examen vi

i’m on notepad. (textedit because it’s a mac, but this plain blank white screen will always be ‘notepad’ to me)

the wifi at home has been dead since last night, and it feels like 8 years ago when my life depended on notepad and small black tahoma characters. 

except back then, i completely rejected the world i was in. it was easy to choose to retreat for hours and devote my existence to writing whatever could possibly be written.

right now as i rediscover that rhythm it comes hard and bulky and taunting me because i can’t keep myself awake to do so at night, because i am pathetically failing at making ends meet between my interior life and a world i finally want to be in completely.

they say time flies by when you’re having fun, but i seem to be clamouring to catch up with time in the wake of mistakes that have caused a storm.

word vomit. two fingers down the throat. right now i am reminded of maybe three weeks ago when i was throwing up on an empty stomach and i didn’t know where it was all coming from. is this the same case? because it feels like i have no more words. or it feels like something daunting is constantly stuffing itself from the crown of my head and clogging my brain that any thoughts spill out and seem to get lost before i can pin them down. like in the shower which lasts ten minutes, i sit down after to write it down and i can’t remember it. i can only remember what i felt when i thought it, that i was blessed by peace and that i would write it down when i finish my shower. i could almost cry at the forgetting. at the frustration with whatever blockage there is in my head.

God’s language with me was always of remembering, and seeing, and right now i can seem to do neither.

when my parents called me down to speak to me a while ago, i caught a bit of the film they were watching. A Beautiful Mind. “your delusions are triggered by stress,” she said. i wondered what stress triggers for me. and maybe it is a kind of delusion. a kind of delusion that is constantly condemning me, like the imaginary man with the hat in the film. this stupid feeling is what has done so much damage lately. 

You fashioned my heart, Lord. (Psalm 33:15) i know somewhere in the rubble of this mess i have caused is the truth that can break down the walls and defeat the delusions. i know that no amount of mistakes that accumulate can be greater than that of feeding the self-condemnation that sprouts afterwards.

this is the end of me and i am here waiting for grace. 

i am remembering gratitude. presence in gratitude. eucharisteo. and it’s hard. thank you Lord for… this frustration. 

how can i be thankful for that??

    

      

  

    

     

my frustration tells me that i have a limit. it tells me what i don’t want. and it tells me of this very human, very cerebral limit. let me hope Lord in what is beyond all this. thank you for this limit because this is where i know Your footsteps begin. where there is no choice but to look at You. Lord let me never have any other choice again because my feet will always, always fail. these waters are impossible to cross by myself.

failure and frustration and pain is the beginning of the greatest blessing, the greatest grace. i imagine Jesus in the world, Himself and everyone at the same time. the human existence of the entire world, including him, in Him. his disappointment and love in perfect and painful tandem. perhaps as the new covenant this is what i am too. in me there is the battle of human disappointment and Godly love. but He carried it. which is why i shouldn’t have to. and every time i try and toil is an act of ignorance of that. 

i only have to love. think with love and see with love and move with love and act with love. from the inside, and then out. why is this something you cannot understand until now? that God loves you. that you need not move only according to what is moving around you because He moves you. your entire life being moved around you have had to relinquish control. in your family you see the relinquishing of control. but this should be a no-brainer (all-hearter?), this relinquishing to Him FOR control. a surrender to be free to be moved by Perfect Love. only in that can strength be created. everywhere else… it is stolen and fleeting.

laugh at my plans, Lord. laugh at my anxiety. and let Your laughter be here again. in this family that i have failed. you don’t make mistakes Lord and i know you brought us all together and that things are not meant to stay this way. let your laughter enlarge my heart and fill up the pits of silence in between these relationships. knock me down so that Love can enter with relentless force. i’m here trying to put together charcoal from the rubble and you’re just waiting to give us gold bricks and the softest feather to be cozy in your kingdom. every day let me see things that are not as though they were, as you everyday promise. upturn all the tables i have set up meekly to attempt to organise my life, because these efforts are nothing next to your love that should roam all around this house.