Oh, Lord.

  I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. 

  I can't!

  Please.

(What a dumb sermon.)

  I can't.

I think You've been asking me the question in John 5:6 for a while and I keep changing the subject and avoiding eye-contact.

  This is impossible.

Lord, help me to know You more.

I can't figure anything out. I can't figure things out but I think nothing would be worse if I pursued You. I think I want to understand You and what You've said and what You say. I want to understand Your Word and I want to understand how You love.

I want to understand what I should, and I want to be how I should.

I want to understand so much. I'm grateful for Your patience (though I bet I don't actually trust it). I live by grace. I live because of grace and I continue to get along only by grace. And nothing good have I whereby Thy grace to claim so I'll wash my garments white in the blood of Calvary's Lamb. And truly, sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. All of them. All of them. 

I need You so much more than I can express. I wish I could see You. I wish I knew Your heart. 

I need Your divine crowbar, the one that pries idols out of human hearts. I need You. I need something. I need to be taught how to pray. I crave the right kind of rest. I wonder what kind of Father You are. I wonder where You are, how far away exactly. 

I wonder how far away You are. I wonder how much I'm getting wrong. I wonder why I don't know You rightly. I long for You. Nothing else makes sense...and in some moments I feel I've lost it all anyways. 

What does Your Word say? What are You like? How can we have intimacy? How can I feel I'm enough? (How can feelings matter?) And how can I get these words out of my head?

How can I measure up so that You'll come near? What's missing? What am I doing wrong? And what's one more day? One more day of un-figured-out things, task to task, a prayer for eyes and a heart, a flashback, a longing, a distraction, task to task...a laugh, something light that takes me away, a solid conversation with a friend, task to task, dipping and darting to avoid the shadows. One more day to be dumb and ugly, to curse the mirror when I wake up, plead with it before I leave the house, and to avoid it til the next morning. What's one more day of dodging "how are you?" because I shouldn't have a big answer? What's another day to wait and try to push and try to stay on the narrow path and try to stop being so self-centred and try to do good and try to do more and try to HEAR YOU...??

Oh, what I would give.

I would love to take a class on the (music) theory of Ragtime.

Yes, I would. I want to learn about their diminished chords and their flat six chords and their non-diatonic passing tones and their chord progressions that seem to deviate from most of the rest of Western music. It's all very delicious to listen to and I'm almost afraid of looking under the hood in case I end up losing some of the beauty.


[So I pull out my Essential Jazz: The First 100 Years book that was assigned reading for a Jazz history class I took maybe six or seven years ago because I remember that Ragtime is the immediate ancestor of Jazz. I skimmed the first page of the appropriate section, flipped to see there were only three more pages about Rag and then came back to blog. (They won't go under the hood like I want them to.)]


In looking on Saturday for some of my old theory books to help with upcoming piano lessons, I spotted a copy of the Maple Leaf Rag (which I started learning in the winter of 2011) and decided to bring it to the office as well. Too often I think about how I don't work a tenth as hard as I did to improve my piano playing as I did in the first five or six years of learning the instrument. I put the Maple Leaf Rag away when I got stymied two years ago. The first page was handled easily within the first day but with the second page my hands weren't doing what they were told.

So, like most other pieces I didn't easily master since I started playing by ear/playing chords to be able to lead worship music in Church settings almost ten years ago, it was put aside. I didn't persevere. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the umpteenth guy who starts exploring playing by ear and NEVER GOES BACK to being able to play as written. I say the skills are almost dead-equally valuable. And on principle, for see-it-through-itude, I want to start working harder. (It would probably be good for my ego as well, to remember what it feels like to work on a single piece for weeks, instead of for a couple hours or a couple minutes because I've built the skill of simplifying music--and of cutting corners.)


So, I sat with Mr Joplin's work for about ten minutes, needing a break from Thomas R. Schreiner* who seems bent on making my brain feel like a heavy smoker on a treadmill, and...well, the second page fell into my hands. My hands started doing that thing where they aren't bothered about whether my eyes or brain can keep up with them. So, it's in there. It's in my hands. It's within reach of being mastered and will probably need just one or two more days.
*I believe the R stands for "Really Neat".


I remember learning in the summer of 2001, when I played the (massive and intimidating) pipe organ for services at an Anglican church, that rest between bouts of slogging away at a piece is absolutely essential. There's a thing like short term memory where you can capture most of a piece in one sitting but if you do too much in that first sitting, and you don't give it time to settle and come back to it the next day, it can be either completely gone or can be in so bad a state that you have to re-learn the piece and un-learn the slipshod version you've now ingrained.


Alors. That said, I am encouraged. I am encouraged to discover I can still learn new pieces. I hope I haven't plateaued as a musician though I simply assume I have. I think I'm too old for most things. But I'm not giving up. I'm encouraged to know I can eventually master something and not only immediately master something.


[Editor's addendum: The last four blog posts have not been the ones I mean to write. Over the past two weeks about three times as many blog posts have not graduated past the draft stage. I mean to write about the things I'm struggling with; I mean to find an appropriate outlet, to be honest, and to be integrated as a person. But I come to write and the posts about needing help and feeling despair don't end up being published.
All these lighter, everyday-life posts are surprising and annoying me. They come out and they get published. But, what I would have written last night around half past midnight about how many hot tears were streaming down my cheek because I just didn't know why I was upset, what I should be doing, who to talk to, or how to move forward--that one I couldn't construct for more than three paragraphs. I started and felt relief but then it stopped feeling right so I stopped typing. It didn't work. So now I'm frustrated. I'm both people but one seems muzzled and isolated. She feels desperate, guilty, and small. But the other one, the one who types at present, she really does like music theory and learning, and this post was completely earnest.]

also called Belteshazzar.

Interesting fact:

I am not
·from nobility
·a young man without any physical defect
·handsome
·showing aptitude for every kind of learning
·well informed
·learned in the language and literature of the king's nation
·regularly fed the king's choice food and wine, or
·trained for three years for this post

BUT

somehow I could still be fit for the king's service.

Yes, I realise Nebuchadnezzar is quite a different king, it's quite a different situation. But I like my King better. And He's better. And He can demand the most--can have the strictest requirements for His servants--and yet... I may be fit.

New Covenantites, I daresay we're fit for the king's service, thoroughly imperfect and unimpressive though we may be. I guess that is a thing.

why not deism?

why come near? why be involved? why allow intimacy?
why the rainbow?

and why sentience?

Every time he came into my office (which used to be every Sunday but in the summer could have been six times a week), B would ask if he could draw on my windows. I used to store three large antique-ish windows here in my office because I occasionally used them for accents in our worship services. I let him draw on them twice in the year-and-a-half I've known him and each time I've said no since then, I've explained to him that the answer is no because the markers are too expensive. (Each goes for more than five dollars and B draws with gusto.) He never quite believed me and he has no category for what "expensive" means.

But just a moment ago, they caught my eye and I thought that if he asked me today, I would say yes a hundred times.

um.

This arrived in my inbox a few minutes ago, a newsletter from UNICEF. I normally delete without reading them because I haven't the heart. But, this. What is this. How is this some real person's real life? 

Renewed fighting over the last two months in the Central African Republic (CAR) is having brutal consequences for children. The number of children recruited into armed groups is believed to have risen considerably to as high as 6,000.

Last week, UN partners helped to secure the release of 23 children (aged 14-17) associated with armed groups, including six girls, through negotiations with transitional authorities.

The 23 children are now at a UNICEF-supported Transit and Orientation Centre that provides basic education, sports, vocational and life skills along with psychosocial support while the children’s families are traced and reintegration within their communities is prepared.

Now I'm just staring at the cursor. (Even writing that "everything I want to say sounds trite" sounds trite.)

It's hard being home.

Earlier today I briefly considered whether I could come up with a way to not need sleep for several days in a row. I suppose that's not a real possibility but I do wish coming to this space didn't fill me with dread and being in this space didn't feel suffocating. Hard to describe without sounding dramatic but easier to grasp if you observe how hard I work on a daily basis to make myself scarce around here. 

Anyhow,

This is what the LORD says:

"Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
  or the strong boast of their strength
  or the rich boast of their riches,
but let the one who boasts boast about this:
  that they have the understanding to know me,
that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
  justice and righteousness on earth,
  for in these I delight,"
    declares the LORD. 

Jeremiah 9:23-4

This consoled me in a new way, earlier today. It's good to know the right thing, the right Person to boast in. I wonder if humans are naturally given to boasting as we are naturally given to worship and that when we clue in to boast in the Lord our God, it finally feels right. Properly directed worship feels [good] like nothing else. Something fits in a profound way that I don't think I can describe. I guess it's just that you can truly be aware you were made for it. Like the Prince trying the glass slipper on every female foot in the kingdom, feeling that desperate ache for only one wearer. And then when the exact right person slides flawlessly into place (as if the glass slipper were only ever made for just one foot), his whole being sighs with relief. The search is over.  I will stay right here with her. Let no other trust intrude.

another weirdly half-victorious day:

Relapse didn't cross my mind til about eight minutes after midnight which means I went almost a whole day without thinking about it. That's something. That's one Friday, but I'll take it.

Insulting language didn't show up til 5.30pm which is actually huge. It made me notice it more AND it seemed more absurd and dismissable instead of par and worth steeping in.

Phantom hands only showed up for about ten minutes just before 7pm and started again just before going to bed but they're stupid (read: not something I can actually control but their absense makes a day better).

In a different column, yesterday was the first day I felt truly like I was a staff member, that I had a place among my coworkers. It was a thing where I was being myself, I was relaxed, and I was included. Just amazing. What a feeling.

In fact, for big chunks of yesterday I was feeling exactly like myself, like a self I recognise but also a self I haven't grown into. Yes, yesterday felt rather growsome. It is possible that I spent more than half of my day feeling unburdened. Baggage-free. It's not accurate but it's a break and I'll gladly take it. I will take the rest when it's here and I will take the crash when it comes.

With some fancy brand of immaculate wisdom, a friend recently suggested that I may learn to be happy just like I've learned to cry these past few months. The first time tears tried to come I stopped them up and very soon deeply regretted it. Then I was given more opporunities and made the better choice, and I built the skill (if I can put it that way).

Since I thwarted my prolongued happiness two weeks ago, I've been waiting for re-presented opportunities to make the better choice now that I know what's better. There have been a few opps and I have been practicing and yesterday I didn't even have to think about not thwarting. I simply was who/how [anagram] I was and it was fine. It was fine. I was fine. It was a good day. I saw my different-ness reflected in other people's responses to me. 

It was kinda neat. In my baggage-free, I-am-Jesskah, laughing-smiling, calm-present moments, I felt alive in a funny way. I felt distinctly centred. Now that I think about it, I'm probably describing just one moment in my day but there were a few close runners-up. Excitedly discussing Isaiah and non-Bible books, work, life, and funny things, I felt like just one person and it was glorious. I know her (partially) and I kind of like her. I think I subconsciously wished for gravity boots to keep me from floating away in elation because I was just one me, centred, balanced, OK, happy, fine. For fifteen minutes out of my day, I'm grateful. 

I felt present and alert and lighter. That's another marker of a pseudo-victorious day: I did not nap nor feel the urge to nap for the first time in months. It will be nice to fully wake up, I suspect.

And if a month of blackened skies is what begins today, I will take it. A day of rest from what has felt rest-less since approximately the 13th of October makes me feel fuelled to do another six months in the dark. I know that's easy to say right now but I said it.  

in my world, a three-tissue day is almost worth a fist pump.

Today was more OK than it sh/could have been. Throughout the morning I felt like I was struggling to tread water but the afternoon allowed other people in (for work, not-work, and fun-surprise-visit-work) and that was good. It's also good--I realise as I type--to keep plugging away even when you don't feel like it. Like, really don't feel like it. Like, rather-make-your-whole-self-disappear don't feel like it.

But I stayed and I worked. I tried to keep my head up and to remember true things. Somehow this was a good day. Perhaps that's attributed to a good Creator. [Side blurt: I often forget how much I enjoy intellectual stimulation.]

I'm trying to learn how to be OK with how my life is right now--OK in the appropriate sense. I believe what I'm trying to say is that I want to see the full picture well and to know if I'm half the disappointment/mess-up I generally feel like, and generally think I'm viewed as. And I guess I also want to know what to do with that.

I want to truly be OK right here but to still know what areas need to change. I want patience but not slack.

What's that thing called when you know you are saved by grace and can never expand your value or utility in the Lord's eyes but you're also meant to spend every waking moment working to be the best possible servant-ambassador for Him that you can? You know... that thing where you rest on God's sovereignty and forgiveness but you also find that the effort required to cast off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles has allowed you understand precisely how windshield wipers feel when it's raining?

Yeah, that thing. 

I literally just rolled up my sleeves to come to typing a blog post.

that's funny. I consider it work and a pleasure and I think it's actually more enjoyable because it is work.



I'm writing because I've been steeped in reading for many hours today and I think now I have something to say.


Isaiah 37:15-7

And Hezekiah prayed to the LORD: "O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Give ear, O LORD, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God."

37:21-3, 28-9

Then Isaiah son of Amoz sent a message to Hezekiah: "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, this is the word the LORD has spoken against him:

"The Virgin Daughter of Zion
  despises and mocks you.
The Daughter of Jerusalem
  tosses her head as you flee.
Who is it you have insulted and blasphemed?
  Against whom have you raised your voice
and lifted your eyes in pride?
  Against the Holy One of Israel!

Because you rage against me
  and because your insolence has reached my ears
I will put my hook in your nose
  and my bit in your mouth,
and I will make you return by the way you came."

37:36-8

Then the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning--there were all the dead bodies! So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.
One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer cut him down with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king.


This and then some of what preceded Goliath's end are in the back of my mind.

[I should first admit that I barely know what I'm talking about so if I get something wrong, I am not surprised. (I welcome correction.)]


My new consideration: Insults are significant.

Yes, apparently I thought that they didn't matter or didn't need to matter because they're "just words". I don't know how I became so convinced but maybe it's because I would rather that insults didn't matter. Yes. Apparently when you mouth off to the Living God, He doesn't take it lightly. I realise He's the biggest deal and the most insultable but I suspect the principle carries.

It would be easier if people's words didn't hurt us. It would be easier if a verbal attack wasn't a thing. Also, life would suck if words were ever "just" words. They can't be nothing. I know better than that. (What am I writing??) However, I find it incredibly hard to make the argument when I have an arrogant, loud postmodernist screaming in my ear.

Yes, Dr PoMo, you insist that I can strip off the intent from the language and the words will just poof into mist before they reach me. Sticks and stones and all that. If I know that I'm not an idiot, why should it have an impact when someone else applies the label? They have uttered gibberish. I am unaffected.

 Yeah, OK.

This quote says more precisely and incisively what I would like to say: "Real life always has a way of making a lie out of pretentious false claims." 

You tell me you've never been hurt by something someone else has said (even when you both know it's not true), and I will call you a liar.

So, insults may be a thing. If that's true, that's a bit of a game-changer / paradigm shift / citywide-hydro-crippling light bulb for me.


On we go.

I don't know what to write but I can't keep it in.

Presently I feel what seems to be the deepest disgust with sin that I have ever felt. There is not enough glucose in the universe to sugar-coat it. My mind is too clogged and overrun to explain it well (at least for now).

This morning a sermon was delivered at Crestwicke that was rooted in I Peter 2:9-10 and travelled to Hosea because Peter's letter alluded there. Me, I always get the heads-up on the sermon content at the beginning of the week but I am simply never prepared for what the Holy Spirit will say through the preaching pastor here.

And this Sunday... I don't know where to begin. I'm perplexed. It's so bad. It's just so bad the way Israel prostituted herself on God's dime. It's hard to process the grief caused by a brazenly and repeatedly unfaithful spouse. It's hard to think about prostitution. 

It's hard to think about prostitution. It's hard to admit that I can't make it all stop RIGHT NOW as in, RIGHT NOW. How many more days can I push it out of my head? How many more days in boot camp and in the medical tent before I can be in the next push over the top? Arm me and give the order: I'm gone. I loathe the enemy and I groan for the captives. I mean that. But that's physical sexual prostitution.

Spiritual prostitution is important, too--more so. We'll call it paramount. And that brings a different kind of heartache.

But then we have the Gospel. Oh, yes. Then we have the Gospel. Then we find hope. Then we see the only possibility for relief and freedom. How sweet it is. How sweet it is, I shout!

[Side-note: today I realise that though I often want to quit trying to get better myself, I probably need to consider that I would do it for someone else's sake. As in... I gotta get in the war. Every able-bodied citizen. Let's GO.]

So the Gospel says that the faithful husband of Israel pursues, woos, and then buys back His wife. The Gospel says that He gives us literally all we need and our response is to reject the Provider but to enjoy His provision with other lovers, with other gods. Here I want to interject the biggest, most incredulous seriously?? of all time. What manner of arrogance and selfishness... what ignorance to think there was anyone or anything greater.

Really, my heart??

 Really, Gomer??

  Really, Israel??

   All of us. We all do it. We're disgusting, wayward, and vile, yes we are.

And He, ever-amazingly, is nothing but good. He is nothing but good and nothing but good to us. We are undeserving wretches. And yet--or dare I here use an audacious therefore??--He comes to us. He came to us and He paid the highest possible price to win us back to be His special possession. He paid the full redemption price for us with His own precious blood because He would NOT be the second-highest bidder. We were going to be His and that was that. Yes, He called us out of darkness into His wonderful light.

He called us out of darkness into His wonderful light. Get that.

Today the Gospel seems as insurmountable as it always should have seemed. I feel physically frustrated from trying to climb over the top. I cannot crest it, I cannot squeeze around beside it, I cannot even dig under it, and I have been trying. I have been wanting it to be less [please forgive me, Lord] and I have been insisting that I really "got" the extent of my former darkness so I don't need to think about it as much anymore. NOPE. 

Not even close. Maybe I haven't even begun to understand how far He has brought us. Maybe I don't get a thousandth of how wonderful His light is.

And this song, because it resonates. I'm going to inlay it with Scrip to make the connections explicit. Welcome to my Music Director brain.

I once was lost in darkest night 
yet thought I knew the way.

The sin that promised joy and life 
had led me to the grave.

"[Gomer/Israel] said, 'I will go after my lovers,
  who give me my food and my water,
  my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.'
She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
  she will look for them but not find them." (Hosea 2:5b, 7a)

I had no hope that you would own 
a rebel to Your will

and if You had not loved me first, 
I would refuse You still.

"she decked herself out with jewelry,
  and went after her lovers,
  but me she forgot,"
                               declares the Lord.
"Therefore I am now going to allure her;
  I will lead her into the wilderness
  and speak tenderly to her." (2:13b-14)

But as I ran my hell-bound race, 
indifferent to the cost

"She has not acknowledged that I was the one
  who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavishes on her the silver and gold--
  which they used for Baal." (2:8)

You looked upon my helpless state 
and led me to the Cross.

The Lord said to me, "Go show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred [offerings]." (3:1)

And I beheld God's love displayed: 
You suffered in my place.

You bore the wrath reserved for me, 
now all I know is grace.

So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. (3:2)

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. (I Peter 1:18)

   Hallelujah, all I have is Christ!

   Hallelujah, Jesus is my life!

Now, Lord I would be Yours alone 
and live so all might see

the strength to follow Your commands 
could never come from me.

Then I told her, "You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you." (Hosea 3:3)

Oh, Father, use my ransomed life 
in any way You choose

Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (I Peter 2:9)

and may my song forever be: 
my only boast is You.

(c) 2008 Jordan Kauflin Sovereign Grace Praise

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. (2:10)

Declare His praises.

that's a little better.

Subtitle: a copper coin hits the ground.

[Censor's note: If I tell you it's gross (but not graphic!) you'll read it anyway.]
[Editor's note: If I warn you it's long that will sound like I'm apologising, which I refuse to do. Buckle in.]

It feels like it took a full week but I think [I] finally changed my mind. Yes, for what seems like the first time ever, I was able to articulate that I am not a whore and mean it and know it and believe it and own it. I don't know all of what happened, but today I get it.


Last Thursday I analysed my deeply held belief that I am indeed a whore.Yes, I finally realised the word wasn't an arbitrary insult for me but that I really clung to the identity because it seemed to aptly support many things. The word has been around for a while, at least three or four years, but it's been louder the last few months, probably because of the nature of much of my baggage.

Thursday I discovered that the title supports the following:
-it keeps me at what I perceive to be the lowest rung of dignity for a woman
-it prevents me from being loved
-it resonates well with the image of the rag or picked-clean carcass I feel like
-it allows me to frame my sexual assaults as appropriate or par or solicited or even something for which I should be grateful (i.e. business/a client)
-it asserts that my worth is in my body alone and so to access/fulfill my worth, I should give my body away

Big sigh.

But also on Thursday, I did an objective analysis of the belief and concluded that the term is misapplied. I also noted that people who are employed as literal prostitutes are no less deserving of dignity and proper treatment than those who are not so employed. Let us be serious. [citation: The Truth.]

I felt a little freed from it that Thursday. I felt that the realisation that I was not literally a prostitute would be enough to get the thin end of a wedge between me and this word.


Then by Saturday I was not so sure. No, I wasn't worried about denotation anymore. I knew how I felt. I knew what level of dignity I deserved. I knew how covered up, protected, and sacred I should be. I was a worthless whore and I may as well lie down now. How disgusting I am.

At the close of Sunday it seemed my better mind was completely gone. Yes, I was done with fighting for good things. I gave in. I lay down. I didn't care. I had also decided Saturday that I was done with friends. It's become too much work and too uncomfortable. It's hard to consent to having someone near when you know you're garbage. It's hard to try. So by Sunday it was rather dark.


On Monday morning I could have pulled a muscle from my extensively furrowed brow. I was so angry and so inward and so small I felt for a while like I could only keep moving. For the first couple hours of the day all I could do was put a foot in front of another. I didn't want to stop because when that hungry dragon caught up with me, I was done. He was so close. On my heels.

I was losing my resolve to remain isolated, dark, and given up. This was also hard work, apparently.

I tried to get out of the weekly Monday morning sermon discussion that usually catalyses the start of my work day/week but I was unable to. Apparently knowing the passage wasn't enough this week and yes, I needed to come over and discuss it.

Great. Human contact.

I sat down in the same spot I always sit, comfortably with a coffee, a Bible, a pencil, and a scrap of paper--normal. We caught up a little bit and I thought I was doing a decent job of faking (i.e. obscuring the fire-breathing knight devourer behind me) but then the non-sermon talk petered out and a surprising question came from across my boss' desk. He said it over his own cup, right before a sip, which is an abnormal habit for him. He's not a grenade lobber and I wondered if it was an indication of how he was bracing himself for my reply.

"Is there anything more? .. for you?" I probably looked bewildered so he embellished: "Is there something else you want to say before we get to the passage?" Up goes the cup.

(Side-note: I was smitten with the open-endedness of the inquiry. Even in that moment I chose to infer that what I have to say might be important. I mean...what I might say might be worth hearing. Yes, I liked that the question muzzled my typical instinct to look for justification to speak. I didn't need a secondary or couching reason right now. I could just speak because I might be important.)


I instantly became physically uncomfortable. I stared into my coffee cup as if my cheater's notes had been scribbled at the bottom. I looked around, bit my lip, waited for him to interrupt because I had taken too long and ha, ha just kidding you're actually not important. I opened with the only line of my answer that I had drafted before arriving in the office. "If you had asked me how I was, I would say I was numb. That would be the word that would fit."

I fumbled through a summary of the past couple days and explained how I felt the backslide was huge. I said a lot of things, actually. I spoke at length. I think I was secretly running an experiment. I think I wanted to see how many minutes I would be allowed to talk about what's significant for me before I was cut off because I was boring and not worth any more time. I didn't get cut off. In fact the body language that I observed from across the room seemed to indicate that I very possibly mattered. Like... I might be a human being.

I was told how incomprehensible and ridiculous it was to consider me a whore or whore-like in any way. Meh. You have to say that. You're a pastor. I was told many things and it seemed like 25% of them trickled in and most other things just stayed on the surface. (It seems I'm painting a picture wherein the gateway to my mind/heart is like a drain. Clogged drain, standing water, stuff sitting on surface. Picture it with me!) But I watched and listened and wished I could agree. I wished I could be affected by the conviction I saw. I wished I wasn't so stony.


But by the end of Monday, more conversations and comments than I can reasonably blog, I wasn't so stony. No, the waterline was around my chin instead of my eyes. Hope was poking its nosy, presumptuous face where I hadn't invited it. Conviction and persistence were working on me. I remember feeling exactly like myself (one of those odd blips I have every now and then where I think it's a glimpse of who my new self will be) when I said, "You really believe that, don't you?" after my friend closed his spontaneous sermon. My tone was like the kindly, playful adult giving kudos to the little girl that has zero doubts about the existence of unicorns. I wasn't patronising but rather dumbfounded. He nodded with a big smile like he knew I was internally starting to give in. I was seriously starting to wonder if unicorns were real! The strength of conviction forcefully kicked out a stone from the foundation of my firmly held belief. I felt I literally had no choice but to allow for the possibility of unicorns. I had to start from scratch and re-draw my conclusions. Startling. Ground-breaking!

I had seen, standing in the doorway to my office, the other side of this preacher/teacher who I've only ever seen in the pulpit. I know that guy. I know the guy that sees the Lord well and wrings himself dry every Sunday, preaching from the Word. He is the epitome of animated because the Word he preaches is alive. It's alive and huge and everything. And God is good. This guy is not the epitome of quiet nerdliness that I usually find around the office. But that animated guy he showed up on a Monday and so I was forced to conclude he was telling the truth. He was telling the truth. He grows animated because the Lord animates him! So I listened.

I listened like all the true parts were from God. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk. I could feel pieces shifting.


From where I sit to write I see that Tuesday was lighter than Monday (even Monday evening was leagues from Monday morning), though it was still darker overall than it's been in a while. I plodded on. I was still assertive in my self-labelling but I was starting to hate it more.


Wednesday brought a pivotal conversation. Monday was still filtering down, as the Holy Spirit seemed to have dumped in some Drain-o. Yes, on Wednesday I defended my position again, saying that I realised I was not a literally a whore but that I would not be told I didn't feel like a whore. I would not be told that I didn't feel disgusting and violated and used and base and worthless (or worth little--just one purpose/use).

Then, ever obnoxiously, I was told that what I felt was wrong. *cough*

Yes, apparently it was "wrong" based on what has happened. I was reminded that though I was present, I was not active but acted upon. I was reminded that though I was involved, I was not culpable. The neighbours squinted as the light bulb in my head flickered on. The missing piece. The reason my position was untenable. I could feel like disgusting things had been done to me and that valuable things had been taken from me [suddenly writing a blog post becomes uncomfortable; wow, this is my real life] but I could not reasonably feel like a whore--for I had not solicited nor consented. No... no, I didn't. I'm pretty sure on this one--I remember it fairly well.

And somewhere in the conversation I ceased being able to say the word aloud. I didn't think about it, there was just a point--I'm guessing after the floodlight blinded the entire block--after which I blanked it out or called it "the W word" which does not roll naturally off the tongue, let me tell you. As I journalled it tonight: "The word had become dirty (it sounded more like the para-cuss that it is) and that was because it had become less mine."

I thought I might be able to say it in the conversation when I was throwing out a hypothetical, "so that would mean that I am not a--" and I couldn't even utter it then. I thought I could pronounce it if I wasn't applying it to myself but I couldn't say it precisely because of the context. I felt distinctly unable to string those words together. No, I wasn't there yet. I wasn't going to say it once, for fear that I might like how it sounded and start believing it.


The word ominously dropped from my (inner) vocabulary from that Wednesday morning until this evening as I began journalling just before 5pm. I began: "I keep hearing nasty words in my head. I wonder about work and worth. I wonder about when this will end. I feel so caught and trapped and sad. My brain feels so full to the brim. I wish I could expel some of these words. I wish I could expel so much of this pent-up stuff." 
Next I started processing some of this week's conversations and found myself ogling the light bulb yet again.

I unpacked to find that if I can articulate how the word is being used to "frame" my assaults then that means I am consciously viewing them in an unrealistic or inaccurate way. Yes, it's contorting. As I wrote in my journal, "I was somehow aware [in the light-bulb-versation] that the W label must be inaccurate because I am using it to suppress, to contort reality. I am using it to facilitate controlled pain (presumably because the alternative is worse)."

And then immediately after, this little gem: "And so ... if those things happened but I was not consenting, I'm not a whore." I wrote it very slowly and deliberately, paying close attention to the declaration. I meant it. I processed all the information and even my feelings and I drew the resounding conclusion, and was at peace with it. Really at peace. It's not me. That's not me.


(Yes, there are other words and yes it's still a long-ish road but I will take this parting of the clouds, yes I will. And this time I prayed the Lord would help me to not thwart my happiness!)


Selah

oh, what I would give to be just one person.

I'm plugging through the Psalms this week and every time I hear the superscription "For the director of music" my attention is caught in a funny way. (I wonder if that's how Matthews, Johns, Daniels, Davids, Sauls, Timothys, etc. etc. feel then they read/hear their name in the Word.)

Enough of them in a row and eventually some callouses on my heart are ground away. Just now it took me six psalms to relent (however slightly). The sixty-sixth psalm ends this way:

Come and hear, all you who fear God;
  let me tell you what he has done for me.
I cried out to him with my mouth;
  his praise was on my tongue.
If I had cherished sin in my heart,
  the Lord would not have listened;
but God has surely listened 
  and has heard my prayer.
Praise be to God, 
  who has not rejected my prayer
  or withheld his love from me!

I'm not King David and I don't know everything
but worshipping God seems like a good idea approximately always.

I realise with some embarrassment this evening that I have quite put this aside. I have quite excused myself from engaged/deliberate/active worship of God simply because I feel crummy in myself. I feel like a crumm-butt. (I assume I made that word up.)

I've lost the capacity to do many other things and I have to fight hard most days to keep my head up both physically (fatigue hangs about like a mooch), and emotionally (having to do with perseverance and with dignity). For me, these days, it takes crazy amounts of energy to do just about everything.

I haven't cursed God, I haven't denounced Him; I'm not blaming Him or failing to articulate His goodness on a regular basis (as His goodness is a part of my regular everydaysis) but... if I have any energy, it should certainly be allocated to this activity. [insert massive "who am I kidding??"]

Sigh. I feel like a liar for every time I've sung though there's pain in the offering, blessed be Your Name. Yikes. On the road marked with suffering blessed be Your Name.


And who am I? Who on earth am I to decide I've been exempt from worshiping the Creator? David Platt put a bug in my ear earlier today:

We spurn our Creator's authority over us. God beckons storm clouds, and they come. He tells the wind to blow and the rain to fall, and they obey immediately. He speaks to the mountains, "You go there," and he says to he seas, "You stop here," and they do it. Everything in all creation responds in obedience to the Creator...until we get to you and me. We have the audacity to look God in the face and say, "No." 
Platt, David. Radical: Taking back Your Faith from the American Dream. Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 2010. Print.

Suddenly I seemed more insolent than I ever have been.

Part 1 of 1

So the Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,

     "Cursed are you above all livestock
        and all wild animals!
     You will crawl on your belly
        and you will eat dust
        all the days of your life.
     And I will put enmity
        between you and the woman,
        and between your offspring and hers;
     he will crush your head,
        and you will strike his heel."

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman's conqu'ring Seed,
Bruise in us the serpent's head.
Now display Thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours and ours to Thine.

Oh, to see my name written in the wounds,
for through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death; life is mine to live,
won through Your selfless love.