Changes and Change

are we adaptors or imitators?

I realize life is meant to be a growing period. A discovery of oneself in the midst of things and people all around you, and eyeing which is truth, which is lie. What makes your soul come alive? And it’s hard you know, cause who knows what your soul is for and what it feels like?

But when your heart and soul feel something, it’s not a feeling you can make yourself! I always have to have a build up of emotion to feel anything but when my soul knocks on my window, I can’t help but let it consume me. 

I don’t have to be with anyone. In fact, it hard to convince me to be with people. It’s messy, things are said and misunderstood. Your heart gets used and abused because you were looking for acceptance in someone who is as human as you. (Humans, by the way, are very broken, very imperfect, selfish, egotistical, angry, bitter, selfish- did I say that already?)

But by making the choice to enter into communion with people around you, brings a whole new level to the way you value human life. People hurt you, and they can show you great love all at the same time. This is the idea of God’s representation of love. Our love isn’t perfect but his is. And we must use the love he has for us, for the others that are just as imperfect as us, and love them anyway with the love we have been given ourselves. Ouch.

So by making the choice to live with a heart wide open to experiences and people, I compare it to a jam jar. A jam jar is sealed, soulmates. My jam jar of a heart was sealed because of past hurts, fears, and failures. But I made the choice to open it. And a jam jar can’t be sealed again once the lid has been pried open to get to the sweetness that is inside. People have pried at my jam jar heart with their controlling, dominating, overbearing fingers and wonder why I’m not like them. I’m crazy, I’m foolish, I’m shy. I looked at my hurts and my fears and I welcomed them as part of me. My actions tried to poison me but I will not be consumed and defined by actions and sins. And the whole time my soul has been tapping on the window.

So it is with your visual eyes, that I ask you to take your pains, and the ones you forgot about, place them in your hands, and the people who hurt you and who don’t understand you, grab them by their imaginary collars and say, you have hurt me enough. You, who bumble around the world like a whirling dirvish and break up what isn’t yours, it is enough.

Take all of your experiences and say, thank you for making me the person I am today, but I want more. I want more than the fear of what might be, to control my life, I want more than the feeling of falling. What I do want is the fear of falling into someone’s hands who loves me, that takes care of me, that understands the rhythms of my heart, and who knows what’s best for me and let’s me do stupid, foolish things anyway and loves me just the same.

I opened the jam jar, with thoughts in my head. But if I do this, I’m making the choice to be open and uncomfortable for the rest of my life. I’m leaving my heart in the hands of others. I must be psycho. And I became better for it.  

I realize I’m just as needy and flawed as everyone else. And I readily admit it. And that’s what people don’t get. Don’t you want to try and make life work for you?? Don’t you want to try and be happy? 

Whether life is good to me or not, this life is short. I don’t care if future events cause huge catastrophes in my life or not. One, I don’t care, and two, I don’t care. 

I have something that makes life worth living.

I have someone who makes life worth living. 

I have people and person who makes life worth living. 

So open your jam jar.

I know the fruits inside you are worth spreading on the toast of life.

Christ did not come so that you would have a reason to try harder, but rather that you would have to try no longer. He did not come to obligate or entrap you in a relationship with him, but rather replace your heart of brokenness with a heart that beats of his love. He died not that you would owe him more, but that your debt would be paid in full. Never has the true gospel of Christ Jesus preached anything more, or anything less than this earth-shattering sort of freedom.