We're All Hungry for Something

If you read my last blog post, you know that lately, things for me haven't been great (emotionally). I've had a lot of down moments and down days, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was that was causing it. I should have been able to figure it out, but I'm stubborn. Often, I keep my eyes closed tight when I know I should open them wide, because I know that when I open them it might sting.

Tonight, Vince and I went to Lexington to attend 608--the church service held at Southland Christian Church for college-ish age people. The pastor, Jon Weece, talked about running from things and running to things. He then told us the story of a woman who was abused as a child, and ended up turning her life toward things that were harmful to her and to others--sex, drugs, alcohol, and self-injury. The story ended when after this woman had run from her past for years--from all that hurt she endured as a child and then allowed herself to endure as an adult--until she ran to someone that opened up their heart to her and loved her. This woman wasn't judged for the way she'd lived her life. The word sin was never used. Rather, this woman was described as someone who had been hurt, who was hurting herself and others, and who, in the end, was loved simply because she needed to be loved. That love healed her brokenness.

I'm not doing this story justice. We got to hear the woman, via video, tell her story from beginning to end, and it broke my heart. She talked about her drug and alcoholism, her prostitution and career in the porn industry, and about her broken childhood with a mother who introduced her to many of these things. This was a woman who was broken in so many ways, and who in the end was healed by the love and grace of Jesus. This story is miraculous. It's miraculous because Jesus' love, through people, helped this woman heal, but it's also miraculous, because, despite what I've seen from people for so, so long, the people in this story never made this woman seem like she was less. 

I've been to many different churches, and I've talked to people with varied beliefs--Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, Baptists, Catholics, Jehovahs Witnesses, Methodists, Mormons, Muslims, Wiccans, you name. These different groups of people have vastly different views of God, religion, and the world, yet there's one common thing that ties most, if not all, of them together. The idea that what they believe is right.

What stood out as different to me about this particular service, about this particular story, was that I never got the impression that the people of this church thought of this woman as any less than them. I never got the impression that they saw themselves as being better than her. They weren't going out and loving her because she was lost--they went and loved her, because she needed to be loved. No questions asked. No holds barred. They just loved.

Pastor Weece told another story about a young boy, a second grader I thing, that was a pretty violent kid. Once, he took a swing at a teacher, and Jon had to pull him away. The boy bit him, and when Jon got his hand free, he pulled the boy into a gentle bear hug and took him to see the principal, holding him the whole time. As they walked, the boy fought against Jon, still full of anger. When Jon got him to the principal's office, she saw him, went back outside, and brought the boy a peach. He ate as if he hadn't eaten in weeks. Why did he act so violently? So angrily? Because he was hungry.

We're all hungry for something. The woman I talked about before, she was hungry--desperately hungry--for love, for a sense that she was important, that she belonged. The child was hungry for food, so hungry that all he could do was be angry. I'm hungry for things, things that I may not even realize I'm hungry for. I know that you're hungry for things too.

As I said in the beginning of this, emotionally, things have been rough for me lately. I've lashed out at my husband, at my family, and at my friends. I wasn't happy. If I'd opened my eyes up, I would have been able to see that it was because of how hungry I was. I've been starving for Jesus, and I didn't recognize those hunger pains for what they were. I've been hungry for God to move in my life, and what I didn't see was that I was also hungry to go out and live my life for God, and to share the love that He so freely gives me.

I'm not trying to idolize Pastor Weece, or Southland, or the 608 service we went to, but I do want to say that tonight's message opened my eyes and my heart in a way that I haven't experienced in a long, long time. The message made me realize that a little bit of love, the smallest thing, can set in motion a chain of events that might change someone's life. And if it doesn't, that little bit of love can at least make a person happy for a moment. The message made me want to go out and love.

Vince and I talked about the service after we left. We felt refreshed, renewed, and excited to go out and live our lives, and our marriage, for God. The entire service was centered around not who was right, who was wrong, and how we (the "right" ones) can correct the thinking/beliefs of the "wrong" ones, it was centered around the need the world has for servants--for people who go out and love others no matter what. In the story about the little boy, the principal and Jon loved him and gave him food, not because he was angry, but because he was hungry. In the story of the woman, she was shown love by the people at Southland not so that she would believe what they would have her believe, but because she was hurting and needed to be loved.

My heart broke tonight in a way that it hasn't in a long time. My heart broke for myself when I realized that I'd gone for so long not living my life loving and worshipping Jesus by loving others. My heart broke in a beautiful way when I realized that there are people that are living that way right now. My heart broke in a refreshing, exciting way when I realized that there are churches out there right now that are going and doing the things that make life beautiful--they're out there spreading the love of God. There was no political agenda, or church agenda, no secret, hidden reason for why the people of this church are doing this--it just is what it is, and what it is is beautiful.

Jon challenged us to go out this week and do for one person what we wished we could do for the world. To go out and show one person love. What a beautiful opportunity, and what a beautiful way to live, to go and give someone love, and to do so not in order to change the way they think, or the way they act, or the way they are, but simply go and love because we all need to be loved.

31..."The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches." 

-Matthew 13:31-32

Antithesis

A photo I took in October of 2011.
This was one of those days.

Every now and again, I'll have one of those days in which I can't shake a feeling of, for lack of a better word, badness. That's a terrible word to use there, but it's the first one that came to mind, and in a strange way, it fits.

A terrible word for a terrible feeling.

These days seem pretty random. Sometimes they're set off by something specific, but more often than not, I just feel bad...generally I feel bad in specific ways, and those different ways pile on top of each other until it's just a general feeling of badness (there's that word again).

On those days, I get random urges to tweet really melodramatic things. Sometimes, those things don't even pertain to the way I'm feeling. For example, yesterday I tweeted, "Perpetually looking over one's shoulder is no way to live." It sounded kind of sad, and kind of paranoid, so I tweeted it, because I was maybe feeling a little sad, and maybe a little paranoid too. I have no idea why. I get random urges to pour my little melodramatic heart and soul into my many social media outlets and to my close friends via text (if you're one of these close friends, and you've gotten one of these texts, you know how horribly annoying and pointless it can be). Lately, I've done a stellar job of fighting those urges (except for my paranoid-shoulder-tweet). This blog is my attempt at channeling all of that badness and turning it into something...not so bad.

If I let thoughts and emotions live in my head for too long, I get kind of crazy. My husband notices...I'm the least careful about holding it in around him. I'm very sad to say, he has to take the brunt of it...when I let things boil in my head, sometimes the steam burns the ones closest to me. Nine times out of ten, that's Vince. He has to deal with his burns, while trying to keep the pot (that's me) from boiling over, as well as trying to keep me from getting burned, too. Thinking about it that way makes me sad for him, and at the same time, makes me very, very grateful to have such a loving, compassionate, patient man.

I've had these spouts of badness since I was a kid. A part of me thinks it's just my lack of control over my emotions getting the better of me. That makes me want to learn to control it, and makes me feel like I've failed somehow by not being able to. Another part of me thinks I have some as-yet undiagnosed chemical imbalance and need to see a doctor or a therapist (that's the easiest option to "fix). And yet another part of me thinks that I have some deeply rooted issues in the depths of my brain that, every now and again, peek out to see if they can join the party, but they don't peek out long enough for me to see them in their entirety. Rather, I see them for only a moment, and rather than being able to deal with the issue, the root, as a whole, I focus on the effects or symptoms of that issue. Namely, comparing myself to what I see as incomparable beauty, the idea that I'm unlovable,  the idea that I'll never live up to an expectation that's always going to be unspoken, but in my head, will always be there.

The most likely scenario is that it's a lovely mix of all three of these things.

In a way, this blog is just my very long-winded way of melodramatically-tweeting-over-140-characters. In another way, it's my way of writing out these "major issues" that I think I have, so that I can see them in black and white. Seeing things in black and white always helps put things in perspective.

Some days are bad and some aren't. I suppose that's normal, but I'm tired of it being a toss of the dice for me. My goal is to bring the bad days into the light, so that they're eventually forced to become their antithesis. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that exactly, but I have a few ideas to try. I'm going to talk to my husband before all of the emotion I carry boils over and hurts him. I'm going to try positively redirecting the tangle of thoughts in my brain. I'm going to quit comparing my photos to photos of other people. And lastly, I'm going to try and limit my social-media-time, because as great as Facebook and Twitter can be, they're both always excellent venues to commit self-esteem suicide when left to my own devices.

A photo from a few days ago.
This was not one of those days.

I actually wrote this last night, and waited for a new day and a new frame of mind to decide if I wanted to post it or not.

Now that I've decided I will post it, I'd like to ask that no one take the time to tell me that I shouldn't compare myself to others, that there's no unspoken expectation of me, and that I am lovable. Rather, if you choose to comment, I'd love for you to share your struggles with me, too. Or maybe you could tell me something that helps you when you're having a bad day. I cherish the encouragement and love that the people in my life are always so willing to pour out on me, and I appreciate it more than any of you can ever know, but this time, I'd rather hear about you.