Tag Archives: choice

Aug16

desperately seeking silence!

Posted on by
Standard
desperately seeking silence!

Don’t act like it isn’t sometimes too much for you, too. I’m so tired of disingenuity. If you’re alive; if you’re breathing and you’re caring then it’s sometimes too much for you, too! I mean, don’t you ever just want your head to Shut. The. Eff. Up. Already?! Tick tock tick tock. Like heaven forbid some half formed idea go unexamined. What is my brain telling my own damn self that I don’t already know anyway? And how many more times can I think through the same tired thoughts, on the same worn out circle before I realize (again) that, oh yeah, I don’t know the answer.

I mean, I come here to write about something, about one thing that my mind is replaying over and over, to share it and highlight this journey of mine like I promised, and then my brain goes nuts, absolute bananas, lightbulbs flashing everywhere. I’m so damned indecisive I can’t even decide what thought process to focus on long enough to write it down. I could start taking requests. What kind of b.s. are you in the mood for today? God is so good? God is so hard? I love life, I hate living, I’m lonely, I admire my independence? Ministry is the greatest blessing I’ve ever been given? The ‘call’ is God’s great curse on the desire to live a ‘normal life’? I like men, I like women, I like sobriety, I wanna do a line, I hate my body, I love my curves, I love Vermont, I crave the concrete, kumbaya and hard f’n rock… Dude.

Don’t tell me your head doesn’t do it, too. And it’s so unbelievable ridiculous the way we smile and nod and act all in the very center of control. Have you ever thought about how ridiculous we really are? I mean… really? Why are we trying to look so in control all the time anyway? What the hell was the last thing you were ever actually in control of? Yeah. Nothin’. Just. Say. It. You got nothin’.

Doesn’t that feel better?

The truth is so annoying when I’m all wrapped up in my head like this. Seriously. It’s so annoying I don’t even want to type it. I can feel my lip curling as I think about it. Because when does it stop, when does it all just go away??

When we surrender.

I warned you. Ugh, annoying. Trite platitudes designed to keep you down, rob you of your freedom and enslave your precious independence. Well… except that it’s not. Except that it’s absolutely true that the only time I’ve ever felt free from the nauseating-endless-nonstop-rollercoaster-vegas-lightbulb-flashing mindtrap of mine is when my heart and spirit were in a place of complete surrender to God, where His will was the only way and nothing else mattered.

And I’m not there right now. I’m no where close to that kind of anxiety-free, easy street kinda livin’ right now. And I’m pissed about it. I’m pissed because I worked damn hard to get there the first time, got myself out of a lot of bad entanglements, relationships and mindsets to be able to relax with that kind of surrendered freedom. And then what’d I do? One by one my pretties, one by one.

Annoying.

What’s annoying exactly? That I’m going to have to go back through some of that stuff to get there again. What? You didn’t seriously think I was going to hang out in here in ‘every man for himself land’ did ya’? This endless brain conversation that keeps me up nights and gets me up in the morning can kiss my UV-ray colored derriere thank you very much! One doesn’t taste of the promise land and decide that the ghetto actually suited them better, trust me.

So here’s the thing. Stop acting like you don’t do it too. Stop plastering on that so-fake-even-God-is-pissed smile for everyone. Just fix it. Jump the hoops, cut the ties, wave goodbye and get it done.

Surrender dude. It’s the only way up.

Jul30

Apologetically Me

Posted on by
Standard
Apologetically Me

 I’m all for introspection. I think it’s important to know yourself fully, I believe it’s a part of living in the center of your peace and finding fulfillment. So yeah, I’m all for introspection – just as long as it doesn’t hurt.

Of course, too long looking within and one is bound to find something unpleasant and demanding to be changed. That is, if one is being honest. And that sort of discovery doesn’t come easily or pleasantly. None of us want to admit our fallibility. We’re ready to be anything but human.

 That being said, there’s a red flag waving at me from within and I’ve ignored it for as long as I can. I’ve come too far to stop moving forward now. This whatever-it-is has got to get up and go.

 Here it is: I’ve come on this arduous journey of self-hood and identity; I’ve staked claim in personality and fought for my right to be uniquely me, as God has created me to be. Yet, I’ve realized that I’m the first one to turn on myself, to inside-out and upside down myself at the first sign of trouble. I’m subconsciously apologizing for who I am to people who languish in various shades of ‘who I used to be’.

 It’s baffling to me. I have fought the hard fight. I’ve learned every lesson the hard way. I came from having everything, which turned out to be nothing, to having nothing, and realizing that it’s everything. I walked the path, tested the options, searched out the dead ends and made my way to the fulfillment of open road once more.

 And yet, I find that in certain company, traveling in particular circles, I become tight lipped about who I am today, instead glorying in the stories of who I used to be, with the disclaimer that she was me before. Clearly I don’t want to be her – but apparently I don’t want to be me.

 And so I sit on this particular quirk and wonder. Double-mindedness? Fear of man? Insecurities?

 Or, is this the next level that lies below what used to manifest as an eating disorder? That feels like truth. There is still more in me that I have to accept fully before I’m comfortable letting other people do so. It’s a troublesome realization, if one stops to wonder what ugliness this phase is a symptom of.

 And so I do what I can. I remind myself, sometimes hourly, of who I have become and the freedom and beauty that rests within the woman that I am today. I think of all that I have escaped, literally alive only through grace. I try to remember how life felt then so I can revel in the beauty of how life feels now. Sometimes I have to call to memory the very worst of the flashbacks. It’s better than letting it become my reality again.

 I’m working on the rest of it. The Heavenly mindset that rises above the casual concerns of day to day, the acceptance of truth that opinion is just that (and likely untrue and definitely irrelevant). I’m no where near arrived.

 But I do love myself today in a way that I never did before. And when I’m really open to the truth, I know that everyone else does to. It’s only me that still thinks I need to entertain in deed and behavior. It’s times like these that God protects me from my very self.

 I could never cease to be grateful.

Jul22

Simplicity of choice

Posted on by
Standard
Simplicity of choice

I do not mean to diminish the potential of redemption and restoration when I tell you that my life will never be what it could have been. I do not confuse the reality of consequence with some sort of lacking in the promise of grace and mercy. It is with a new awareness that I face my future and the inevitable scars it carries from my past. My life is told in those scars, in the particular look that sometimes clouds my gaze. I am who I am because of who I chose to be. These words do not stem from a pool of hidden regret and sorrow for what will never be. Still, with a new awareness of all that is, with a hindsight that comes only from experience and with nothing even akin to bitterness, I tell you with confidence – sometimes, this time, it’s just not worth it.

It could have been different. I have a peace in the reality of how and what It Is but when the walls crumble and the truth is exposed in all of it’s devastating solidity, I must look at the remains of life before now and know that I have only myself to blame. As I grow confident in my newness and strong in my identity, as I relearn that which to some seems so very basic, as time is spent to repair and renew and rebuild I have to remind myself, lest I become forgetful…

It didn’t have to be this way.

The choice was mine.

I have partied with people seen on TV, done the drugs curious people are most curious about. I’ve worn clothes that could pay the average rent and ruined them in places and in ways I’ve come too far to mention here. I can tell stories that raise eyebrows, flush cheeks (excitement or embarrassment) and radically alter the mere perception of myself with tales as true as the one I tell now. From the vantage point of onlooker, I may have been those things any number of people would want to, strive to, try to be. Believe this – looking from the outside in is never an honest gaze and nothing is as it seems to be.

What can I possibly say to you that would convince you, those of you lost in the haze of Right Now, that no matter the stories you can tell or the things you’ve seen or even gotten away with that all of it is vanity – meaningless?

You’ll reach a point, and some of you have reached it already – your spirit tells you so whether or not you have yet chosen to acknowledge – where there is no going back, where you will never be again what you were and the road to where you want to be seems an impossible trek. The point where Right Now leaves an indelible thumbprint that you will spend years of your life either flaunting, hiding or double timing to overcome.

When the ride stops and, wobbly-kneed, you get off, looking around naseous and disoriented and you wonder the question that (some of) you should have asked sooner…“is it worth the cost of the ticket?”

The answer is mocking in it’s simplicity.

“No.”

It doesn’t have to be that way.

It doesn’t have to stay this way.

The choice is yours.