He told me that I am his best friend. 

I’m moving to Texas in less than a year. 

To fall more and more in love with my best friend. 

My heart has found the one it has longed for. 

For once, I can look at all those silly wedding blogs and not feel crazy. Because guess what world? In less than a long while, I will be engaged, and then in not much longer, I will marry my best friend.

here i am, send me: would you consider helping a family have a home

isaiah6-8:

i will be headed down to mexico in the next few days. i am used to going a few times a year with teams of up to 180 people at a time. but this year we’ll have less than 30. this is in direct relation to the drug war being fought there. i can understand people wanting to be safe and for that reason…

Good Seed, Bad Seed: "If" by Rudyard Kipling

goodseedbadseed:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated,…

when a song meets your heart’s cry

Beyond the Blue

Stand on the shores of a site unseen
The substance of this dwells in me
Cause my natural eyes only go skin deep
But the eye’s of my heart anchor the sea
Plumbing the depths to the place in between
The tangible world and the land of a dreams
Because everything ain’t quite it seems
There’s more beneath the appearance of things
A beggar could be king within the shadows,
Of a wing

And wisdom will honor everyone who will learn
To listen, to love, and to pray and discern
And to do the right thing even when it burns
And to live in the light through treacherous turns
A man is weak, but the spirit yearns
To keep on course from the bow to the stearn
And throw overboard every selfish concern
That tries to work for what can’t be earned
Sometimes the only way to return is to go,
Where the winds will take you

And to let go, of all, you cannot hold onto
For the hope, beyond,the blue

Yellow and gold as the new day dawns
Like a virgin unveiled who waited so long
To dance and rejoice and sing her song
And rest in the arms of a love so strong
No one comes unless they’re drawn
By the voice of desire that leads em’ along
To the redemption of what went wrong
By the blood that coveres the innocent one
No more separation
Between us.

So lift your voice just one more time
If there’s any hope may it be a sign
That everything was made to shine
Despite what you can see
So take this bread and drink this wine
And hide your spirit within the vine
Where all things will work by a good design
For those who will believe

And let go, of all, we cannot hold onto
For the hope, beyond, the blue

Said I let go, of all, I could not hold onto
For the hope, I have, in you

This is from Josh Garrels new album. And it resonates, oh it meets my own cry of heart and sings so sweetly on. As my spirit yearns.

You can download the album for free @ joshgarrels.bandcamp.com You won’t be disappointed.

love enough to marry?

Joshua and I were talking last night. He’d just come from the wedding of one of his good friends. We’ve been to a lot of weddings together, which always makes for interesting conversations after. He said a few things that challenged me, that provoked me, and that make me appreciate him all the more.

He said, seeing Matt and Shannon commit the vows they had written to one another made him realize how finitely he loves me. That’s a terribly painful thing to hear out of your lover’s mouth, that he’s realized how inadequately he loves you? But it was beautiful. He said that their love challenged him, and made him realize how far he has to go, how far we have to go until we could marry.

He said, I love you as I can, you in Alabama and I in Texas, but it is not enough. I want to love you more, and I could never marry you until I could lay my life down for you, to love you as Jesus loves his bride. He said, I couldn’t marry you until I could lead you wisely and humbly.

We are not there yet, our love is young and foolish still. But it is growing. And to hear his heart, to hear him declare how he desires to love me, how he desires to grow. Ah, heart be still! For you are wild with anticipation.

It’s easy for me to get caught up in the romanticism of us. To want to jump forward and just be together. But it is so true, we have so much to learn of ourselves, so much to grow in love for one another. To marry will be a very difficult thing, a thing that makes you holy and humble.

God of life, God of death? What is blasphemy?

It is staggering to me, the amount of turmoil my heart is thrown into when speaking of sexuality. I sat in a coffee shop in a Southern town just now with my parents. As is custom, the talk of religion and politics swept through our conversation. My father can speak so frankly about such things. About things changing, about Christianity being more and more outcast, pushed out of government. We do not disagree about this. It is true, but our reaction to it is so different.

What of Christianity falling out of social norms? I praise God for it. The blasphemy that cultural Christianity is makes my heart sink and my blood boil as it is. My father is outraged, while I rejoice at its decline.

And of homosexuality, as he speaks the word with disdain, as if it is unclean to even say. My heart breaks at this. And my heart sinks as a friend, Tina, the owner of the coffee shop we are patroning sits in earshot of us. My father declaring this abomination and that, how the homosexuals are taking over and everything is becoming perverted.

I am ready to vomit at this point, paralyzed in humiliation and broken hearted. Am I supposed to feel as my father does? Jesus wants wholeness and holiness and restoration for us all. Must I hate all that is not perfect? I would be gnawing my own arm off and pulling my teeth out and poking my eyes out and cutting my tongue out if this were true. Wait, isn’t that spoken somewhere, that I ought to be doing such?

It is true. I am to hate my own sin, to hate sin, to grieve for all that is imperfect. But to raise a stone? A word against another loved by God who does not recognize such love? Surely this is blasphemy? And so I weep, and so my heart breaks and I sit in a cold sweat, praying she does not hear his words. To speak them to her, to sit for long hours and live life together, to earn her trust in love, and then to speak in truth and grace- yes yes yes, my heart lifts at that. But to sit in chairs she bought, drinking coffee she invested in, in her shop that has held so many dear conversations for me- and to speak words that carry no love around her and towards her- no. My heart cries out.

I am stricken with grief and fear. Am I afraid of truth? Does the world whisper sweet nothings in my ear and am I aroused? I do not know, Jesus, I do not know. I know only that I want wholeness and life and you in all things. And this place, this earth is so broken, so infested with hate and death and I mourn for it. I scream out it is not your will, but I am silenced by angry mobs who shout your sovereignty. And I cry out that you are God and author of LIFE, and they cry back that I am prideful and lukewarm and misguided.

I do not understand. My God, my God I do not understand. Who are you in all of this?

Good Seed, Bad Seed: our sisterhood of secrets.

goodseedbadseed:

we talked for a time
of wishes and wandering
all logic and reasoning
just to kill it with compassion and hoping
one breath or thought in exchange for the next
like true sun-blistered sisters, it all came to lay bare.
all thoughts undressed and left collecting
at our feet, just before the water,…

Good Seed, Bad Seed: This is where thinking gets you.

goodseedbadseed:

I am convinced that the cynics and realists in this world are just hurt idealists.

“Don’t be naive” is the favorite line of many fearful girls transitioning to womanhood. They chant it in their heads, they sing it to the mirror as they crane their necks to the side and stare into their own…

“By this we k now that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows all. ” 1 John 3:19-20

Read this this morning. We are truly our own worst enemy. God is greater than what we condemn ourselves, too. Love you sister.