I have come to the conclusion that I can no longer tell the fine line between living a wish-dream and reality. Perhaps what I live and experience now is simply sensations from the real world, manipulated by my mind to keep me from the truth. The truth that ultimately, I have utterly no control over my circumstances.
I lie awake, drenched in sweat from my own heat and from the muggy room emanating it’s warmth.
I think back to the things I’ve done in my life. Things in my past seem like a blur. I try to remember them, but something tugs at my long cloak telling me not too. Begging me not to. I concede to its plea. There will be a day and time for that. There will be judgement.
Things in my present feel as though they were long ago yet as if they just happened, all at the same time.
I remember when this used to be fun.
I remember when this used to be enjoyable.
I remember when this used to feel right, when the mystery of it gave me all the more confidence.
I remember taking a step back, remember saying my prayers to remind myself that not to my glory, not to my wants but His. I remember trying hard, foolishly by my own power, to keep this promise.
I remember the timidness, the shyness, the pseudo-double-entendres, the word games, the vulnerability but
not
really
vulnerability.
I remember the unsaid formula, the predetermined planned procedure, the politics, the methodology. I remember them being all too familiar yet all so foreign at the same time.
I remember the pain, the patience, the endurance, the waiting, the deference, the waiting, the pain, the waiting, the waiting, the waiting…
I remember the struggle.
All this I remember.
All this.
Yet in a folly attempt to recall the minute insignificant details of my life, I gloss over the more important things that are bigger than me. That make my life more than just me.
I remember not the personages.
I remember not the characters.
I remember not the plot, the setting, the ambience.
I remember not the Audience, the applauses and boos, the cheering and the crying, the unending support.
I remember not the reasons, the whys and hows and whatifs. I remember not why I remember not.
Is it all for naught then? Is it all for naught, because I do not remember? I deny this not. As much as the past influences our present, it presents no excuses for itself nor for the now.
How we live our lives is a daily choice we make only with the grace of God.
How *I* live *my* life is a daily choice I only make with the ever so kind and powerful grace of God.
A grace that wrenches me free from my failures, my mistakes, my critics, my accusers, my chains, and all the brutal consequences that come with.
A grace that wrenches me free from the idols I cling to even now. My idols of pride, lust, greed, selfishness, deceit, power. My idol of good works, good intentions, My idol of morals, of being on the “right side”, of being perfect, of being loved, respected, dignified. My idol of me.
I cling
so
hard.
A grace who hates all this, who despises all this, who accepts me in spite of all this, a grace who recognizes the perfect condemning judgement and wrath, that bitter and holy and perfect wrath, that is deserved.
A grace who pleas, “he knows not what he is doing. Josiah knows not what he is doing” – I know not what evils I do? Is that a joke? I know full well my evils! I know full well my judgement! – and stands between me and holy perfect judgement.
A grace that instead takes my place on my cross, who bears my mistakes and its punitive and consequential power.
A grace who is both willing AND able to say “it is done”. Period.
Period.
It is done.
There is NO dignified response to this. What a great injustice has been done onto the Son of God on my behalf! Why did you do it God, why? Why should I, a mere worm, benefit from his, from Your, great loss??!
And so I draw from this power.
Power from the fact that the LORD can destroy both my soul and body.
Power from the fact that I fear the LORD.
And if I fear the LORD, and if the LORD is for those who fear Him, whom else is there left to fear? I cannot fear the Lord except by the Holy Spirit who teaches me how to fear amazing grace.
Whom then, WHOM shall I fear? Myself? Posh, I have died and risen with him; behold, my old self is defeated, presented as a dead corpse, just as it were.
Just as He would be pleased with
and
exchanged for a new life!
And so, all this I do, I CAN do for His glory. I know not the outcome of what he calls and permits me to do; only that if I trust and obey Him who saves, in the end He works for the good of those who fear Him.
Arise dear self, arise and do not be disheartened; weep no
more! God is GOOD! God has saved you by destroying you and made you new, and will make you perfect yet!
Arise dear self, arise! You are more than a conqueror, for you have been conquered by unfailing love, by everlasting redemption, by undying faithfulness. And it is not by my own power, it is a gift of God.
Arise, and rule the world in and with love as God has made you his servant; rule in and with and through love and praise to God. Rule over your self, your community, your relationships; rule as God has intended you to rule, to rule through his grace and mercy and sacrificial love.
Arise now, dear self, and REMEMBER this:
For by GRACE you have been saved through FAITH. And this is NOT your own doing;
It is the GIFT OF GOD!,
not a result of works, so that no one (yes you, that’s me) can boast.
For we (that’s you, self) are God’s workmanship, created in CHRIST JESUS *FOR* good WORKS,
which, by the way,
GOD prepared BEFOREHAND, that we should walk in them.
Arise, my dear self, and LIVE in and through HIM. Only through, for, by, and in him are ANY of my actions and existence justified. None else.
O to grace how grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.
All to His glory. All to Your glory.
Amen.
Someone once asked me about marriage; that if two people really loved each other, why they needed a marriage certificate, a piece of paper, to prove it.
At the time I didn’t really know what to think of it. But here’s my quick two cents on it.
Two people will never ever be fully “compatible” or have perfect chemistry with each other. Never. Either they’re both robots, or they’re lying about it. People fight, people argue, people change. It’s life, and it’s part of any human relationship, romantic or not.
Some relationships have it better than others – some people just happen to be more compatible with another, some relationships just have more incidental luck than others. But in the end, no relationship is perfect.
I believe that if two people really love each other, marriage is there to signify their commitment to each other. Crudely put, it’s like this in my head:
“Hey you, I love you a lot. I know that I’m not a perfect person, and I know that as a result of that, my feelings for you could change. I might start getting bored of you. I might start getting angry at you. I might even start to not like you. Maybe I’ll even develop feelings for someone else. I’m not perfect, and I know that. But if I make this vow in front of everyone, I want it to mean that even when I don’t like you, I’ll still love you, if at the least by whatever this vow represents. That at the time when I want to leave you the most, I’ll have this as a reminder that I gave you my word I won’t. That this is a representation that our relationship is more than how we just feel about each other. In essence, this is about me giving up my freedom for you and this relationship, and putting you first before me. This is my gift to you, as a token of my love. It’s about sticking through with each other through thick and THIN, through better or WORSE, through easy or HARD, through richer or POORER, till DEATH do we part.”
Call me an idealist, that might be what I am. I’ve never been in a relationship, and who knows, my views may very well change. I also recognize the fact that the idea of marriage and the institution itself is, at least popular society’s eye, failing. But these are my two cents at this point in my life regarding how I view marriage.
Looking back at the past few weeks in retrospect, I realize how self centered I have been. I have been too focused on how I feel, on what I want to do, and how to satisfy MY needs, and the way I think is right.
This has led me to become a prideful, gluttonous, judgemental, self-seeking, ignorant fool, with no regard to what people around me think and feel. Worse yet, I’ve lost sight of the grace that was mercifully given to me, and lost sight of my future home.
Father, have mercy on me, a sinner.
I’ve been told in the past that I function too emotionally, and that I don’t think decisions through before making them.
Fair enough.
In recent times, I think I’ve been doing just the exact opposite – or at least, seemingly so anyways. I’ve been extremely detached from my surroundings from an emotional point of view, and do things methodically – sometimes, too methodically. Yet it still resonates of the way I did things in the past.
Maybe it’s actually just a masquerade, and I haven’t really become as far removed as I thought. Or maybe I actually am being too methodical and too out of touch with my surroundings.
Love must be tempered by Truth, as Truth must be tempered by Love.
While walking into a convenience store, there was an elderly lady sitting outside with a cup, asking for money. As I was about to enter the convenience store, I told her that I had nothing I could give her right now but that I would on the way out. Inside, I saw a combo deal for hotdogs, so I decided to buy 2 – one for her, one for me.
Upon exiting, I offered the hotdog I had bought for her; I noticed she had just lit up a fresh cigarette. Initially she turned it down, but when I said that I had bought it specifically for her, she accepted. Suddenly, I felt a wave of compassion for her, and asked if she would like a spare blanket or sweater. I said I would return in 15 minutes with one, and she agreed.
I walked the short route back to my apartment. I wasn’t really sure what was going on in my head. I remembered that I actually didn’t have a spare blanket or towel, but I did have a sweater that I had been meaning to give away. I also made a cup of honey tea.
I walked back to the convenience store, but when I arrived she wasn’t there. I saw the hot dog and its box on the ground where she sat before, as well as a used coffee cup. I peeked briefly inside and saw that she was actually inside, making a purchase. I waited outside the convenience store for her – I wasn’t sure if she thought I was going to hurt her or report her or something.
It had been about 5 minutes until she came back out. She seemed a little surprised at first, but she received the hoodie I offered almost immediately after. I was glad to see that it was big enough to fit over her multiple layers of sweaters and jackets. I also asked her if she was allergic to honey before offering her my honey tea.
It was then that I decided that my homework could probably wait, and I asked if I could sit down and just hang out with her. Was I honestly going to get anything productive done at that hour if I went home? Besides, I felt like this was an opportunity that God was giving me to learn more.
And I’m glad that I took up on this opportunity. I felt immensely blessed and enlightened by the conversation we had.
J actually isn’t homeless, but lives at a local halfway house, probably about 2 to 4 miles away. At first I was slightly taken aback, thinking that she had run away, so I asked if they knew she was there; she responded by telling me that the halfway house gave them complete freedom to go in-and-out at their own will, so I was relieved.
We had a nice conversation; mostly it was me asking her about her life. J has lived in Boston since she was 19 – she is now 69. She used to live in another major city along the east coast.
J wasn’t always in this situation. She used to have her own apartment and her own place. I didn’t really understand what she was telling me about her past, but somewhere along the line her schizophrenia manifested, and she had to be taken away.
J has three kids, but all three were up for open adoption, meaning they were allowed to communicate and know of each others’ existence. Her children are apparently doing very well for themselves. One of her sons runs a lucrative gardening company in another country, and the other studies at a prestigious school. Her daughter is doing some sort of volunteer program in Peru. She hopes that her son will do graduate school at Harvard so that he would be closer.
Her mother lives in a suburb near her home city, and apparently just underwent bypass surgery and is still recovering. It really touched me that J said she had to make sure she took care of herself so that she could be at her mother’s side at the end.
At the halfway house, J says that they aren’t necessarily treated the best. I was a little bit surprised to hear this, but then she told me that it was actually privately run and not state-owned. She lives with 6 other similarly aged women, and talked a bit about them. She seems to get along with and thinks well of them.
We talked a bit about computers and technology. She told me about how she really wanted to learn how to use a computer, because they are so useful and fun to use. She told me how at another halfway house she gained access to Facebook, and found her children online two years ago, and that seeing pictures of them was one of the happiest moments. She prints out their pictures and hangs them on her wall.
We also talked a little bit about international affairs. She seemed very well informed of current news – about the situation with Korea, the war on terror, etc. We talked a bit about how much America wastes, and she chimed in, saying that the halfway house she was at wastes a lot of food. What touched me the most though was that even at her self-admitted “extremely-low income” status, she talked about how much of the rest of the world had a lot less than she did.
We talked a bit about drugs. She said that she was worried that her son who is studying at university was doing too much weed. She said that she could doing drugs once in a while, but having a life revolve around it was too much. J revealed a bit about her own experiences, and how it was such a cheap but ultimately unsubstantial and costly escape.
J has gone through so many hardships I could only begin to imagine, yet she has such a drive and determination to live. We talked a bit about what it meant to really live. I remember he telling me that she very well could just sit around doing nothing and wait for food to come to her and everything, but that wasn’t really living. Instead, she said, that was just being a vegetable. She said that to really live, one must have a motivation and drive, a purpose to wake up to each day. I asked what her purpose was. She responded very frankly, saying that for her, what she looks forward to every day is going outside and having a cigarette. This was because at one time in her life, she was incarcerated in a very small cell while she was pregnant, and developed claustrophobia.
About an hour after we first started talking, J decided to head back to where she was staying. I offered to walk her back to make sure she was okay, but she declined and said she’d be alright. I felt immensely blessed after our conversation. I hope to see her again and possibly even visit her one day at the halfway house.
One thing I realized was that I had approached this from a totally wrong perspective in the first place. I know a lot of people are put off from helping people because of the possibility that the person they are helping may not be using your help (financial or otherwise) in a beneficial way (eg if they were an alcoholic or drug dealer). I know I’ve always had that dilemna in my head. What I finally realized though is that in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Are we to set some sort of (un)merit-based system for providing help, that a person must meet so-and-so levels of desperation before we help them? Furthermore, if you truly have love in your heart, should that love not extend to the person regardless? The idea of grace comes to mind – that while we were still sinners, sinners who even now still abuse the grace and love God gave us, God still continues to pour it out on us, in spite of the fact that we don’t take it as it was meant for.
I have a confession.
I confess that a large part of the latter years of my life have been motivated by getting the attention and affections of girls, in the ever-perpetuating never-ending search of “true love”. I think part of that comes from wanting to be special to someone, to be that center of attention, to feel needed, to be that shoulder to lean on, to be that warm body to embrace, to be that friend who can support, to be that man who will rise up to lead.
Yet in the end, I find that all my motivation comes down to selfishness and a need for attention.
But when I look to the cross, I find that the God of the universe, the one who has it all, has given me all his attention already. He needs no shoulder to lean on, no warm body to embrace, no need to be supported. Yet all his attention is turned towards me. His eyes’ gaze form a spotlight on my life. He wants to hear about my day, hear about my troubles and my joys, my struggles and my triumphs.
And my humble heart is speechless without response, save for a teary “Why?”
And I realize just how beautiful You are, and how great Your affections are for me…
I really need to write in here more. My blog feels neglected.
I reformatted my iPhone the other day to downgrade it, unknowingly wiping away all my Notes. I had a lot of potential blog entry items in that Notes app. Sad 