so hard not to. Something to definitely be more conscious about.

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So, there it is. This was only the first day of reading, so whether or not I end up writing something for each day remains to be seen. Hope anyone who reads this enjoys it, and maybe finds it a bit eye-opening, as I did.

Tear-Stained Memory

This is a paper I wrote my Senior year in High School, for my English class. The assignment was to write about an experience or award that changed you. Being only four months after my Grandpa's death, that's what I picked: The last time I saw him. This will eventually be incorporated into 'Spontaneously Combustible', if I ever get around to finishing it. I hope you enjoy reading it, it's a piece that's very dear to my heart.
SKS
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Tear-Stained Memory
February 7th, 2000

The most recent experience that deeply changed me was on October first, last year, the day my Grandpa died. I saw him an hour after he had died, and the images are imprinted into my memory forever. It was the last time I saw him, and I’ll never forget it.

Grandpa died at two o’clock in the morning on a Friday, and my Dad woke me up fifteen minutes later with the sad, yet happy, news. I couldn’t cry, because Grandpa had been suffering for a long time, and I was happy that he was finally home. Dad said he and Mom were taking Grandma up to Villa Maria, the nursing home where Grandpa had spent the last three months, to see him before the mortician took him to the funeral home. Dad asked me if I wanted to come with them. Under normal circumstances, I would have said NO WAY!!!! But these weren’t normal circumstances. I was shell-shocked, and barely able to keep my eyes open, so I’m not surprised that I said I’d go with them. We left at two-thirty.

Riding in the back of the car on the way there, I just sat, numbly staring out the car window at the stars. It was such a clear night. Not a cloud in the sky. Just as I spotted the constellation Orion, I realized what was about to happen. I had never seen a dead body before, never been to a funeral. Now, I was about to see my Grandpa who, just an hour ago, had been alive, and was now teasing angels, making them laugh. At that instant, I wanted to jump out of the car and run home. But I couldn’t move a muscle; it was like someone else had control of my body at that point.

We got to Villa Maria at three. My mind was still racing. The monologue in my head went something like this: “Oh my God!! What the hell am I doing!! I’m going to see Gramps dead!?!? NO WAY!! GET OUT OF HERE!! Just start screaming!! Tell them you don’t want to go in!! Why am I not moving? RUN!!” My feet were now moving towards the building, and I couldn’t stop and turn around, as much as I wanted to. I see it like a video that’s playing in my mind, the memory is so vivid.

We were inside. I saw Grandma talking to the nurses. They were crying. So was Grandma, as she thanked them for being so kind. Then, we started down the hall towards the room where Grandpa had been just an hour ago. The clamor in my mind got louder and louder with each step closer. Halfway down the hall, the words turned into screaming and my head started pounding, like there was someone inside that was banging on the walls, trying to get out. Grandma was softly crying.

I remember pausing outside the door. My Grandma went in first, then my Dad, then me. My Mom was somewhere behind me, as were the nurses and the mortician. As I walked in, I saw the shell of my hero, my Grandpa. I held my breath.

He looked like he was sleeping, like he was going to wake up any second, sit up, and tell me that he wasn’t dead, but very much alive, and back to the way he used to be… but he didn’t even move. His body just lay there, his spirit no longer in it. His eyes were closed, his cheeks were like a caved-in prune, and his mouth was gaping open, like he was gasping for breath that wasn’t there. I noticed his teeth weren’t in as I heard the most disturbing sound. It was a cry of anguish, almost a moan, and it was coming from my Grandma. She bent over Grandpa, her husband of fifty-eight years, and started talking to him, kissing him over and over while stroking what little hair he had. She was telling him she always loved him, and always would. She told him she would miss him so much, and that she can’t wait to see him again in Heaven. As I stared in disbelief, it finally sunk in that he was really gone. For the first time that morning, I cried. I wanted Grandpa to tell me it was going to be all right. Most of all, I wanted to have been able to say good-bye. I cried harder, because I missed my Grandpa. I still do.

Then we left. The ride home, like the ride up, was very quiet. Halfway home, Grandma started crying softly again. Tears silently poured from my eyes.

I have never been the same. Memories from when I was little: Grandpa playing with me and building ramps for my brother and I to jump our bikes off of, going swimming together in the summer… they’re so hard to remember. I see pictures, but whenever I try to picture him in my mind, it’s the last time I saw him. The whole thing plays over and over, and I can’t deny it happened, though it feels like it was just a horrible nightmare. I wish it were. It’s so hard now, to go anywhere. I’m always reminded of Grandpa, and what a good man he was. It’s hard to tell someone how that night changed me, but I know it did. It scarred me badly, but it’s a scar very few see. It’s so hard to even be typing this. I can’t see the computer screen through the tears that are raining from my eyes. Seeing what I saw touched me so deeply, I don’t know the words to describe how. I don’t know if they even exist.