Dang, You Guys Are Awesome

My post, What’s in a Name, garnered more appreciation and interaction from all of you than I imagined when I penned it. And I think that’s so stinking cool.

Seriously, thank you.

Like many of you, I have intimate knowledge of depression, hopelessness, loneliness, weariness, and the struggle required to make it through one more day. The thing about social media is that it can be a vehicle for so much deception. We can post photos that we’ve specifically curated to portray a life that seems dazzling, but reality often tells a different story. Because of my struggle with debilitating depression, I love to try and find beauty within the darkness since it’s incredibly difficult to experience true beauty and joy in your spirit when you’re locked in a battle with demons. Often times, I turn to my blog and the community on here to lift my spirits when I’m too tired to continue the fight.

So, again, I just wanted to say you guys are a cool bunch and I appreciate you ♥️

Also, check out this funny video that made me shriek when I saw it 😂 This makes me feel ooollllldddddddd 😂😩 (tell me if you understand what this convo was about.)

Broken Clocks

You frighten me.

When you ask me for things like friendship,
companionship,
a night on the town.

An invitation thrown carelessly,
like a pebble in the water,
as you walk away without a care in the world.

As you walk away without realizing
that I am made of glass
and a misplaced throw may shatter this perfect illusion
of my reality.

I tighten my grip as anxiety roars to life
and settles on my shoulders with its familiar cold embrace.

“I’ll be there,” I whisper
Because I’d hate to disappoint you with my silence,
my absence,
my mysterious disappearances.

But I breathe in and swallow my fear
because even a broken clock
tells the correct time every once in a while.

Envy

I’ve finally stopped being incredibly envious of other peoples lives. No, not even that, it goes deeper than that. It’s as if the ability to care so desperately has been plucked out by its very roots and I’m left with this beautiful paradox of looking into the window of a life that boasts everything that I do not have, and I feel incredible warmth and joy for that life.

Without the slightest hint of envy.

Even though I crave all of that which I am gazing upon and I am still on the outside looking in.

It fills my heart with joy to realize that another persons happiness and well-being are not the cause of my bitter envy and urge to compete. To want even better than that. To always have the upper hand. The last word. The last laugh.

Another’s joy fills me with joy.

This catches me by surprise.

I am content to sit back and to sink into the wonderful knowledge that soon my turn will come as well, soon my heart will be full to bursting and I will never have to compete with anyone ever again. Not even myself. And believing this means already enjoying the fullness that flows into my heart and spills out into my soul.

A Thousand Deaths

Pure love is absolute freedom. It gives the object of its affection unbridled power to come and go as it pleases. Even if that means that the object of its affection chooses to walk away from that source of pure love.

Let me tell you what love is not. It is not stifling and controlling and domineering. It does not mask itself under pretenses of worry or care while it slowly squeezes the life from you under the weight of possessive control. It does not lash out at you when you have failed to carry out its expectations. It does not determine your life for you while your self-will dies a slow and torturous death.

That is obsession.

It only took me a thousand deaths to finally realize the difference.

To Love Deeply

If you’ve never truly hated someone with the deepest of bitter resentment and the hottest fire of burning rage–then do you truly know what it is to love someone?
If ever the black crashing waves of the purest loathing have never pummeled you, sucking you under in the fierce current of their bottomless depths, then tell me–how do you ascend into that sweet paradise of sublime beauty in equal measure?

To love deeply is to risk letting the pits of hell take you into their unrelenting embrace.
To crash unexpectedly into that fiery inferno, arms and legs akimbo as you pinwheel helplessly through the air.
To feel a thousand deaths as you watch your dreams sputter and die, winking out one by one.

But the glaring tragedy here is not having to survive such unbearable loss, no–the real tragedy here is to never have felt that kind of consuming love at all.

Invisible

Invisible in a world full of molds,
We search desperately for someone who will see us–
Beneath the masks, beneath the facades, beneath the uncertain smile.
Will today be the day that someone will finally take notice of me?
Hear my words, look into my soul,
Acknowledge the small flame of my existence?
Will you be the one to stop by for a moment,
And warm your hands briefly by my fire?
To let me know that for a moment in time,
I was not alone in a world full of molds.

A Woman of Valor, Who Shall Find?

I’ve been doing this kind of roundabout study on some things in the Bible that pertain to women, and what I’ve found has blown me away. I didn’t set out to study this, actually, I sort of stumbled upon it over the years through various other studies. What has really taken me by surprise is that God created the woman with incredible power. The reason this surprised me as much as it did when it was fully revealed to me was because religion and culture has claimed such a total hold on women that it has effectively stunted their full potential and growth.

Ever since my teen years, I was completely fascinated with the Proverbs 31 woman and fervently prayed to God that He would transform me into her. (Little did I know what, precisely, that transformation would entail.) But over the course of the years, as I was put to the test and subjected to battle upon battle, I was bewildered and confused and disheartened, and there was many a time I cried out to God, “God! What is the point of these exercises?! All I do is continue to fail harder every time I try harder!!” (Strangely enough, I was failing up towards success–but that is a different topic altogether.)

One day I was listening to a sermon on Hebrew roots in the Bible, and the preacher stated that a word in the Proverbs 31 chapter had been incorrectly translated–the passage that asks, “A woman of virtue who shall find?” The Hebrew in that passage is actually, “A woman of VALOR who shall find?” Okay, at face value, that seems kind of odd. Valor means to have great bravery in times of war or an intense battle or danger. A courageous warrior displays valor when he performs feats of great bravery in securing victory in a battle. So why would a woman have valor? Better yet, what would she need it for? So digging deeper into this question, I uncovered the roots of the formation of woman, and what, exactly, was in God’s mind when He was creating her. When God said, “Let Us create a suitable helper for Adam,” the Hebrew word for “helper” there is ‘ezer.’ Loosely translated, it vaguely means “helper.” But that is not the actual and correct translation for that word. The roots that are used in the Hebrew to make up the word ezer mean “strength” and “power.” In other instances of the Bible where ezer is used, it is describing an encompassing power that surrounds the godly person to protect and shield him from danger and harm. With that being said, I am pasting this passage from an article I read that summarizes everything up quite neatly:

“Therefore, could we conclude that Genesis 2:18 be translated as “I will make a power [or strength] corresponding to man.” Freedman even suggests on the basis of later Hebrew that the second word in the Hebrew expression found in this verse should be rendered equal to him. If so, then God makes for the man a woman fully his equal and fully his match. In this way, the man’s loneliness will be assuaged.

The woman was never meant to be an assistant or “helpmate” to the man. The word “mate” slipped into English since it was so close to the Old English word “meet,” which means “fit to” or “corresponding to” the man which comes from the phrase that likely means “equal to.”

What God had intended, then, was to make a “power” or “strength” for the man who would in every way “correspond to him” or even “be his equal.””

Okay, back to my own voice *wink* –After I realized the full spectrum of intent that was in God’s mind when He was creating the woman, I understood fully why the Proverbs 31 woman is a woman of valor. If she is to be a power and a strength unto her husband, (coupled with the godly mandate to be his protector) then she is supposed to come equipped with the courage it takes to head into battle and overcome it with victory. We are all in the war, and we each also fight our own personal battles. Our foes have many faces–fear being chief among them. The fear of social rejection, stigma, what other people will think, being branded as this or that, etc. etc. etc. I listed those fears specifically because our culture has made those fears into an Olympic sport.

“A woman of valor, who shall find? Her price is far above rubies.”
-Proverbs 31

*Note–I carried this over to my blog from my personal journal. I apologize for not citing my sources, I was pouring this down into my journal and simply copied and pasted there.

English, why you so hard to learn?!