Perfect with Every Imperfection (and an update :) )

Hey there, yeah I’m still alive. This is the season of exams, papers and nights of less than adequate sleep. It’s been a crazy few weeks since I last posted…I definitely did not pick a good time to start “31 days of…” In the time since I last posted I went to Seaside, OR with a group of crazy college students from campus who are part of an even bigger family with a Father who loves us more than we know! I love these people!! (Hopefully there will be a post to come about that retreat because it was AWESOME!) I spent time with friends from my church for the Thanksgiving holiday, that was all an adventure in itself 🙂 Everything from trying pumpkin pie, pineapple, and apple pie to going to the snow and cutting down a Christmas tree for the first time, being part of a snow ball fight that lasted for close to 2 hours, sleepovers, homesickness, late night talks and lots of fun! Now we’re in the final stretch of the semester. 5 days left of official classes and then it’s just study study study until finals and then HOME!

In the meantime, I was given an assignment for one of my classes to write about a group of people in my schooling until now that I, or other people, identified as “the other”. We were given creative freedom and this is what I came up with:

they come and go
at their own pace,
in their own way.
wheeling, limping, holding a hand
eyes follow
voices soften

teasing words
go in their ears
but we don’t see the wounds they leave
we watch and don’t say a word
hoping that it will go away

joy and excitement
fill their eyes
at the simplest things
we laugh when they jump
and flap their arms
turn away to ignore,
as if we’re embarrassed
at the spinning in circles
biting, pinching, hitting
thinking that it will all go away
if we pay it no attention

some look at them
with pity
frustration
annoyance
pride
but who gave you
the power to judge
the call to make

those who pity them
why?
that jumping that you turn your head to
is pure happiness
possibly more than any of us know

they don’t fit within our mold
of happy and successful,
but they are perfect with every imperfection.

Carried

So I started this a week late, I found it here  https://betterthanahallelujah4041.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/write-it-girl/ ) I’m challenging myself to this. So many times I begin to write something and then delete it or filter so much of what I am feeling. I am trying to become more transparent and open in my interactions with other people as well as with God. There is a voice inside my head that still tells me “They won’t accept you if they knew that part about you. They won’t love you. You can’t be good because of that part of your past. You aren’t worth their friendship and love.” These are all lies that Satan has fed into my head, and that I have believed for much of my life until I became a part of a community that shed some light on those lies. Sometimes I get so frustrated with myself because I have believed these ridiculous things, and still, to this day struggle with many of them.

It’s funny when I reflect like this, and like in a conversation I had today with a friend, how everything really does seem to be connected. The struggles I have been facing through the past month, the questions I have been asking, scriptures I have been reading, my reading Grace for the Good Girl, even as far back as discussions and struggles I faced over this past summer…it’s all connected. And it makes sense, because it all comes down to my heart, and where I place it. Do I place it in the world, with the opportunity of being crushed and violated or do I place it at God’s feet, and let him pick me up and carry me through life? The second one sounds much more appealing and comforting doesn’t it?? I think so. This makes me think of those footprint in the sand poems, the one that I remember reading describes a dream in which a man saw scenes from his life. In each scene there were two sets of footprints, one his and one God’s; but he noticed that in some of the scenes, the ones that turned out to be the lowest of his life, when he faced trials, there was only one set of footprints. So he turned to God and asked him about it.

“Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you,
you’d walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that during
the most troublesome times in my life,
there is only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why when I needed you the most
you would leave me.”

The Lord replied,
“My precious, precious child,
I love you and would never leave you.
During your times of trial and suffering,
when you see only one set of footprints,
it was then I carried you.”

This is such a powerful image for me, and helps me be able to connect the idea of God as my father to my relationship with him. We can’t understand the vastness of the love, grace and mercy that he showed us…but we can love him with all our hearts and try to make our lives look as his, loving as he did.

Sarah 🙂

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http://www.29lincolnavenue.com/2011/11/write-it-girl-week-1/

that God shaped hole in my heart

You want to be real, you want to be empty inside

You want to be someone laying down your pride

You want to be someone someday

Then lay it all down before the king

You want to be whole, you want to have purpose inside

You want to have virtue and purify your mind

You want to be set free today

Then lay it all down before the king

This is my desire, this is my return

This is my desire to be used by You

You want to be real, you want to be empty inside

And I know my heart is to feel you near

And I know my life

It’s to do your will

It’s to do your will

All my life I have seen

Where you’ve take me

Beyond all I have hoped

And there’s more left unseen

There’s not much I can do to repay all you’ve done

So I give my hands to use

~ My Desire, Jeremy Camp

I have been challenged many times in the past few weeks as to what I am really pursuing, what am I living my life for? As these questions have been asked of me and I have been looking more into what it is that I am valuing and where I am placing my life I have been given many reminders along the way of God’s goodness and love for me. One of the songs that we sang last week at our college group has stuck with me through all the questions and times when I don’t know the answers. “Sovereign, You are still sovereign even when confusion has blinded my eyes.” I don’t understand all of what’s going on right now…I have been asking why I can’t have these things…it didn’t make sense to me why people who live their lives for Christ often don’t have their dreams fulfilled, their lives don’t look like the picutre they painted. I thought that I was trying to be a follower, not just a believer. But in fact I was still relying so much on my own strength and trying to make happen what I want. A friend of mine unknowingly pointed out to me that by having the things that they valued so much slowly taken away they were stripped down to who they are and how they define themselves. This is what I have been facing the past few weeks: like sand slowly slipping through the fingers of a tightly clenched fist, I could see dreams and plans dissolving right in front of me but I was still trying to rescue them. The journey begins of unclenching my fist and holding those things with an open hand and telling God that he can have whatever he wants.

 “Holy Fire burn away, My desire for anything

That is not of you and is of me.

I want more of you and less of me.”

~Empty Me, Jeremy Camp

This verse describes where I am. The other day I was talking with one of my friends about all of this, how much I want so many of these dreams and how my plans are so important to me. She said that one thing she had been reminded of and shown lately was that if it’s not from God, she doesn’t want it. Hearing it said like this made me really look at all the different things that I wanted and question what it was about them that I wanted so much? All the things that I want can be found in a relationship with God. The longing that I have in my heart, that I think can be filled with a boy or by having more friends is there because God wants me to pursue him and ask him to fill that “God shaped hole” as someone put it to me yesterday 🙂

“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.'” John 6:35