Have you ever felt a deep pain for someone? I’m not talking about an over-dramatized, scripted pain, but one of true, sincere hurt. You have to have felt true, sincere hurt in order to fully understand.

I passed her old house today and wondered where she is… who she is…
You know it’s funny how God creates those who appear so strong, yet have never known the depth of strength.
They have never drank a measure of their own depth of mind… or heart. Their deep remains a lost mystery.

How then can one ever try to explain true Life if they have never wanted to understand their own?

I wonder if experience truly breaks someone down …
or only adds to their created thinking?

I wonder…

how to carry light to content darkness?

or even …

how to explain to another that their light’s batteries will fade out completely

when they so desperately insist that your wick will die first.

God has convicted me to hold an accountability with a wonderful resource He has given me. Through this accountability, voicemail messages are left each morning confessing triumph or failure in reading the Lord’s Word daily.

He has opened my eyes to the reality that He has set before me fantastic witnesses and tools for spurring each other on and I have been careless and lazy in failing to use them to further His Name.

But this morning He really opened my eyes to His Beauty. A phone call came at “too early” o’clock in which to hold me accountable and in which to cause me to hold another accountable. And I agreed with the person, lowering my choices with a familiar habit.

I drove into work this morning with unfamilairly early traffic… reports are due by 4:00 today. And a warm, passionate voice spoke through lyric. The words natural, yet foreign in many ways to me. Isn’t it funny how God can take a concept that has been taught to you for nine years and teach you to re-think it and re-think it until you posses His mind and determination about it?

Choice.

It is my choice to grow in or fail away from the Lord.

It is my choice to place Him at highest priority.

MY choice.

Not another’s.

See, for so long I expected my faithful walk to come “naturally.” Of course there’s struggles, I’m perfectly fine with admitting that, but some level of naivety lived within that statement for the past nine years.

Love. It is something to work at, not natural at all. See, we are a self-pleasing flesh. So love, in it’s purest and most basic sense is a sacrifice. I choose to do this because I love you. I choose to accept this about you because I love you. Too much of our society teaches that love is what you receive from a relationship, turning the focus inward and selfish in nature. But it is a choice. Matt and my marriage is not going to last on a romantic high. (I knew that coming in to the relationship.) But the only way it is going to last is not in the way that my family has survived. See, my family has survived in that I have loved them because that was all I knew and some inherent bond that the Lord created caused me to stick with them through thick and thin. (though I think the latter part of the previous statement applies to Matt and I as well.) But this love… this marriage is a choice. Daily I choose to love Matt and be in love with this man, Matt, and only Matt for the rest of my life.

I am a part of the bride of Christ. And it is a daily choice to love my Groom. Some days I wake up and think, “no, not today. no more today,” because my flesh is weak. I just want to survive today. I just want to last through today. I’ll never get this whole daily Bible reading down so why even bother. I’ll never be perfect until Heaven so why even bother. And I choose to accept that love should gratify me. It should be an easy and automatic high. It should be a romance… not a lasting love. But when it comes down to it, many times my relationship with God is a romance. His Spirit sweeps over me in a way that I cannot keep from responding through praise. His voice whispers Truth in my mind. He pursues my thoughts, He opens my inner being and calls it beautiful, He smiles at my obedience, and He even blesses me when I stumble. And yet other times I must choose to read His word. I must choose to sing His praise when it’s not easy… it’s not a romance. It’s a love.

And it’s amazing how the Lord has opened up this Truth to my mind…
through my husband.

– I love the Lord… He is my Love.
Thank You, Lord. Thank You.
Thank You.

A rainy day calls for a good book.

I don’t care who you are …

there’s no denying the joys of a good rainy day book.

It’s 10AM, but my lunch break beckons.

Don’t worry, Anne, I shall visit you soon.

The time has finally come… thank You, Lord.

You know, tomorrow’s the interview. The light at the end of the tunnel, I hope. How it would be nice to find a job that would allow me to serve Matt as well in our marriage. It’s odd how “ready” and yet completely unprepared one feels at the completion of a “lifegoal“. But the diploma has yet to be hung… and already burnout ensues. I wish I felt like what I did mattered to the child who repetitively cussed me out as I bent over backward to do things for her. Miles on end I drove for her “convenience” only to sit in an empty apartment and return in two hours of traffic. It’s moments like those that you really want to throw the towel in on a kid. You want to loose your mind and not take it anymore.

God opened my eyes on the last car-ride home. I tried so hard for the pavement not to swallow my character. I really hate rush-hour. And in the frustrated silence He reminded me that I was that undesirable in my sin. I was that hate-worthy and filthy. I spoke such vulgar, hateful words defying the very help I needed. And yet He loved me.

Sin is sin. I’d love to stand at her door pointing telling God that there’s no way I am that sinful. There’s no way my sin looks as bad as that. But how can this unjust one dare define justice and righteousness?

It’s ugly to think that my sin looks the same way to my Father. How filthy and un-me I feel at that thought. Yet it is true. Sin is sin. And it’s ugly. And it dirties the beautiful gown of Christ’s Bride. No sin is too dirty for our Savior to clean. But all sin is too dirty for our character growth. And it’s in the time of mind-renewing that the Lord chose on I-75 that repentance once-again looked as necessary as it is.

And the child who refuses help, is most needy of all.
Only there’s nothing I can do to change her.
It’s only the Lord’s work.

Would You, Lord? I don’t have to be there to see it.
But would You please help her fall at Your feet?

-No matter where I end up… Lord, please use me.-