Blame Game

Exodus

Isrealites blame Moses. Moses blames God.

We blame those who hurt us, the friend, ex boyfriend/girlfriend. The parent who was never around. We blame those people and they blame others. The father who didn't teach them how to be a man, the generational differences, the disease. 

Everyone is blaming someone else. Passing off our behaviors and actions and words as results of something that happened to us. 

But what if we stopped. What if we stopped passing the blame? What if we just admitted that a crappy thing happened to us but that we can rise above. 

Yes my ex relationships have hurt me in a lot of ways but those men aren't to blame for our failed relationshipships. They screwed up and I screwed but in the end We didn't belong together and that's all that matters. 

Yes your father was never around, he never "taught" you how to be a man but aren't you still a man. And maybe he wasn't around because he realized he wasn't a good teacher. 

I am not trying to create excuses for the way or why things happen. All I am trying to say is that passing the blame onto someone else gets us nowhere.

So let's all just own up to the fact that crappy things happen and learn from it and stop pointing fingers.

Marriage won't fix everything.

I can't speak from my own experience as I have never been married but I have been surrounded by married people my whole life.

People who made marriage look like the easiest thing in the world, people who I didn't understand why they stayed married, people who tried to sugar coat it and people who were brutally honest.

This is what I know: adding someone else to your life is hard. Making time and space is hard. Making time and space for the right person is easier, but it still means sacrifice. 

When you get married life doesn't just magically change for the better.  What does change is your name, your title, your living situation and change is hard. Change can be worth it but it is hard. 

"Singles" don't do yourself a disservice and think that getting married will solve all your problems. You are adding someone else's messed up life, finances, family to your own messed up life, finances and family.  Yes there are now two people carrying that weight but it is also double the weight.

"Marrieds" don't do us single people wrong. Don't make us feel like marriage is the end goal. Some of us will never get there. Some of us will take a long time. Be honest with us. Remind us that living in community is hard. Remind us that love doesn't take out the trash or put the toilet seat down. Remind us that we have value and worth right now in our singleness. 

Heck be jealous of us, because unfortunately a lot of us our jealous of you. 

New Year's Eve

I don't get it. 

Stay up past bedtime, mess with sleeping schedule; for what? To see another day come in? That happens every day, every day is new, every morning is fresh. 

No point in losing sleep over one more day.

See you kids in 2015. 

Because you will never read this

You will never know that I first realized I loved you on Christmas Eve. 

You will never know how my heart broke in that realization. 

How my heart still breaks in knowing that the man I loved was never meant to be mine.

Love is powerful and strong and leaves a mark.

Love is dangerous and beautiful and hopeful. 

My love for you left a scar. Christ's love for me has made me whole. 

I am a bad friend

I am horrible at relationships. I must have missed that day in school.

I am not just talking about dating. But friends, family, coworkers, God. Any and all relationships, I have never been good at.

In grade school I didn't have a lot of friends. My birthday parties were always just family. I hung out with cousins and the neighbor kids, and even those relationships I couldn't make last into middle school or high school. 

High school I hung out with a few people, but once again I was bad. I rarely initiated the conversations or the hang outs. I was always on the receiving end. 

College I sat in my room until people came and talked to me. During summer breaks I rarely spoke to those people. Out of sight out of mind seemed to be the running theme.

Even now as a grown woman, with all the technology we have, if you are not a part of my day to day life I don't reach out to you; even if you are, I don't reach out. I sit and I wait. I wait for someone to speak to me.

I do the same thing with God. I don't hang out with Him daily. We see each other on the weekends and a few times during the week, but usually I just sit around waiting for Him.

I wait for Him to reach out to me. To say something big, to comfort me when I hurt, to grant me knowledge and wisdom and peace. 

I sit with my phone always on me, waiting. 

Part of my reason for not reaching out to others is that I never want to be a bother. I don't want to interrupt their life. And what if they don't want to speak to me, like I want to speak to them. 

But see the thing is when I do reach out and reconnect with those old friends, things are as if they have never changed. They love and care for me the same way they did before. 

God is the same way. When I open up and speak to him. He opens up and speaks to me. Loving me and caring for me the same way as before. But taking that first step is always the hardest and scariest, the fear of rejection hangs tight.

God I am sorry I have been a bad friend.
Friends I am sorry I have been a bad friend.

I promise I will try to do better. That is all I have. The promise to try. 

Hope

"Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told." - Habakkuk 1:5

Some day I will look back. Some day I will look back at this time and this place and be amazed and in awe of what God has brought me through and what He has brought me to. 

And so for now I will hold on to that moment in the future. I will hope for the day that I can sit in a place and time and say "For this. This is the place and space God has brought me to. What a better place than I could have imagined."

Get out

I heard something recently that really broke my heart.
A man who was a leader in a church(not the church building I currently attend), it was found out that he was having an affair. Not just a one time indiscretion but he was in a relationship with someone who was not his wife. When his wife confronted him about it he admited to the affair, he told his wife that he wanted to seperate, that he wanted a divorce, that he loved this other woman.
Obviously my heart broke for the wife.
But that is not the part that really broke my heart.
Obviously since he was a leader in the church, church leadership was going to get involved. They would ask him to step down from leadership, which I feel is appropriate, but I also was informed that they were going to ask him to leave the church, and my heart broke for him. My heart broke for him. He is a wounded individual, he is a hurt man, he is a sick man. He obviously needs the healing and love of Christ.
But my heart also broke because of the way this other church is responding to sinners. To say no you have to leave, instead of we are going to stand here with you though this and love you through it. And obviously there is the thought that this is the church the wife goes to and wanting to protect her. And that I understand, 100%. He caused her harm and we should want to protect this woman in the church. I feel like we should do everything we can to protect the victim. But when it comes to an act of sin, and granted he has not asked for repentance, he is not repenting of his behavior in any shape or form but I feel that that does not give us as a church justification to say you cant come here any more. My heart breaks for this man who is obviously troubled and stuck in sin and the devil has a hold of him. And instead of our response being hey I am going to fight for you and instead of fighting for him and saying no this isn't appropraite behavior, you can't do this, I am going to stick with you through it, we are kicking him out until he changes his behavior.
One of the things I have heard from my own church recently that makes me love my church so much, is the phrase, Belong, Believe, Behave. First we get to a place where we feel like we belong and out of that belonging can come a belief in Christ and out of the belief, comes a change a behavior. So its not that we have to do good in order to be saved, and its not that we have to do whats right in order to be saved, and in order to feel like we belong. First we have to feel like we belong and we have to feel safe, and out of that comes a sense of belief and a sense of trust in Jesus Christ and out of the trust in Jesus and relationship with Him comes a change in behavior.
So my heart breaks for this man who is stuck in sin, my heart breaks for this man who is being kicked out of the church.
My heart breaks for his wife who is heartbroken at this betrayal.
And my heart breaks for the church.
I pray that he can be loved, I pray that he can be known. I pray that there is someone out there who will say I am going to fight for you brother. I am going to walk with you through this. And I will be here, til the day that you believe and I will be here til the day that you repent, and til the day that your behavior changes. I will make you feel belonged, I will make you feel loved despite of and because of your sin.
Just the way Jesus loves us because of and in despite of our sin.