Music II

I wrote a post a while back about how important music is to me, especially music about the Lord.
I talked about how three songs had been my prayers to the Lord and over time they had turned from prayers to praises, because I had seen the Lord work. I've have some new songs that are speaking to me right now and I wanted to share and explain them.
The first is a song by The Collection called To Dust, I first heard about this song while one of the leaders on my trip to Boston was telling me about some of the music she listened to and why she liked it. She pretty much just said the whole last verse of this song to me while we were walking through the streets of Boston, and since then I have listened to it more than anything else. Sometimes I put it on repeat and just leave it for a couple of hours. There are several parts and pieces to this song, it's all really gorgeous and magnates to be beautifully poetic and fantastically candid at the same time.
"well I remember when You danced with me in the mud so ever frequently, and I didn't wash my feet for weeks for fear that the muddy healing would rub off"
I just relate to this line a lot, it makes me think of times when I've gone on mission trips and grow a ton with the Lord over a short period of time and it was never overly religious or strict and legalistic, it was like dancing in the mud with my Father as He explains how much He loves me and wants the bet for me.
"I used to no love You, but I changed my mind and if that happened once, could it happens, how many times can I 'still have faith'?"
This describe basically the way that I have been thinking for about six months now, thinking about my journey with the Lord and how I made a decision to follow Him but then sometimes looking at my life and seeing that I struggle to follow Him, and asking myself, "well i changed my mind to choose to follow Him, could I change it again to not follow Him?" which has kind of become a haunting question in my life this year, but is something that I'm working through.
But it's kind of answered in the next line
"but You are forever, and if we brave this weather, You go and walk across the water to keep me from drowning to the bottom"
This has been the thing that has brought me so much peace since January, it's not up to me, I made a choice, but I didn't save myself, He saved me, and I can't do anything to change that.

Now, the last verse of this song has just kind of been on my heart constantly since I first heard it in Boston in March.

"I was staring, looking back, out the keyhole of my door

You saw that I had seen you, and I fell to the floor


You were dancing with the children and loving all the broken


And I was too scared to come out


And then you busted through my doorway and it seemed so very violent


But peaceful words came out and silenced all my silence


And I realized that the knowledge that I thought that I had known


Was nothing compared to you coming to my home"

The first few lines there are so how I looked at being a Christian before I actually became one, and how I, sinfully, sometimes still view it. I grew up almost bombarded with the gospel and the stories of the Bible, I had Christian parents, I went to church every Sunday and Wednesday, and I went to a Christian school, no part of my live was away from it all. But the way that I saw it was so distorted, and sometimes the way that I see it now is still distorted. I felt like I just wanted Christ around to make sure that I wasn't going to go to hell, and I felt like that whole like relationship thing was just how bad people became good people, how broken people became whole. But I didn't need that of course, I was a good girl, I wasn't broken, but of course I was, I would never have gone outside to be loved with the other broken ones because I didn't see myself as broken, and sometimes I still have trouble reminding myself that I am broken and in need of Christ. I feel sometimes like the pharisees that Jesus rebukes for being like a cup that they was on the outside so that it looks nice but leave the inside dirt covered and disgusting. I am seeing more of the inside of my broken and twisted heart this year as I've been given more freedom to pursue my own wants and desires which are so often incredibly sinful. But then I think to when Christ did burst in through my doorway and how I realized that all that I had thought that I had known about Him and what it meant to follow Him was nothing compared to actually being close to Him. 

"And I could be content to forget everything I've known, and fall asleep right now, for good, before Your throne."

December 10

I thin God is trying to prove a point to me in a way that He often does. Generally when I know He is trying to tell me something, the first time He says it, I think "alright yeah, I've got it" and His response is always, accurately, "no, you clearly don't, so let's go over it again". I'm like a poor student who thinks they can handle the lessons better than they really do. So, after yesterday finding what I wrote last year about coming back to see God's faithfulness, I was looking aimlessly through the files on my computer and I came across something that I wrote over two years ago about a moment of moving back towards the Lord. So, same as yesterday, here is what I wrote two years ago:

"December 10, 2013

Recently, as simply part of my life, I have had a feeling in the back of my head of myself moving away from God. Every time this happens (and I feel it is way too frequently) my first reaction is that God is pulling away from me, when I know that actually God is chasing after with all of His might, and that to get away from the effects of His love, I must be running hard in the opposite direction.

I always miss the beginning of this, I never notice myself starting to move away from God, but instead I find myself mid-stride, halfway through an attempt to runaway like a child who didn’t get the toy she wanted. I’ll find my Bible gathering dust in a bag from the last trip I took it on, and I’ll notice that last date in my journal is one from months ago, or I’ll realize that I cannot find one of the aforementioned necessities, or that I don’t remember where a book or a verse can be found (not to say that you have to know every book of the Bible in order or that if you don’t know the exact reference of every verse, but I have found that when you truly fall in love with God’s word, and you are really reading it, you just tend to know where to find things).

Usually, just noticing that I am drifting isn’t enough to get me back into reading my Bible everyday and really listening to what God has to say to me. Usually (and I really hate that this happens often enough that I can even use the word “usually”), it takes a good hard push from my Creator to remind me that His love for me is not just something that I can remain “just ok” with, that it is something so powerful that I should not be able to help but act upon it.

This time around, my “shove” was a reminder of the journey of a friend of mine, and how much God’s love really, truly, actually changed her life. I have known this girl for almost three years now, and she is a fantastic person, now when I met her, I probably wouldn’t have said that about her, in fact, her closest friend at the time’s mom was actually worried about her daughter hanging out with this girl, and was only allowing it because she was bringing her to church. Then, she wasn’t what you would call a “good person”, and she certainly wasn’t a “church girl”, and according to people who have known her longer that me, that was her getting better. But over the first year that I knew her, I literally watched her life transform into the person I know today.

Two weeks ago, I asked her about a locket she was wearing; inside of it was a single word, “furious”. Two years ago, that word would have meant to live life furiously, to take it by the horns and have as much fun, and be as cool, and be as crazy as possible, but now, that word has a totally different meaning to her. She showed me an entry in her journal about it. It was a brief overview of her journey from her former life to her current one as a child of God. She talked about how God had furiously fought for her in so many situations in her life, how He had given her parents the courage to love her and care for her and to be the parents that’s she needed, how He had kept her from places and people that would have damaged her life irrevocably, and how He had always kept her in a place where there was a way out. There is a song that describes God’s love in a way that is a little different than what we normally think, “His love is deep, His love is wide, and it covers us, His love is FIERCE, His love is STRONG, and it is FURIOUS.” C.S Lewis described it perfectly: as a lion. It’s not something tame and captious, it is a furious fight for us against the one who wants us dead.

With the reminder of this I can’t keep living like I have been, I like the way it is described in the Afters’s song: “I feel alive, and it hurts for a change. I’m looking back, and it’s hard to believe that I was cool with the days that I wasted complacent, and tasteless, and bored. But that was yesterday; I’m never going back to easy. I’m never going back to the way it was. I’m never going back to ok.” I don’t think I can continue in living my life in a state of being “ok”, it just won’t do, because my God has fought and is fighting for me furiously, and that is not something that I can leave unnoticed.

His love is deep, His love is wide

And it covers us

His love is fierce, His love is strong

It is furious

His love is deep, His love is wide

And it’s waking hearts to life

He is jealous for me

Love’s like a hurricane I am a tree

Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy

And all of the sudden, I am unaware

Of these afflictions eclipsed by glory

And I realize just how beautiful You are

And how great Your affections are for me

I DON’T HAVE TIME TO MAINTAIN THESE REGRETS WHEN I THINK ABOUT THE WAY THAT HE LOVES US."

March 14

Three hours ago, I sat down on my bed with the intention of writing a post about how I had felt so lost and distant before this past weekend and how being at Passion had completely changed my point of view and that I am totally on the right track now, but as I was typing I started to realize that that was simply not true. After convincing myself all weekend that things would be better when I got home and that I would feel sure and secure once it was all over, "sure" is the least accurate word that I can think of to describe how I felt. Broken, lost, unsteady, trembling (literally), and silent crying on my knees on the floor is a much better description. And this is how I really felt all weekend:

I find myself, once again, arriving to my knees,
I ask, I knock, I seek, I search for Your sweet relief.
Lord, I come confessing now, I've trained some wandering feet.
I've tasted and seen, but with faded feeling, I long for something sweet.
I feel it all, I know it's real when outward I am shouting,
But all the while, I move along, and inward I am doubting.
Never of Your greatness Lord, or Your reality,
But always of my own fate in this sinful malady.
I reach, I long, I pine, I thirst for some tender clarity,
And yet still, I find myself wading in this vast disparity.

I texted a friend who agreed to meet with me, and scrambled to grab my phone and wallet and tissues before I ran out the door to talk things through. A few hours later I arrived back at home to find that in my scramble to find what I needed, I had pulled out a booklet from an event that I went to last March. The event had fallen on the day that I made my absolutely decision about where I was going to go to college. I began looking through the booklet and found something that I had written just a few hours after my decision. I had intended to post what I wrote that night, but in the excitement of becoming a Gamecock, I left the pages unshared, so here tonight as I falter with doubt and worry, I'm going to finally post what I wrote that joyful afternoon.

"March 14, 2015

It is so very strange to me just how much has changed during this time. The difference between this morning and that morning three months ago is unreal. Three months ago if you had asked me where I was going to college, I would have told you "The Georgia Institute of Technology" not, "I hope that's where I get in" but "that is where I am going". And then, at 12:00 pm on January 10, 2015, everything changed. The news of being deferred was far more devastating than it ever should have been. But then I got to spend three months waiting on God. Have you heard the song that says "strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord"? I never really understood just how true that was until this. Spending time waiting on God forces you to listen to Him constantly, you feel like you have to be constantly connected to Him so that you don't miss His answer. And He keeps you waiting so that He can teach you things while He has your attention. Some of the things I learned through this time:
1. Those pseudo sins that you think aren't a big deal because it's all just in your head are still sin. There is no difference to God if you are having hateful thoughts about someone or actually physically harming them.
2. Listen. Just listen. It is so easy to just talk and talk and talk and talk, but if you are really looking to hear from God, you won't be able to hear when He wants to say something. So listen to Him when you're alone, listen to church leaders when you're with them, and listen to your parents when you're with them. God is trying to speak to you, so stop talking and listen.
3. Read your Bible. Good grief. Stop making excuses about being too tired and having too much to do. You don't have too much to do, you are wasting your time on insignificant things if they are getting in the way of your time in the Word. The difference in my perception of my day if I begin it in the Word versus if I don't, is astounding. Because, when you begin your day in scripture, you see each day as a new way to glorify Him, rather than a way to help yourself.
4. Oh how He loves us. He is obsessed with us. He created us exactly how He wants us to be. But the thing is, He also feels that way about the person that you hate. That person is just as much His creation as you are, and when you hurt them, you are hurting Him. "


This was written by a me that had just come out of the dark days of worry, and was beginning to see the light of God's promises. She had moved from "Lord I am holding onto Your promises, because I know that that is the only way I am going to get through this" to "Lord I am holding onto Your promises because I KNOW that You are faithful, because I've seen it". That girl is not me right now. Me right now is back in the darkness and back to my knees, but I'm still getting truth from the Lord, He is just using this nearly year old booklet to do it. What I thought I wanted out of Passion this year was for God to say "alright, I am with you now, and everything is going to be ok" instead He waited until after Passion when I was finally willing to admit that my way may not be the best way to say "look I am with you always, and you know that because I've told you before".
None of this changes the way that I feel, but the way that I feel doesn't change God.



Post Script (May 13, 2016): just a note about #1 in the things that I had learned from God while waiting to hear from Him, I didn't deal with that pseudo sin the way that I should have and it has lead to real tangible sin in my life and I wish that I could go back to me a year ago and tell her that even though she thinks that she is a good person and doesn't have to deal with temptation the way that other people do, she does, cause she and I are broken and I wish that I had acknowledged the fact that I am broken earlier, because I would have lead to less pain and less tough conversations now.

Wandering in the Desert

I am so much like the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. Like them I come to the Lord on my knees saying 'I've messed it up, can you fix it for me?' and, ever so faithfully, He does. He pours out His mercy and His love and says 'Do better this time', my reply always comes 'This time, Lord, I am going to get it right'. And I do. For a time. I seek Him and I really do want to know and participate in His plan for my life. But then nothing happens. It's not that God stops His work in me or that He abandons me at all, but the pace gets too slow for my taste, and I begin to move into a very purposeless way of life. It's never that I specifically begin doing any 'big sin', but I stop making a point of doing things for the Lord and I settle into my comfortable routine of school, friends, netflix, and sleep. There is nothing wrong with any of those things, but they shouldn't be my entire life. There is so much more for me. And I know it. Even sloshing through that routine, I know it. Something always seems to happen near the end of the calendar year the jolts me out of this slump. (Yes, my Israel inspired cycle of faithfulness is consistent enough that I know when things are coming.) and then I crawl back to the scarred feet of Christ and I say 'I've messed it up, can you fix it for me?' and, ever so faithfully, He does.
I watched this cycle happen again this year as it has just about every year since I first decided to follow Christ. The final few weeks of the semester, I started to look at my life at school, it was fine, but fine wasn't what I had come for. At my first experience at a passion conference this time last year, I had said 'Lord, whatever school I end up at, I know that you put me there, and you put me there for a purpose.' I should have gone to school expectant of what the Lord had in store, but instead I went expectant of what I had in store. And at the time, what I had in store was simple and comfortable and nice, and I liked it. But as finals drew near and I called to mind this yearly cycle that I go through, I thought, 'oh no, what is going to happen this time?' and then, nothing happened. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. And nothing happened. Things weren't just not going wrong either, they were going right, with everything that I expected to be the thing that brought me to my knees, were actually lifting me up in the way that I was living. BUT I began to look back on the semester that I had, and I thought about the prayer that I had prayed at the beginning of 2015 and realized that I was not doing much toward the plan that I had thought God had had for me at USC. I began to doubt if I had really made the right decision, did God actually want me somewhere else? Had I messed up His plan by choosing the wrong school? And with those doubts came more doubts. What if I'm not really doing enough or the right things to be a Christian. I had a plan for my answer to this question later in this post, and I felt like I knew the answer, but typing it now, I realize that I have spent my entire afternoon since I've gotten home from Passion worried about this very thing, 'I need to be in scripture enough and I need to be listening to only worship music and watching more videos of sermons' and the tears begin to roll because I know just how untrue that is. I feel like every time God is trying to tell me something, I hear it the first time and I say 'Yeah, God, I've got it, you don't have to keep pressing this point' and He replies, 'well, you clearly still just don't get it, so I'm going to keep on driving it home until it actually clicks'. After spending a whole weekend listening to God say 'stop worrying about you doing enough to have your name written in the book of life, you made a choice and your name is in there permanently and you doing all of this is not making a difference, it is done.' and still I come home and think 'If i just try harder'.

Identity

As Christians, we say the phrase "find your identity in Christ" all the time. But since you first heard that, how much have you really thought about what that actually means? What does it mean to find your identity in anything? Well, how do you think about who you are? What do you think when you think about you? Is it how many likes you got on your last Instagram post? Or what that girl said about your hair last week? (I always wonder when I read things like this, "Is she pulling examples from her real life? Or just making things up that people will relate to?" It's the former, sadly enough. While I'm writing this and thinking about where my identity lies, I had to push my hair out of my face so that I could see to type, and I realized that I only straightened it this morning because of a comment that my suite mate said the other day. I made an active choice to change my hair from the way that God created it (Hella Curly) to straight, and lost 20 minutes of precious, precious sleep in the process.)
A friend told me an analogy once in reference to identity that I really love:
"When you look at yourself the way that the world looks at you, it is like looking into a broken and dirty mirror. The world is sinful and is not gong to create an accurate reflection of who you really are. But when you look at yourself the way that God looks at you, it is like looking into a brand new, perfectly clean mirror, and is a perfect representation of who you really are." So, how does God see you? What does He see when He looks at you?
He sees that you are all beautiful and that there is no flaw in you (Song of Solomon 4:7).
He sees you as one fearfully and wonderfully made (by Him) (Psalm 139 that's from verse 14, but really just frickin all of it).
He sees you as His own, dearly beloved and chosen by Him (Colossians 3:12).
He sees all of the worst parts of you and still says that He loves you and wants to be near you. And that should point you to the cross. When you think of you, you should think of how He loves you so much that while you were still fighting against Him, He saw you are important enough to send His Son to die a brutal death on the cross so that you can spend eternity with Him.
That is what it means to find your identity in Christ.

College

Five months ago I moved into my dorm room for the first time, but honestly it feels like I've already spent so much longer here. It has been amazing, and I fall more in love with this place everyday that I'm here. I just want to do something more for myself than for anyone reading this (which, let's face it, is the only reason I write this anyway). So, this is just a letter to myself right before move in day.

Oh Emily,
You are so worried about so many things. You think everyday about everything that could go wrong. You're worried about not knowing what to do, about trying to make new friends, and about loosing your old friends. Just take a deep breath, it is all going to be alright.
You will be amazed at how quickly you will grow close to some wonderful friends, and how you will recreate old ones. You'll love your roommate more than you could possibly expect now. It won't take even a week for this place to feel like home. You'll meet some weird people and some great ones.
You'll loose your voice cheering on the Gamecocks and you'll eat away your feelings the first time that they lose. You'll find the perfect dress for game day, and you'll jump and cheer until you can't feel your feet. And you don't regret choosing this for one moment. This wonderful, beautiful, fantastic world you have found has become home, and you wouldn't have it any other way. You'll mess up a few times, and you might even get your heart broken, but nothing is too big to stand in your way. Stop worrying and remember that God has brought you here for a reason. Take some deep breaths and finish packing. Everything will be ok.
Stop worrying about losing your friends. No, you don't facetime one a week, but Meghan sends you random buzzed quizzes once a week, and the first time you see Rachel and Molly again it's like you all never left, except for the fun new stories that you have to share with each other. Don't worry about Nick and Matthew, they are going to be fine. This separation actually brings you closer together and now you tell them everything. You even help them through a few weird situations too. Stop worrying and start praying, that's the only thing you can do. So, respira.
With hope and love and joy,
Emily, One Semester Down