Where I am

Sometimes it's not healthy to make choices for other people's benefit. In fact I'm coming to a point where I believe it's not healthy at all. There should be some kind of mutual give and take, a mutual desire that make things beautiful for both parties.

I'm tired of being weighed down, feeling guilty over things that because of stubbornness won't change, and carrying with me through the day the clips of depressing statements from midnight conversations. I don't want it. I don't have to have it.

It's been a long time coming. One weekend wasn't the reason, it was the suspended animation, the feeling of knowing myself and being known in a real and transparent way that finalized the decision I should have always made. Makes me believe: it's just there or it's not. The chemistry, the intensity.

I remember Luke talking me through my dead engagement and telling me that it was the wrong kind of passion I shared then, that the kind of passion I described was destructive. I think whatever passion I saw these last months was very similar, a self destructive passion. And I'm not a life boat for a sinking ship. Renewal is a choice. Life is a choice. And sinking is a choice too.

In the midst of all the chaos of difficult decisions and hard situations, phone calls that I know won't be well received and thought out explanations that I know will be twisted, it's nice to have inspiring people around me. The kind of people who fight through the sticky jumble of compromised truths and shitty life experiences and find something worth believing in, even if it's not the truth parents smile at or lifestyle choices others praise. I admire their strength and take it in a little.

I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to find the kind of inspiration that heals and creates. In the mean time I'm going to work on becoming it- breathing it, speaking it.

On risk

I don't maintain a belief because it's convienient or makes sense or puts everything in order. I believe because the world is absurd and chaotic. I believe because I am a member of a global community that suffers, much more than I do, and to be a just part of it I have to somehow break my own selfish internal atheism.

I believe because there's beauty in thinking about individual dignity. I believe because I have to push myself outside of thinking the world is about me. I believe because there has to be a greater point than personal gain, especially when personal gain leaves me so cold. When I believe something that isn't a part of me comes out and somehow makes my life meaningful to others. I won't die without making a moment of peace.

Risk is beautiful and risk is hard. But internal death is worse. I choose life.

it dawns on me

All of a sudden while talking about my Greek and Hebrew from college, I realized something significant. Greek is the most expressive ancient human language and I heard all the time about how providential it was that the New Testament was written in Greek to in exact detail explain and defend the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. But isn't it interesting that Greek wasn't chosen to write the Torah, the Law, the very thing that I would think exact detail would facilitate the best. So why did God choose a language that for every word there seems to be eighteen, sometimes contradicting, meanings to verbalize the Law? And then in contrast use the most expressive language with a word for every nuance to expound the Gospels and letters?

Humankind didn't need precision in being legalistic-- we needed it in liberty.

Christ called His law the "Law of Liberty."

God chose Hebrew to explain the Torah to show that fulfilling the Law can only be about the heart- if it were about the head He would have explained every jot and tittle of every command in Greek, so there would be no confusion on how to perform. But the Sovereign isn't about dry action and robotic movements. He loves peace, justice, mercy. He loves the grey areas where the character of a real person shows through.

My God was specific when it came to love, and beautifully grey when it came to legality. The Torah is intricate and ornate, full of meaning and substance-- very much more than the strict sounding English translation or the Christianized version of Jewish practice. Point-- the Only is about life, lived and breathed, not only talked about or intentionalized.

I appreciate that, being flawed.

Thoughts and Pieces

I've been questioning a lot lately and mostly writing when I'm on my break at work in the insane cold of a sterile and bleach-smelling corner room. For some reason it's the place I think about issues clearly. Right now I wish I could right something profound about current events, about how a 14 year old died with a steak knife in his heart yesterday one street over from this room, about how all the kids are on edge today, about how fragile life is. I wish I could piece words together in a way that made sense and expressed my emotions.

But even though I'm trying to think deeply and feel deeply about the state of this neighborhood and my role somehow on the fringes of it, I still feel trapped in my own questions from this weekend. See, I've been trying to figure out with I want- I feel like I used to know and somehow lost sight of the clarity along the way. My relationship ended terribly. The only two I've ever had have ended, ended in ways that make people tense when they ask and hear, clenched because no one wants to believe love can fold and morph and die sometimes. So in the midst of all my married friends and the bliss of their lives making sense, I find myself lost but trying to celebrate. My life just seems so separate.

And then I remember, I live. And mourn for the walking dead, the 12 year old who will forever have the memory of murder over him. How do I even begin to pray? What does it sound like for me right now?

Reincarnation

In a past life I was a poet. And a painter. And a mother of four.

In a past life I was a warrior. And a hero. And a victim.

I feel the lives in me that either once were or could have been, the ends of the choices I had the opportunity to make but didn't.

All these lives argue over what the outcome of this one will be, interjecting comments and dreams and memories from lives my religion doesn't allow me to believe, stirring up feelings and affections and directing me through life almost completely on touch. I feel my way through.

Finding the good

Still in the same place. Literally. It's been a year and in many ways I feel like I'm exactly the same. I was looking forward to a change in surroundings, maybe at times using that as a crutch, as a replacement for actually moving on. Forced to take into account all the truths from the past gosh, eight years, I have to admit somethings to myself: first loves don't die, time doesn't heal without intention, and the structure of my life is second to the person I choose to become.

Even though the externals look dramatically different, sometimes opposing, who I have become was chosen. I would have evolved much the same if the location was different, the faces changed. People are people, though, and community is consistent. My goals have been refined but they haven't shifted: I want to experience peace.

If my high school dreams had come out the way I had planned, I would have still wanted peace. I choose to believe that life goes according to the best--it's harder to believe now, but if I lose that tenderness, I will lose too much of the things that I like about myself.