Second: I read other blogs (this is how I best distract myself from doing homework).
Today, I have been reading and updating myself on some friend's newest posts. This one is from a friend of mine. Just read it (from today - 03.08.10)...
www.daverinker.com
The bits about knowing who you are as a result of feeling or literally having been abandoned struck some chords. These are two pieces I wrote last year. Somehow it connected in me.
Life
Its ups and downs
general uncertainties
paradoxical confusions
all make sense when I am simply with You
In full acknowledgement of Your work in my life, I make sense
You take credit for Your creation
and You whisper Your love, pride and value in Your work
-------------
I am not my own hands or my own feat. Me? I am a soul, stuck to one body in time and space. Sent to this earth to live the best and healthiest life possible. I am not my past or the culmination of what has happened to me in this bodily form.
I have been sent from above and to above I shall return. I was created and my creator transcends my life, my past, my pain, my sorrow, tears, joy, and happiness. And in this transcendence my former way of life is transformed. While I used to believe that my life was for me, my transformation has granted me a radical view of purpose, God and love. I was not put on this earth to be queen of my own Empire which revolves around me. I was put on this earth to discover the greatness of this creation.
I am Your hands, Your feet, Your body. May I bear your name well in this world. I am a conduit of Your Spirit, Your breath, Your life, Your hope, Your love, Your dreams...
(I was inspired to write the latter while walking around Oxford last March)...it actually started with me realizing (again) that I am not very nice to my feet. Then my muse spoke ("somehow you are not your feet"). What you read is a portion of what resulted.
I was going through a program from my internship at Westview Community Church in Manhattan, KS. It was called Making Peace with Your Past. Through the material involved in this program, I was learning about how I had been allowing the events of my life define me. Define who I saw myself to be, the truths I would listen to (sinner, unworthy, unvalued, will never get it right) and the ones I refused to accept (intrinsic value in being created, loved no matter the state, appearance, thoughts or misdeeds). I was created with a purpose, and the events of my life have shaped the person I am now, and inevitably, will continue to do so. Through the program, I was confronted with the fact that I have a choice. At some point in time, you have a choice to take control of your life, or to continue to live as the culmination of everything that has happened to you. If I had chosen the latter, I would never pursue my dreams. I would live in a constant state of defeat. I would be Get Happy, Part One without the peace.
The fact that at some point in time, you have a choice as to how you will deal with the (pardon my French) shit of your past gives power, not to the darkness, but to the light. The light blasts darkness and redefines the shadows. Light pierces the depths of the one who dwells in darkness and gives that being legs to stand on and begin moving. What this looked like for me was understanding where certain thoughts were coming from. When it comes to abandonment, my life has been laced, intricately with loss. The other truth of that is to say that just because I have experienced loss does not define me as a person who is always abandoned and not worth staying around for.
In this reflection, I have a choice. I can choose to believe what my Creator says about me, or I can choose to sit in the pain and despair of one who is abandoned, and allow that definition to eek from every pore of my being, lace its way into all of my relationships, and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When I decide to hang out in despair, I have then chosen to be queen of my own Empire. I define myself and everything follows: my interpretations on another person's glance in my direction, or the way I interpret a stupid text message.
The other fact about this reflection is that I have this choice multiple times. Just because I choose one way at one point in time does not dictate what I will choose the next time I am confronted with abandonment.
Again, another fact here, is that no matter what I do decide, I am still loved beyond imagination. Even if I choose to sit in darkness, I am a child of God. Even when I choose to live as one abandoned, I am not alone. This is the peace, I think, in Get Happy, Part One. Knowing that in the depth of my despair, it doesn't matter what I will do, what I think about myself or the rest of creation, I am loved, wanted, desired.
I hope you followed all that...I'll edit it someday and make more sense of it.
that's all,
me
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