triumphal procession

"But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere."  - 2 Corinthians 2:14

Do you feel like you are living a life of triumphal procession? I read that as the verse of the day on my desk calendar and it stunned me. Triumphal procession. Not a delusion filled anti-reality nationalistic Trump procession but a Christ lead, God ordained, triumphal procession. Do you feel like you are living a life of triumphal procession?

I can't say that I do. And here are some thoughts about why there is a disconnect:

1) "Christ always leads..." This is key. Overjoyed exuberance while marching on through the unexpected and expected series of life's events - doesn't come from money, "success", or through the pursuit of me-lead desires. Christ lead - Christ focused - Christ centered, that is the key, that is the cornerstone to the triumphal everlasting life referred to in this verse.

2) "Thanks be to God" Paul wrote in his letter. Let me ask you, are you thankful to God, I mean really truly thankful? It's fine to be thankful when all is well, when we feel well loved, and no one disagrees with us, and there is no conflict or tension, our health is good. It is easy to love the gifts over The Giver. If tomorrow all that you have is taken from you could you say "Thanks be to God" through your tears and grief? If today something big is missing in your life, if there is black deep hole, is the light of God powerful enough to break through it and allow gratitude to reign? Here is another layer - thanks ties into trust. You can't be thankful when you don't really trust. You just don't. Do we trust God to really be thankful for Him?

3) This leads to the final disconnect -"Spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere." Think of it this way. All of us are spreading a fragrance of some kind around. The fragrance of materialism, the fragrance of entertainment, the fragrance of pride, the fragrance of impatience - we are spreading the attitude of our hearts, our authentic nature, everywhere we go, every interaction we have, whether we like it or not. What is our fragrance truly and what knowledge does it spread?

"For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing,  to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?  For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ." 2 Corinthians 2:15-17

With all you are - who do you love?

My first blogging entry in 4+ years. Wow. Time gets away.

What was in those 4+ years?

Retrospective personal assessment: I graduated nursing school. I got the first job I applied for in nursing and passed NCLEX first try (miracle of Jesus). I learned to live with the consequences of my choices not without regret. I also learned to live with the consequences of other peoples choices with much tears and sorrow. I got to work with strong amazing women juggling so much and I got to feel what it's like to be part of a true team. I was the victim of two car accidents. I got one tattoo which turned into 8 tattoos. I felt the imminent real fear of becoming an orphan with my mom's first massive heart attack followed a year or so later by her second and then with the daunting diagnosis of heart failure. I moved out onto my own for the first time in my life (long overdue). I made my own home from scratch all by myself. I worked night shift and lost parts of my sanity. I got assaulted by a patient. I learned what good leadership is by unfortunately experiencing the lack of it. I got my BSN while working full time. I applied for and transferred to a different nursing position. I learned that the grass is never completely greener on the other side. I learned to assess and go after what's truly important to me. I worked with amazing, generous surgeons. I applied for and transferred to another new position in nursing. I lost one beloved animal friend and rescued another. I learned that the love of my Gammy is core thing in my life and to make peace with the past.

Question: Where is God in this?

He was right there though a majority of the time I didn't see it or care.

The verse of the day on my desk calendar is Matthew 22:37 "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind." I think that's the heart of the matter. You must love the Lord with all of your efforts, faculties, fancies, and thoughts. When faced with a choice that the secular world is calling "good" - stand it up the test of "who is it loving?"  Who is this action serving? Who does it show I love when I...? Does it show I love God utmost when I...? I think it is a great clarifying litmus test for all of us. With all you are - who do you love?

This blog...

This blog used to be about other things. Things I thought were important, God for an example. I've so lost touch with that person I once was so long ago, like a stranger to me now...

I live by a schedule, imposed upon me by others but agreed to by me. I am used to limits and expectations and parameters. I need lines to stay between.

I have had to explain where, what, how long, with who - all that childhood kind of stuff, even though I was never really a child- to my grandmother who I have lived with for so long. And I am struggling to separate myself from that mentality of explaining/confirming/informing.

Approval and disapproval is something that my family has never shied away from offering and withholding as it suits their agenda. I have come to see as of late what that type of behavior has done to my ability to be confident and whole all by myself and for myself.

I say all this because I have no one to say any of it to. I am in a relationship with someone who doesn't communicate all that much and really to be honest plan all that much. And I struggle. Struggle to trust. Struggle to understand. Struggle to breathe.

It's one thing to embark on a new relationship for the first time in ones life. That in and of itself is going to involve a learning curve. Its HUGE. But I have the added pressure of not just building a relationship with this ONE new person but with his two living companions as well. And I find myself resenting it. Horribly. Horribly. Horribly. I don't know how to overcome it and it terrifies me.

Trust is a bitch. You know what I mean? Once its lost it can never really be found again. I have trusted and been burned, burned badly... only tears can do the talking about that now...

I hate feeling like I'm the last to know anything about the person I am sleeping with and dating. I hate that she gets to know things about you before me and gets to do things with you without me. I hate it. Hate it to my bones. I hate myself for hating it. And hate is exhausting. Sooooo exhausting.

All this neurosis I have to keep hidden and that's exhausting too. All this hiding makes me feel more and more unknown. More and more alone. And this feeling of being unknown makes me feel its all so futile. And feeling its all so futile leads to other existential thoughts...

I'm not a very articulate person. I want to be but I'm not. But maybe hopefully pleading to the God above who says He's never far - let this be like a drawing out of poison and renew, refresh, revive me and my spirit. Show me what to do. Prostrated and with tears I plead. Amen.

hypochondria = nursing school

Ok...so... I am reading my mental and behavioural health textbook and the assigned reading is heavy into disorders and diagnostic information. All nursing students suffer from hypochondria. Over thinking, over analyzing, over over over, yup. So keep that in mind when I go off into an odd mood tangent rambling thingy. :)

a mood ring

I wish I had a mood ring I could trust; maybe it could tell me what I feel. Identifying one's own feelings shouldn't be a struggle but for me it's all too jumbled. I feel ill-at-ease for some reason. It's like I'm on a small boat in the middle of dark deep waters stretching endlessly in all directions. It's my lack of resistance to this setting that plagues me. I have no inclination to go to the shore, to reach the land where man was made to live. That's would be too simple somehow. My oar is apathetically untouched; I am at the mercy of the current and accept it as so.

I remember seeing Rob Bell in concert several years ago. He did this one monologue about the poignant moments that make up all our lives (actually that is all of his monologues but I digress). All our lives are a series of transitions, unforeseen circumstances, inevitable ends, blindsiding moments - all of these things are happening at once. He relates these things to hallways.... "We've left one room and gone to the other. We've sat outside, waiting. We've felt pain and been overwhelmed by joy. We've all been in the hallways in one way of another, haven't we?"

What anyone else does or doesn't do isn't for me to determine. The fate of another persons behaviour, affect, mood...isn't in my hands. Laying something down is one thing; picking it up is something else... I think being a nursing student where so much is theoretical jargon and where case studies are idealized and fictional, the ability to see, accept, and embrace what is real and possible gets dampened.

Seeing that breakup, being a witness to that (for lack of a better word) dysfunction, made me see how fragile all of it is. We. You. I. All of it. Are fragile. And things might not "work out." And accepting this possibility is vital somehow to my continued ability to walk and talk and breathe...


Round is my shape.
From my face
to my bodies curvatures
Round is my shape.

Beholden is my heart.
Regardless of the future
regarding the now as a present
Beholden is my heart.

Kindness marks my disposition.
Seeing the good first and foremost
freed to laugh and smile
Kindness marks my disposition.

Unafraid is my soul.
Undeserved grace claimed me
and keeps me come what may
I am not afraid.

stretch/extend/embellish

Another amazing day and I'm not being sarcastic oddly enough. It's one of those days when you have everything you need and nothing you don't. Good music playing in the background. Adequate time to for work and ample time for play. Nice company and friendly faces. It's just been a really good day. Those need times like that to be specially marked; to bank them so there is something to look back upon when life isn't so "amazing."

I have recently come to find that I sometimes get bogged down in minutely explaining something when all that I really need to do is just say it plain. Don't use 20 words when 5 will do, you know what I mean. Be clear. There's no need to use a lot of fancy words and showing off. There is a verse from The Bible coming to mind, "...don’t babble on and on as other people do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again..."

I think my tendency to get lost when I am writing and to wander off comes from the desire I have to be understood which isn't necessarily a bad thing but understanding isn't all one sided. All we can do is put ourselves out there intelligently, honestly, wisely and what people understand of that, isn't up to us or in our control.

I've recently embarked on a completely new phase of existence. I find myself finally and suddenly (both equal and at the same time) in a relationship. Never been in a relationship before. This is very sudden for me. I have no idea what this really means exactly or what I'm supposed to do. I mention this because it occurred to me today that relationships stretch us. There is a whole new element (a.k.a. "the boyfriend") that wasn't there before and it comes with it's own variables - parents, history, friends, experiences, debts, dreams. I have to be stretchable, inclusive to many pieces that a make a whole person and that needs to be mutual. The scale of traversing new territory goes from exhilarating ecstasy beyond measure to blind terrifying uncertainty filled with doubt. Yeah, sorry to be extreme.

I consider myself an intuitive person, one who picks up on subtleties and micro-expressions to borrow a term from the canceled show Lie to Me. But the truth actually might be that I over-intuit, I over-examine, I look too long without blinking that I see things that aren't there. You might ask, "Why would I or anyone do that?" The humble answer is, it comes from life with a history of shockers that left the world completely upside down and the erroneous belief that I should've seen that coming somehow.

I don't want to over think this but at the same time I don't want to stop thinking period. Hmm...

One of the synonyms for stretch is embellish of all things. It connects with the definition of stretch that means, "to adapt or extend the scope of (something)." I think that's not a bad goal; may the me/you/us of your world be strengthened and benefited by the necessity of stretching. xo

under the tie-dye sky

Doubt. It's funny or I should say interesting what I choose to doubt and what I have no doubt about. Being in college, nursing school, meeting so many different people in a variety of situations, settings, and circumstances, as well as having been plunged into a new job atmosphere after a decade of being stuck behind a very stifling one, I see every day how wrong I was, how little I knew, and how uncertainty is necessary, even good.

In the classic movie, The Philadelphia Story, with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn there is a great line. Two characters are in the middle of conversation and the topic turns to the subject of snobbery. One character says, "The time to make up your mind about people, is never." As I get older, that's what I'm coming to see. People aren't all one thing and they can't be defined simply with the use of three adjectives or less. We aren't Match.com and eHarmony advertisements.

"The time to make up your mind about people, is never."

Doubt. I doubt the words of leaders, finally I'm unconvinced of their intent. I doubt history for it contains recognizable slant and blinding bias. I doubt the reviews of film critics and the predictions of the weathermen. I doubt at my core that my journey called the human experience is worth it. I doubt; some are big and some are small, some inconsequential and some significant. But with doubt comes wisdom. Doubt reminds me that I don't know everything, that I can't always be right and that I'm often wrong. Doubt in it's uncertainty, allows me the chance to look at things from another's point-of-view. Doubt can at times be a vital force that keeps me from harm and certain injury.

What don't I doubt? I don't doubt that Christ is real, for who would makeup such a character and how. I don't doubt the old saying, "Only two things are certain: death and taxes." I don't doubt that today I lived under the tie-dye sky and it's possible I will tomorrow too. I don't doubt in any sense or dimension that I adore you more than anything on this planet real or imagined, past or present.

I doubt and I don't; it's not simple and rarely easy, but in this moment as the colors of twilight mix and meld, my mind's made up: I'm thankful and glad to be alive. xo