Pieces of Today, Feb. 19th 2016

1. Happy dogs and a grumpy cat.

2. Drowsiness and sleepiness (which are not at all the same thing).

3. New movies and old TV shows and dorky outfits in both.

4.

    "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?    Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.    O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer;   And by night, but I have no rest." -(Psalm 22:1-2)

5. (Well the good ol' days may not return...the rocks might melt, and the sea may burn.)

6. Staticky radio hosts and tangled cords on the floor.

7. Rock n' Roll and blatant carefree-ness.

8. The lingering affects of a headache mixed with the dizzyness of moving too quickly.

9. Different anthems ringing and ranging and leaping around my head like a ping-pong ball.

And most important:

10. "The thing I'm gonna love about Heaven is there'll be no fences." 

He Called Me Beloved

 “I have been wandering to find him and my happiness is so great that it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me Beloved, me who am but as a dog.” 

-(C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle)

"...And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." 

-(Galatians 2:20) 

Pieces of Today, Dec. 23 2015

1. Burned skin and a nutmeg-scented kitchen.

2. Pie crusts and The Girl is Mine and guitar-picked tunes.

3. The Nativity Story. (The prophecy shall end tonight, father.) 

4. Candles and Christmas lights.

5. (How often is it that you have a Christmas at home? With no travels or relatives or friend-centered parties, just you and your family singing round the tree?)

6. The Force Awakens and the thrills it has given me. (Han! Chewie! Rey and Finn! POE!) 

7. Baseball caps and notebooks and paper towels(?) scattered across my floor.

8. Happy tears and song-filled days of preparation.

9. (Joyful, joyful, we adore thee.) 

10. Sunset-colored roses and purple grass and fireant beds and field-scented air. Because these days are filled with flora and fauna of infinite proportions and the feeling of sunshine on skin and grass underneath you is one of the best that can be felt. Oh joy for sunnied Decembers!

(Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout alond, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.)  -(Zechariah 9:9)

Merry Christmas, and a happy and blessed New Year to all of you.

Galu,

Erin

On Crunched Grass and Puddle-Jumping

When I was younger, my mother told me (as all mothers do) that the older I got, the faster time would fly. I, of course, in seven-year-old ignorance, disregarded it with the assumption that ten minutes would always be ten minutes and an hour would always be an hour.

And now, in my fifteen-year-old ignorance, I ask nobody in particular where all my time went. Why don't I have time to just lie on the couch and listen to music anymore? Since when did I become so inundated with school and work and random things that I don't need to do but do anyway?

This summer passed before I really realized it was here. I barely noticed the heat-crunched grass, because I was too busy reading to walk barefoot in the field. I missed the yearly swallow-nesting on the porch, all because I'd rather spend my free moments typing up an essay than watch the sunrise from the steps. I went outside yesterday and the field-grass was wet and soft beneath my feet, something that wasn't supposed to come for another couple of months, or so I thought.

So in a sudden realization that this wouldn't last forever, I danced in the rain.

I was jumping, leaping, laughing, singing and slipping through the mini-lakes and puddles, with blackberry briars sticking in my feet and shivers running down my soaked spine. I rejoiced in the beautiful, cold, sharp rain that made my hair go curly as I shook out the drops.

I found joy yesterday. Pure, unadulterated, un-adulted joy. I could honestly bless my Creator with dance and song as I sloshed through mud and fogged my glasses with heavy breath.

Yes, I missed the summer, to my great regret. But today I'm resolving to live in the autumn, and rejoice in it as God calls me to do.

(There also you and your households shall eat before the LORD your God, and rejoice in all your undertakings in which the LORD your God has blessed you.) Deuteronomy 12:7

Notebooks and Emptiness

What is it about fresh notebook paper that is so strangely alluring? Is it the crisp blue lines? The undented surface of the paper?

There's just something about empty notebooks that fascinates me. Despite my fetish for words and my desire to write them, I prefer to do it on the computer and leave my journals blank. I can't bring myself to mar the perfect, unwritten surface.

What is it, do you think? It's not the perfection of the paper. I've no trouble ruining that. It's not the newness. I love old paper and the smell of it mixed with ink.

Maybe it's the same emptiness that you feel in a completely void room. No furniture, no dust. Just the room. Nothing to distract, just the allowance of your imagination.

I find this addiction to emptiness odd. You'd expect it to be chilling; repulsive even. But at times, emptiness is queerly filling.

I've come to the conclusion that emptiness is fulfilling to me in the sense that it is uncluttered by myths and babble. It opens its arms to reflection, communion, and relations with God. It beckons me to come and willingly throw away distractions and focus my attentions on the Lover and Creator of my soul.

Somehow, when I think about it that way, it makes the emptiness even more intoxicatingly tempting to me. I have been struggling with the way it is so easy for me to forget to spend time with Him. I say that I'm too busy, that I have work and school to be done, and I end up pushing Him into a thirty-second prayer time before bed. I end up filling my notebook with childish complaints and excuses.

As Rich Mullins said so perfectly in one of his most beautiful songs: "I'd rather fight you for somethin' I don't really want, than take what you give that I need." 

God wants to give us what we need: the love, compassion, empathy and joy that can be found in Him alone. Yet, we often fight Him for something we don't want: shallow passions, unhealthy friendships, and superficial clutches at things we don't understand.

But

"Your grace rings out so deep, makes my resistance seem so thin." 

Praise Jesus for his grace. 

On Screwtape, Giving Trees, and Pouring Out

This week, I spent a whole day reading C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. The book is a set of letters coming from the senior demon, Screwtape, to his just-out-of-college nephew, Wormwood. Screwtape has persuaded many to join the ranks of the Devil, whom they refer to as Our Father Below. The letters consist of his advice and admonitions towards Wormwood, who has just received his first 'patient' and is eager to please. 

   
I was very convicted by these letters, and some of the advice old Screwtape gave his nephew chilled me with its accuracy.

Screwtape is a master at pinning down the problem and telling exactly what's to be done about it. Yet he grows angered and wild as he writes about it, because there is one thing he can't pin down: the Enemy Himself. 

He doesn't understand this love that the so-called 'Enemy' professes for the humans. He insists that there must be some other reason to fight for them, some hidden plot that makes them important somehow. Yet he cannot come up with a plausible excuse. This frustrates him to no end. 

Another book I read lately is The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein. It's a children's book, but I found it haunting and poignant all the same. In it, a tree is loved by a little boy, and it loves the little boy back with all its heart. It gives him fruit and leaves and a firm base to climb on. 

But the little boy grows up. He begins to search for what he calls happiness; money and jobs and a fine house with a wife. He leaves the tree to find these things, coming back only once in a while. Whenever he does come back, the tree gives him something to help him in his quest for happiness--apples to sell, branches for a house, and her trunk for a boat. She never thinks twice about the cost her giving will bring upon herself, she only thinks of the boy she loves. 

I think that God wants to be a sort of Giving Tree to us. He pours out love and blessings on us, and the cost is canceled out by the enormous love he gives as well. 

So while I'm often a Screwtape, jabbing at God with accusations and questions, I also realize that He calls me to follow His example and be a Giving Tree in His image, handing out myself and my gifts to His people as He does. 

As Paul says in 2 Timothy 4:6, "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come." 

I, for one, am going to pour myself out before Him, that He may make me new.

Suicide and God's Love

I've been through a lot in the past year. Struggles with depression, loneliness, resentment, spiritual indifference and even suicidal feelings have dragged me down and put me through a lot of emotional and mental battles.

I think most teenagers go through a stage like this. Maybe it's not as bad as my experience--maybe it's worse. But I know that everyone at one time or another feels unaccepted, inadequate, and invisible. As humans we need interaction, we need love, and we need it to be tangible.

During the deepest, darkest point of my struggle thus far, I toyed with the idea of suicide. I knew I would never actually go all the way--I wasn't that miserable--but I almost tried it. The allure of choice paired with the mystifying idea of an enveloping non-aliveness thrilled me. I had the idea somewhere in the back of my mind that it was wrong, but it was too enticing not to think about.

I've always had a deep sense of empathy. If you describe something to me, I can feel it to the point of actually confusing it with something I've actually experienced. That's why I never did it. I had no need to actually commit suicide--I'd already committed it over and over in my mind. I had felt knives slicing across my wrists and I have collided with a sidewalk in the city more times than I could feel comfortable telling you.

The point of all this is that I am not the choicest of people to talk about what I'm about to talk about. I'm going to talk about it anyway.

People often say that it is tragically beautiful, that it's your choice, that if you know you won't ever have another happy day in your life, it's okay to end it. That if you're not enough, you can choose to be nothing at all.

I've had people I love die. I didn't get to say goodbye to them. It is too painful to explain. None of them committed suicide, but I lost them. 

Now let me tell you something else.

I knew a guy. He's an atheist and he's suicidal. I only ever saw him at a certain scholarship program for teenagers. He was the most pessimistic person I've ever met, but he had an amazing sense of humor and he could make anyone laugh. Everyone he met instantly felt a connection with him--he was brutally honest about his situation and we could relate. The odd thing was that for someone so bitter, pessimistic, and even rude, he was the one who brightened everyone's day with his sardonic comments and teasing.

Everyone loved him. Now, he's graduated and no longer comes to the program. Everyone misses him, and several people have even left because without him, it doesn't really seem worthwhile. I haven't seen him since, but I spend my time praying that he hasn't given in to his suicidal thoughts. Because if he killed himself, not only would God's kingdom have lost a beloved child, but the world in general would be bereft of an amazing person.

He is enough. He is worth more than death. One of my biggest regrets is never telling him that.

My point is, no matter what you've done, or who has rejected you, you are worth something to someone. Someone is watching you and thinking about how much better you've made their life. And if no human looks at you and sees a beautiful life, God certainly does.

God created you. And He doesn't do things lightly. Don't you think He would have made someone worth the making?

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame. 

(Song of Solomon 8:6) 

Please, if you've ever felt like I have; if you've ever wanted to jump off of a ledge or wrap a rope around your neck or take a pocketknife to your veins, please, please remember the moments someone you barely know has smiled at you; the times they've said something like what would I do without you or you made my day. 

Please remember that you are a work of art and the Artist can't stop gazing at you. Please know that I'm praying for you, even if I don't know you exist. I want you to know that I know how it feels. I know how tempting it is, how beautiful it looks. You are more beautiful that death, and Christ's love for you is stronger than it.

I love you and am praying for you.

Erin 

Am I Not Free?

Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?

1 Corinthians 9:1

Pieces of Today, Oct. 26 2015

1. Rain and the squishiness of soaked earth.

2. The fact that there are Star Wars fans everywhere...and some of them probably don't even know it.

3. The feeling of freshly clean fabric on my skin.

4. Old notes stuck in my Bible.

5. Brilliance from months past:

6. The odd noises my brother makes when he wants to irritate me.

7. "...holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power..." 2 Timothy 3:5

8. The prospect of making a certain delicacy for a certain gathering.

9. The immense feeling of the inadequacy of my own talents that comes when I see a beautiful work of art.

10. Those moments when you have to stop and examine your life because you realize that you have no idea why: 

Colossians 2:8-14

"8See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.  9For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, 10and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority; 11and in him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; 12having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the workings of God, who raised him from the dead. 13When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, 14having cancelled out the certificate of the debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross." 

{italics mine, for emphasis}