Still Pushing

I'm still tired. Still befuddled, still fighting. And committed to keep pushing through whatever this is. I'm grateful that tomorrow night is Converge, because it is often soul refreshing, and if not, well, at least I get to be with people I love!

I work tomorrow first - work is still hard. I don't want to be at this job anymore, and have struggled with discouragement among other things this week that I will never find a better job. Today at work was long. I didn't want to be there, didn't feel up to summoning the energy to fight the heaviness that has been sinking over my spirit as I enter. At least tomorrow's shift is mercifully short - four hours only.

Last night was restless - around 10:30 pm God started popping thoughts into my head. The whole theme of fire and water, of rivers and streams. I have pages of seemingly disconnected thoughts that I scribbled down as they came. Bits of songs and scripture, thoughts out of nowhere, things I've read. Every time I turned the lights out I needed to turn them back on and grab for the notebook I use for this sort of disconnected rambling and keep writing stuff down. I finally fell asleep with Jason Upton's "Mighty River" playing on the stereo beside my head.

And just before I woke this morning I had another vivid dream. It seems somehow to relate to the whole water/fire theme going on last night. Very odd, somewhat unsettling, so basically normal for me! You know, I used to only have these kinds of dreams once or twice a year. They've been happening once or twice a week for the last while. I've got to find someone to hang out with who is gifted in the interpretation of dreams, although some of them seem quite clear at times...

And with that, I'm off... I've got more to do with this whole fire and water thing... more rambling thoughts and research to do, and then it will be time to start at the beginning of the disconnected thoughts and begin to give them form and substance, to flesh out ideas, to breath life into the words, to pray them into clarity and meaning for my life. (Also, I think I'm going to go finish watching the first of the three Harry Potter movies I rented to watch over the next week!) And maybe some art... it's been on my mind all week to do something with art again. Plus, the mundane stuff of life like washing my hair, cleaning the bathroom, and laundry.

Fighting

I wrote a whole post with this title yesterday, but blogger ate it.

I feel like this week has been a fight. I can feel it in my body. I'm exhausted for no apparent reason. I've had headaches almost every day, and restless nights. As I'm sitting here to write my stomach is convulsing and the muscles in my lower back have knotted up. And all week I've wanted to cry, but the tears just won't quite come.

Looking back, I think I saw the battle coming on on Tuesday night. Funny, because Tuesday was a very peaceful day - the day I wrote about in my last post. I had some uncommonly honest conversations about spiritual things that day, and I know a few others did too. As I sat in my car and shared life with a friend into the wee hours of Wednesday morning I was praying silently for a conversation that was going on elsewhere, for nothing in particular and everything in general - my spirit nudged into prayer even as I spoke and shared some of my story with my friend.

Work has been central to whatever emotional or spiritual thing I've been fighting with this week. It's been harder than ever to go there. As I would walk into the building I quite literally felt heaviness and dread descending on my spirit. My brain was foggy and I made odd mistakes - nothing serious, just things that wasted time and energy. Sometimes I fought the heaviness, humming worship songs, meditating on their words and passages of scripture, and sometimes I just worked.

Tonight I'm tired. Still two work shifts to go. Six hours tomorrow, four hours Sunday. The week has been odd. Weird snippets of dreams. I've done a lot of thinking on the subject of good and evil. I've been reading through the Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling, enjoying them, but thinking deeply about the questions of good and evil they propose. They've even invaded my dreams at times, snippets of thoughts - conversations with characters from the books. Nothing I can remember when I wake, just the impression that I haven't been separated from the characters and thoughts even while I'm asleep. Every once in a while I stop ever so briefly and wonder when I became weird - odd dreams, God speaking to me for others, feeling everything so intensely, unable to escape words and themes...

The lines from Delirious? "Revival Town" that say "You let a broken generation become a dancing generation," have been floating through the mess of thoughts this week too. I think this statement so closely describes what God has done in my life, what I see Him doing in my generation, and in my church. I wonder sometimes if we have cycles of brokenness and cycles of dancing, or if we perhaps simply choose to dance in spite of brokenness. Because I feel more like the broken person than the dancer tonight, but I persist, because God is calling me ever deeper...

Been listening a lot to Delirious? this week, alternating them with the same Jason Upton CD I've been listening to for the last couple months and one or two others. Water imagery, images of nurturing warmth, and fire imagery have all been strong this week. Snippets of lines from different songs have been playing nearly unceasingly through my thoughts this week...

...Find me in the river, find me on my knees....

...Now I'm waiting if you please....

...We didn't count on suffering,

we didn't count on pain

but if the blessing's in the valley

then in the river I will wait...

...Jesus' blood never fails me...

...Where every woman, every son

will life high their chains undone...

... Don't be afraid of your blind belief

because the more you fly the more you'll see

you're not alone, you're not alone...

...They're calling me and they're calling you

from the cold hard facts that we're on our own

to the age old truth that we're not alone...

...A cloud by day a fire by night

I'll keep moving on

It may seem strange but I know it's right

I'll keep moving on...

...In the place of suffering there's a God worth worshipping...

...The Lord has a will and I have a need

to follow that will, to humbly be still,

to rest in it, nest in it, wholly be blest in it,

following my Father's will...

...So I have to find the river, somehow my life depends on the river
Holy River, I'm so thirsty...

...I'm so thirsty, I can feel it
Burnin' through the furthest corners of my soul. Deep desire, can't describe this
nameless urge that drives me somewhere
though I don't know where to go...

...I'm abandoned to the river and now my life depends on the river...

Yesterday

No, not the Beatles song, the actual day.

Yesterday was the fifth day in a row that I had off of work. It was the first day where I actually managed to rest. I woke up with a peace, a calm that had been missing for a while. I sat outside on our patio in the sun and read for a long time. Finished off a couple more chapters of Gary Best's Naturally Supernatural, and was very challenged by the large chunk of chapter three that he dedicated to discussing the prophetic. Understood a bit more about myself, and about some recent experiences, including those of Sunday night in reading this. God's timing that way makes me laugh - I've been putting off reading that bit for quite a while, and then, when I finally picked it up it definitely spoke some stuff I needed to hear - it was edifying. Read some more of the Gospel of John, sitting there in the sun too... Jesus preparing his disciples for the coming crucifixion. Wow.

I did some errands at a lazy pace, and spent the afternoon doing a bit more reading. Oh, and I sent out more resumes - hopefully I'll get some calls in the next couple of days.

I'm reading through the Harry Potter books at the moment. I know that the rest of the world read them quite a while ago - I remember their intense popularity when I was in high school, and that was a minimum of five years ago. But hey, I'm loving them. And the phoenix imagery - loving it too. The healing tears, the rebirth... yeah... so tied to what I've been thinking and praying through lately.

House church was somewhat uneventful for me at least. But afterwards I spent time catching up with a friend who'd been away at school and on a mission trip for the last year. We sat in my car until nearly 1 am catching up, talking and sharing God stories. It's fun to talk about being healed from depression with someone else who's also been freed from it. Someone who understands what it was really like, and knows the feeling of being truly grateful for the freedom. We talked a bit too, about some other situations I'm facing, and prayed together over our house church. So good.

And now, I'm off to work. Can't say I've missed it... where can I find a job that lets me do errands for a living, lets me take time to sit in the sun and read and hang out with God, lets me write and think at any moment the inspiration hits? Because let me just say that Bridal Registry at The Bay isn't going to be that job. I found out on the weekend that I could work as unskilled staff for 7-11 and make 50 cents more an hour than I make at The Bay, and get benefits. It is SO time to move on. Praying that God will provide a job soon - a job that excites and challenges me, that uses my skills, and pays my bills!

Just because it was fun...

You Are Sunrise

You enjoy living a slow, fulfilling life. You enjoy living every moment, no matter how ordinary. You are a person of reflection and meditation. You start and end every day by looking inward. Caring and giving, you enjoy making people happy. You're often cooking for friends or buying them gifts. All in all, you know how to love life for what it is - not for how it should be.

What Time Of Day Are You?

just for your info - I'm not a morning person! But the description does fit my personality, and if I ever manage to move out of my parent's home, I'll be more than happy to cook dinner for a whole bunch of you!

The things floating through my brain

I could tell you about a whole number of different things floating around my brain tonight... what the heck... I think I will!

• First off, what's with everyone taking breaks from their blogs lately? I bet no fewer than three or four of the blogs I regularly check are on "breaks" or are "cutting back" on the posts they put up. Is this some strange new trend? Because what am I going to read, and how am I going to know what's going on in all of your lives if you all stop writing?
• Yesterday was a bit of a day of rest for me. I spent the morning watching a movie, the afternoon reading and watching the end of a movie with my parents. Basically the idea was to engage in pursuits that didn't require a whole lot of active thought. A good friend challenged me a number of months ago to find things that would allow me to completely stop thinking about the things that consume me. She reminded me that it was quite unhealthy to focus as heavily on these things as I was, and pushed me to find ways to "stop thinking." So, I'm working at trying to do that regularly.
• Church last night was interesting... don't really know what to say. I had a "unique" (read terrifying and completely exhilarating) experience during the ministry time afterwards. A friend caught my eye from where he was sitting with a few others praying over someone in our community, and sort of beckoned me to join him. I came over and he informed me that God had told him that I needed to pray for this person. I honestly thought he'd lost his mind, and this was the only thing that kept me from yelling at him. But he explained a bit, and as he explained, a question came to mind for the person we were praying for, and it kind of went from there... weird how God just sort of deposited some stuff, and led me to confirm some things that had been said before I joined them. I was completely convinced when I sat down to join them that it was going to be a really bad idea... that God wouldn't speak, that I would embarrass myself and the friend who was so sure God wanted me to pray, and the poor person we were praying for. Because God sure wasn't warning me that I needed to speak! But hey, He's faithful, and I'm even grateful to the friend who pushed me to step into a situation I would have never have entered without a push.
• I listened to the Focus on the Family Radio Theatre version of C.S. Lewis' "The Silver Chair" this afternoon while I cleaned. I think I'm going to research and write a paper about that particular book in the Chronicles of Narnia... every time I read or listen to the dramatization of it I'm caught by the messages it portrays.
• I finally cleaned my desk today. And my chair, and one of my dresser drawers. That means that I now have a place to curl up and read, a workspace on which to be creative, and space for my socks and underwear!
• I cooked dinner tonight. I like to cook when it is an expression of something creative, and something new. So I pulled a recipe off the internet for pasta with tomato cream sauce, and modified it a bit. I ended up serving grilled chicken over penne with tomato-cream sauce, steamed asparagus in a sesame vinaigrette, and we're still going to have the coconut cream pie that was on sale at the grocery store for dessert.
• I had a job interview at Samaritans' Purse last week. It was a position I really would have liked to get. But, it's been almost a week and I haven't heard back, so my hopes are pretty low. Back to the drawing board again. I guess I'll send out resumes again tomorrow and see if I get any hits.
• I'm loving the Delirious? song "Revival Town" at the moment. Particularly these lines: "Hallelujah, You've turned my mourning into dancing" and "You let a broken generation become a dancing generation."
• And with that I'm off to read for the evening, or maybe watch a movie, and definitely to indulge in some coconut cream pie!