Little Birdie

I have come to learn that love (that is, infatuation or lust) and stress are physiological twins. Let’s examine some of the similarities:

• Racing heart
• Loss of appetite
• Giddy fatigue
• Distracted thoughts/inability to focus on a single task
• Emotions run high
• Insecurities emerge in force
• If you don’t end up in bed you REALLY WANT TO.

I qualify the term “love” here because I have learned, after more than 6 years of marriage and 29 years of other close relationships, that real love is entirely different from that kind of sweaty-palmed feeling you get when you see Johnny Depp dressed up like Captain Jack Sparrow. Or the initial stages of dating, when all you do is lie for 3-6 months so your prospective life mate won’t see who you really are and run screaming.

Love is hard. Love is dying to yourself. Love is submitting to each other. Love is not a doormat, but neither is it domineering. Love is the most wonderful and most painful thing we do. Read I Corinthians. It sums it up nicely.

“So tweh-zha your wuv….”

“Skip to the end!”

“Have you tha wing?”

Free ice cream for anyone who can name that movie

I am waiting in the sanctuary for your anointing
The red carpet is rolled out
The trumpets are calling
The choirs are singing
The dancers are dancing.

Furiously I war on my drum,
Searching and waiting for you to come.
I will not move until I hear from you.
I will not speak until I am spoken to.
You give me dreams I know not of.
The desires I have reflect your love.

I throw out my arms to embrace you.
I throw off the hindrances I hold on to.
There’s no one here but you and me,
Yet I look around and see family.
We are fellowshipping in your wonderful embrace-
Finally, I feel I can run this race.

I wrote this in response to my worship experience this morning–which was really a culmination of the past week. It’s a pretty pathetic depiction of what I was actually feeling, but I’m giving myself a break because I don’t write poetry.

God’s been doing some pretty hefty stuff in my life lately, but it’s been coming on slowly. Usually when I’m dealing with something, it turns into this big emotional drama, but somehow it was different this time. It was sweeter somehow. Don’t get me wrong, there was still drama, but it was short-lived. And the result was me simply falling more in love with Jesus. How cool is that?

Now, go check out Kelanie Gloeckler’s CD “Bending to hear the secrets you breathe.” It had me on the floor.

Easter was hard for me this year. I got really caught up in some selfish thoughts and behavior, and at the same time built up a lot of resentment towards our culture that focuses entirely on the easter bunny and not at all on Christ. We were in Wal-Mart on Friday night and there was an ENTIRE AISLE crammed with people punching and pushing and fighting with each other over some stupid plastic easter eggs…meanwhile, 1 little bitty kiosk in the front had a few “positive-thinking” (not really Christian) easter-oriented items.

Yes, I know, we live in a secular society now. I mean, what did we get everyone for easter? Yep, easter bunny baskets with chocolate and other yummy non-Christ oriented crap. And my thoughts and behavior were exactly the opposite of what I should have been thinking and doing. I am hoo-man and so is everyone else. I should have relied on grace to get me through this weekend, but instead I just kind of blocked all that out.

Plus, our easter program, to me, was kind of anti-climatic. I hope that wasn’t really the case, and my bad attitude just clouded my view of the whole thing. Everyone did a great job, but I felt like I missed the mark, didn’t find the river, whatever analogy you want to stick in there.

Anyway, by the end of the weekend I learned two things from this experience:

1. My life is not my own, and the sooner I realize that the easier things will be.

2. Praying out of fear is pretty much worthless. If I’m going to pray, I need to pray in faith. Jesus holds all things together. He reigns supreme over every thing and every situation in the entire universe. This means he reigns supreme over my little dumb selfish problems.

So, here’s to a humbling and sobering beginning to my week.

I’m not doing the right thing with my hands.

Instead of using them to express beauty, or as an expression of it, I ravage them.

It’s a compulsion, a habit, an outlet for stress relief or boredom, whatever. It’s grown steadily worse the older I get. I remember age 4 or 5, still sucking my thumb, and my dentist tried to use a reward/punishment system to get me to stop. I was supposed to put a frowny face on the calendar if I sucked my thumb that day, and a smiley if I didn’t. Mom didn’t like that system so we did something other than a frowny face…I think. I don’t remember too clearly, but I do remember not getting very many rewards.

I must have switched thumb sucking for nail biting. I tried nasty fingernail polish, gloves, regular fingernail polish–EVERYTHING on the market to try and stop biting my nails. My uncle even tried to pay me to quit biting them.

Eventually I moved on to the skin around the nail. Gross. I won’t go into any more detail.

God is about to change all that. Another layer of the onion is about to get peeled off. Ouch.

I can’t wait

I suspect it’s got something to do with my music. Probably the piano. What a thorn in my side. What a beautiful instrument. What I wouldn’t give to be as free in the piano as I am with my voice, or the drum.

Part of it is unskillfulness. Skill comes with practice. I can already transpose like a fiend. I’ve got the scales down pat. Piano theory is no problem. But as much as I love it, I just can’t get comfortable playing it. Too much emotional garbage.

If the two are really connected, it’ll be awesome to see what God does. But whatever the reason for this compulsive habit, I’m really sick of doing it and I can’t wait to get free. Come Lord Jesus.