Let go of...

There has to be a more grandiose way to say "I AM AMAZED AT WHAT'S HAPPENING" than simply that, because I AM AMAZED seems tepid and lethargic, even, compared to the gamut of emotions and thought processes I seem to be experiencing.

From my frame of reference, it's really, really a challlenge to live in Dorchester with kids. Really. The other day, I'm walking my kids to the JFK T. The sidewalk is a sheet of ice because DOT doesn't get salted. There's piss in the snow on one side, trash wadded up and shredding on the other, there's two people fighting near me and some other people walking by smoking and cussing up a storm. I am trying to do what I can to not have my kids freak out...I try to make it a game. "Let's ice skate to the T!" And they are fully engaged and laughing...but that happens on a good day, when I am doing everything I can not to be dismayed, depressed, down-trodden and without dignity.

Yesterday was a bad day. My chest has been hurting, like someone is stepping on my heart. I know it's because of the stress I am feeling. I was trying to process it with God...yelling at Him. I was saying it's very unfair of Him to have this potential health issue be another thing on my proverbial plate and I really felt like He answered me, saying, WHY, and He like wanted to know what was behind it, and I told Him I was scared, that because I am such a *feeler* and that everything affects me and it seems like someone a little less reactive would be a good fit here, and He kept prodding me to ~explore~ that fear more and I told Him eventually that the fear itself was that I would have a short run at ministry because I would be so physically affected by doing it in the city and I would die and leave my kids and husband alone, and I swear I heard Him say, LONGEVITY OF LIFE IS NOT SOMETHING I PROMISE.

That was hard to hear.

I feel raw, stripped, daily, like all these expectations that I've had all my life, these assumptions of entitlement, are removing themselves one by one. Money. Safety. Long life. Etc. He wants nothing less than my whole heart. My friend Hanneke sent me some sweet quotes from CS Lewis, an author that doesn not drive me insane.

"Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end; submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life.
Keep back nothing.
Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, despair, loneliness, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."


also, this one part I love....
"...the passionate, sensual, unbalanced people. If they make any attempt at goodness at all, they learn in double quick time, that they need help. It is Christ or nothing for them. It is taking up the cross and following...or despair."

May it be so for me, may I be one of them without regret.