Little Birdie

I am an intermittent insomniac. Here it is, 12:30 in the morning, and I’m not sleeping. Five dollars says it’ll be 3 a.m. before I get to sleep. It’s happened often enough so that I can pinpoint the various causes:

1. I am repressing anxiety about something that I don’t feel like analyzing and resolving
2. I have had caffeine after lunch time.
3. God is calling me to intercede for something or someone
4. I literally think I’m missing out on something and I don’t want to fall asleep because I’ll miss it for sure

Tonight, I am putting my money on numbers 1 and 2. I drank a 32 oz full-flave Coke because man, I wanted one so bad and it was 95 degrees out and what goes down more smoothly than a Coke? Problem was, it was 9:00. PM. Alas. I was working my tail off and I needed refreshment. Thank you Marty, you are my hero for bringing me that Coke. I don’t even regret it.

Also, I am stressed about various things; work, my relationship with God, etc. All things under my control, yet I am so unwilling to work on them. So, I stay up and watch loser tv instead.

Number four doesn’t happen much anymore, but sometimes I feel like if I close my eyes, I will miss something important. Like, something big is going on and I will miss it. I think it’s just a manifestation of a deeper fear, that I am somehow missing out on life. Maye it’s a four thing, I don’t know.

As for #3, I used to mind God waking me up in the middle of the night to pray, or keeping me up, but now I don’t mind so much. I can tell when it’s Him and I’m honored he would wake me. Of course, my humanity often rears its ugly head and I complain, but I’ve seen prayer work in too many circumstances to ignore its importance. It’s such a mystery to me how God can be sovereign and still hear and answer our prayers. I guess I won’t understand it until I get to heaven. And no, it’s not a cop out because I still search the scriptures for more understanding on the topic and wrestle with it all the time. Just because we don’t understand something doesn’t give us an excuse to quit searching. It should actually encourage us. However, I like how Ben once put it, and I paraphrase, that God requires us to fill the gap between human understanding and supernatural answers with faith. Until we get the answer, we must walk by faith.

Well, happy sleeping everyone. I might end up losing that $5 after all

You know how sometimes you try to use sarcasm to be funny and it comes out all wrong?

I do that a lot, and it especially doesn’t translate well on the web. I feel my last post had a little too much sarcasm in there and it muddied up the parts where I was trying to be sincere.

I really did have a great vacation. I really do, believe it or not, love going to the mountains when it rains. It wouldn’t be the mountains otherwise. And losing my keys wasn’t that bad.

I wouldn’t normally post a follow-up like this but sometimes my sarcastic nature gets on even my own nerves. Anybody else ever get on their own nerves?!? Is it hard to get off? What happens if you get all twisted up and stuck?

These are the things you can ponder on your cell phone when you don’t have to worry about how many minutes you’re using.

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.

Q: Why do blondes wear earmuffs?
A: To avoid the draft.

Q: Why did the blonde stare at the can of frozen orange juice for two hours?
A: Because the can said “concentrate” on it.

Q: How do you make a blonde laugh on Saturday?
A: Tell her a joke on Wednesday.

Q: What is the blonde doing when she holds her hands tightly over her ears?
A: Trying to hold on to a thought.

Q: Why don’t blondes have elevator jobs?
A: They don’t know the route.

Q: Why do blondes work seven days a week?
A: So you don’t have to retrain them on Monday.

Q: How does a blonde commit suicide?
A: She gathers her clothes into a pile and jumps off.

…And the list goes on.

Now, I am a blonde, and I take absolutely no offense at these jokes. Why? Because I have a very close brunette friend with absolutely ZERO common sense.

Nah, just kidding. I do have that friend, but I actually have never taken offense to blonde jokes because I have better things to do with my energy. They’re just jokes. If someone is going to judge me based on my hair color, that person has a severe problem with self-confidence.

In fact, I can make my own joke about it. True story: What kind of faith opens locked doors without a key? Blonde faith.
The other day I walked right into a building not knowing it was locked, opening the door with no problem, and the person behind me (who happened to be a brunette) couldn’t get in for anything.

Perhaps the modern-day interpretation of “faith like a child” really is “faith like a blonde.” That statement is problematic though, because our culture equates “blonde moments” with stupidity, which is quite different from child-like innocence and wonder. Talk to any kid for 2 minutes, and he will knock you off your feet with the amount of knowledge in his brain. We’ve got 8-year-olds writing reviews on complicated internet technology, for crying out loud.

A more accurate interpretation might be having “blonde faith” instead of “blind faith.” According to urbandictionary.com, blind faith is “unquestioning of anything that is dictated by the religion of choice, no matter how foolish, or even if one “rule” (or “guideline”) contradicts another.” This assumes of course that Christianity is more about a set of rules than a relationship with the one true living God.

There are at least two interesting points to the definition of blind faith though. First, I suppose faith in God does look blind because, well, the things of God are a mystery, and we do only see in part. But that’s not the whole story. We are admonished to test the spirits and doctrines against the Word of God. Jesus cautioned us to be wary and wise as serpents. So we are not really supposed to take everything on blind faith according to the scripture.

Second, many things about Christianity do look foolish to the world. In a literal example of “blind faith”, John tells a story of Jesus healing a blind man. According to the story, Jesus spat in the dirt, made a mud paste, and slathered it all over the blind man’s face without even asking him.

Jesus did this as a demonstration of God’s glory, and he must have known the blind man’s faith, because if I went out proclaiming the healing power of God and started throwing mud at blind people, I’d probably get punched. And I honestly don’t know if I would risk looking that foolish to the world if faced with such a command from God.

I guess the moral of this is, the wisdom of this world will get you nowhere in the kingdom of God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:27 that God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.

So take heart, blondes. Our time is coming.

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 shoulda changed that stupid lock.

I shoulda made you leave your key.

Belly, you seem to be sneaking your way back into my life. A fry here, a cookie there…now I’m three or four pounds heavier than I was a month ago.

Maybe my boobs are conspiring against me. They liked their resting place and they got tired of supporting themselves.

Well, too bad boobs. Get a job. It’s time to evacuate the free space that existed a half inch in front of me just four weeks ago.

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.

Oh Belly of mine, how you have grown.
Through thick and thicker you have been there.
You have stayed close to me even as you protrude
farther out into the wide, wide world.

Now as I look down…at my toes
My heart is filled with so much woe
How could you leave me oh Belly?
Yet as I come to grips with this loss
I feel…lighter, somehow.

So as you depart from my life
I will remember the couch we shared.
All the fat, all the sugar
Disappears as I drink more water.

So long, sucka!!

Recently I have noticed that I really get emotionally involved in my loved ones’ lives and situations. Sometimes it’s to the point where I’m the one losing all the sleep, and I’m the one holding on to old hurts even when everyone else has moved on…and sometimes, I’m only peripherally, if at all involved in the situation.

I know this is an integral part of my personality. I care deeply, and I value friendship and love above most other things. When I’m emotionally unhealthy, this spawns a deep need to please other people, often to the detriment of myself. This need clouds my judgment and often I can end up making things worse for everyone.

The bottom line is, when I see someone hurting, I want to fix it, especially if it’s someone I love. And I can’t always do that, so instead I just get all twisted up inside about the situation.

I was talking about this trait last night, and wishing out loud that I could just flip a switch to turn the anxiety off. But my husband reminded me that the same switch is connected to compassion, and once off, it’s really hard to turn it back on. I guess I’d rather keep it all on than turn it all off, but there’s got to be some middle ground in there, where I can keep the compassion but let God handle the anxiety.

Really, I’m not the one holding all things together - God is. It’s my responsibility to make known my requests to God through prayer and petition and trust Him to work it out.

Man, I am such a control freak.

Welcome to my little nest on the web. I am very happy to be here!

I’ve been toying with the idea of creating my own website for some time now. It’s all the rage, you know. Thanks Jerm for setting this up for me. It was the best Christmas present evah

Now that I have this wonderful site, I have been procrastinating about setting it up. I made a lot of excuses and rationalizations about why I didn’t have time to work on it. But the honest truth is, I didn’t want to work on it because a) I am a perfectionist and I didn’t want to do it wrong, and b) I didn’t want to get rejected by cyberspace.

I know, I’m a freak, but rejection is a big deal for me. I need to feel accepted and needed. That’s part of who I am. Often I keep my opinion, or even entire parts of my life, hidden from others because I’m afraid of what other people think about me. I am afraid to express myself, even in the anonymous atmosphere of the web. Because for me, it’s not really anonymous. I’m still putting myself out there for all to see, vulnerable to criticism from people I might not even know.

Obviously, I’ve worked through this enough to write my very first article, because let’s face it - I can’t hide behind my fears forever. I want to express myself and I’m tired of being too sensitive to accept criticism for what it is - a way to help me improve myself. However it comes across, whether it’s malicious or not, I can still use it in a constructive way.

Please check back often. This is a work in progress, just like everything else in my life.