When your will takes over your logic

It’s been ages. Last post was in February! But I was finishing my degree and for a little while I just lost the drive to meditate and think about blog posts, even though I have loads of drafts and ideas written on my phone. I completed my undergraduate degree in Sociology in May, and my graduation will be some time in September/October, so I have lots of time to think, read, write and catch up on various things that had to be put on hold. Today is also the last day of a  fast that I’ve been doing since Monday, so I can get some clarifications about my career and life goals. I’ll try to keep you all updated.

This week, I’ve been thinking about the will, and how closely it’s linked to pride. On Sunday, I went to my surrogate mother’s house for morning prayers, and we reflected on how God will go to any length—no matter how ridiculous to us—to save us from ourselves. He has a will for our lives, and we stray from it, and end up having to tread down dark, dangerous and miserable paths—which he allows—in order to finally see him and what he had tried to tell us from the beginning. We look over our shoulders at the adjacent road we could have gone down: bright, warm, and easy, and chide ourselves for being so foolish. This is why I’ve decided to wait patiently and pray about where I should go next in my life, because the initial experiences of sixth-form and university were riddled with doubt, loneliness and concern, that I’d made the wrong course choices; gone to the wrong institutions; started in the wrong year. For once, I want to walk down a path with confidence that it was the right decision.

As we spoke, some extra thoughts came to mind. There are a few ways to deal with wrong choices: some go into crippling self-pity and chastisement, resenting and hating themselves to the point of depression; others get annoyed because they saw where they went wrong, but pray for wisdom for the next time. Although some times, when their decisions lead to failure, some people project their frustrations on others. “It wasn’t me; the reason I did this was because; if only so-and-such had acted differently”. We’re all guilty of this at some point: deciding not to own up and admit to what we did wrong because it’s easier to blame someone else.

God’s will doesn’t just refer to our careers, but every choice we make. I thought about the blame game we tend to play with ourselves and each other, and for the first time, I could actually envision the wicked, who didn’t make it into the New Jerusalem in Revelation 20, charging towards the city to fight God. This passage always befuddled me because I thought “who could possibly do that, wouldn’t they just be really sad that they didn’t make it?” But if so often, when our bad choices and wrong doings are put in front of us in the calmest of ways, our first reaction is to lash out, give the silent treatment, and make excuses, then what hope would there be for someone being faced with all the wrong decisions they had made that led them to be standing on the outside of the Ultimate Gift? They’d no longer be able to see all the measures God had taken to save them, they’d just see everything that everyone else did, that caused them to miss out on heaven.

The will is a scary and great thing. If we let our pride and ego get in the way, we’ll only make decisions for ourselves; we’ll live solely for our own interests; which will inevitably not only hurt us, but someone else. Furthermore, when these decisions cause problems, and we’re confronted with this, we’ll never admit to it, deciding once again to put the blame on others. I had this experience this week and it’s honestly the most frustrating thing: when you tell someone they’ve hurt you and done something wrong, but they’ve decided to be upset with you for reasons they can’t properly vocalise. But after reading and studying this week, I think I know what the problem is.

If we stopped engaging in this battle of wills, of self interest, and instead surrendered our wills to God, we’d all be walking down that sweet, easy road happily. But until then, we struggle through the brambles.

So… We can’t just be friends?

Ages ago, I watched a really silly interview with Steve Harvey, where he essentially reeled off all the generalised sayings about men and women that’s made him money over the years. There was one comment he said that made me laugh. How ludicrous! I thought. Why do people buy his relationship books? Surely he’s a man who’s become a parody of himself without even knowing it! In the interview, he’d said that men and women can never be “just friends” because the man is always thinking about sex; in his mind, as long as he’s close to her there will always be a chance for him. Obviously I’m uncomfortable with how similar this sentiment is to the “friendzone” mindset: when a man just doesn’t know his boundaries and decides that pushing himself onto a woman is the best way to ignore her stance that she really is just his friend, and in response to his rejection he hurls abuse at her for “friendzoning” him (or sometimes worse).

I shook my head at Steve Harvey, because I’ve never believed that to be true. It was just another stereotype based on pseudoscience and biological determinism about the crazed, feral, explodingly strong libido that heterosexual men have which means that if you’re not going to sleep with them, shut up and leave ’em alone.

Until now, I suppose…

Let me explain: I don’t believe the biological determinist lark, but recently I’ve been hurt by certain events that have left me disappointed in a few people—men—who I thought were my friends, but who now live a nonexistence in my life that I find quite worrying. They have both been alluded to in previous blog posts, and I would love to link to said posts, but it’s half-past ten in the evening; I start at 9am tomorrow and it just seems too long. I’m only writing at this time because I’ve had these thoughts in my head all day and I need to get them down.

Both of these guys were… not “love interests” by any means, but they were (in my mind) potentials. One of them used to message me often on Facebook and we used to chat and pray together on Skype or on the phone; he invited me to his church once, which was nice. Now, these things aren’t extraordinary, but he did this thing that I now know a lot of church guys do for a reason I still don’t understand. He had this habit of talking to me about marriage and kids and homelife. He even recommended that I read Adventist Home and used to always talk to me about relationships. In fact, he once asked me if I was seeing anyone. I took this to mean he was interested, but one day, he posted a picture online of his girlfriend (a woman who never came up in any of our conversations), and I withdrew a bit. I was shocked. This was my first experience of the “church way” and I didn’t like it. In my opinion, all the evidence showed that he had played about with me a bit. If he’d told me there was another woman from the start I would have known where I stood and continued correspondence as friends.

The friendship I shared with guy number two was too intense. As I think about it, I cringe. He told me very personal things about himself (that I still and will always keep to myself); I spoke to him about personal things; we spoke almost daily either on the phone or on Skype; he told me he was attracted to me and just when I thought things were going somewhere, he said I was more like a sister to him and that he didn’t mean to make me think we were going places. At this, I was angry. I felt as though he had called my heart out and I felt vulnerable because until then, I didn’t realise I was still trying to come to terms with a fairly recent instance of unrequited love. It made me really reassess myself; I put a lot of blame onto my actions and I was paranoid because I felt as though I would never get this relationship thing right. After a very tense and difficult and uncomfortable conversation with Guy Two, we almost stopped speaking.

Today, I can’t really say I’m friends with either of these men. With the first, we don’t even like each other’s statuses, let alone private message. With the second, he’s changed his number twice and has decided not to give me either of them—and I’ve been texting the wrong number for a long time. I don’t even know what he’s doing with his life or if he’s doing well, which is a shame. Now it’ll be awkward for us to talk again because it just won’t be the same.

Now, I wonder if the relationships I had with these guys were genuine, of if they were only used as tools to see my character and if I would be a good match for them. When it didn’t work out, they discarded me, which I don’t think is fair. Did I ever have a true connection with them, or what is all one-sided?

I realise now, that some guys really can’t be “just friends”. Of course, this is only my take on it and there could be a reason why we’ve all lost contact, but from where I’m standing, it looks as though they’ve both terminated whatever contribution I made to their lives.

Until next time…

xXx

Untitled

There is a bruise on my arm.
A round of purple petals
once small and unimportant
like abandoned buds in winter
that failed to bloom for their time,
or the discarded sunbeam
of a daffodil in the middle of
fresh auburn, lost in
the funeral confetti of summer;
or as useless as
a Christian woman
who wants to be loved in the midst
of red, empty aisles.

What started as something stupid–
a blight of health,
as if I were lounging in doctors’ parlours
given injections;
leaving behind the dot of scarlet
on blue veins,
the unwanted leakage; like an unsightly stain
on the seat of a pair of jeans–

Has now blossomed like an inferno.
Congealed, like molten flesh
turning wistfully over a fire.
I ignored the apostle’s plea:
St Paul suggested union
to prevent the explosion of my self
and yet I continued
watching the offspring of forbidden gardens
bloom angrily on my sleeve.

And every time I move
I feel the pull on my arm
where a bruise was made against my Spirit.
A shawl; a jumper or robe
to cover–
but at night, when I’m naked in my bed
I’ll see the brand and wince at the reminder
of how unbearable I am.

Pity

For the first time in my life
I felt the 
                 Pitter Patter
of tiny hopes
in the form 
of a smooth
brown hand

Soft.
Like a freshly baked scone
also warm to the touch.
I sat with the child
while he read to me
as he did, 
his stubby fingers brushed against mine
half-clenched over the jagged edges of
his faded purchase
half-holding onto me
for approval.

With that touch
arrived the
                     Pitter Patter
as I began to need
like the wanted monsoon
after an early hosepipe ban,
his hand felt welcome on mine:
a stigmata of friendship
a sign of my peace.

The want for me 
to love something bigger than myself
came in the form
of a stranger’s boy
watching me serenely in the library
as I listened
to hear him read.

Sometimes It Feels Like There’s a Bomb in My Head, Waiting to Explode…

I’ve always been a victim of my own destructive thoughts. I have a habit of day dreaming that I’ve cultivated, fertilized and tended to for years now; I’m pretty much standing in a tangled mesh of roses, thorns and bristles at this point. This all started a few years ago, when I began suffering from psychotic episodes. My concentration was awful; I’d practically sit in class staring at a wall, and only regain consciousness with ten or so minutes of the lesson to spare. It was during this time that I saw just how sinister and self-destructive my thoughts could be. My day dreaming often led to long moments, sometimes hours, of lying in bed with my eyes fixed on the ceiling. And I’d think, and think, about how awful I was, how much I was unloved; that I was ugly; that I should be dead. This usually resulted in physical self harm. One night, I boiled the kettle and poured the water on my arm.

Thankfully, God brought me out of that. But the vestiges of the past haunt me from time to time.

If I’m honest, my levels of lust within my relationship has been hard to cope with. Before I had ever been in a relationship, I naively thought that ‘lust’ wasn’t a huge issue for me; that I could always control myself. Well, now I’ve grown up. It’s been difficult, but I prayed; I set boundaries and curfews; I spent more time studying the Word, got involved with loads of church work to keep me occupied. Those things worked brilliantly, in fact, but every now and then I slip, and end up feeling really awful about myself afterwards…

Today has been a low day. I got home really late last night (fell asleep sometime after 1am), and ended up waking up at half six in the morning, only to find I couldn’t get back to sleep, despite my eyes stinging with fatigue. I rolled over and looked at my university email from my iPod and saw that I received my lowest score of the year so far. That already put me in a bad mood, but coupled with the tiredness, and the spiritual stumble that I took the night before (I broke the curfew) led me to think again. I was thinking, thinking, thinking, becoming more entangled in the thorns; cut and bruised, I emerged in a fit of literal tears. I cried for quite a while and the more I cried the worse I felt. I tried to get rid of this image I’d created of myself in my head, but I couldn’t. I kept thinking, ‘how far are you going to push yourself to the edge before you end up participating in something you’ll really, really regret? What are you really worth? Why are you making yourself so open? Since when were you a prostitute?’

I understand that a lot of the self-blame stems from the cultural belief that a woman needs to exercise more chastity than men, and in the church, a woman who is ‘hard-to-get’ and perches herself on that pedestal, away from all male hands until her wedding night, is a woman truly fit to be given the title of ‘Proverbs 31’. A virtuous woman, indeed. And my boyfriend holds none of these views. Not even a little bit. I kept reminding myself of this fact, but I chose to listen to the voice that did not have my best interest at heart.

We spoke on the phone in the morning. When we ended the call, I burst into tears again, mainly because he sounded so sorrowful and I thought I’d caused him unnecessary upset. I felt as though I shouldn’t have said anything, but I wanted to be honest.

I’m yet to eat a meal today. I had my shower late; popped to the shops to get some water and household stuff; got back into my nightclothes retreated to my bed, eating chocolate and turning on the laptop to write this post. I felt sorry for myself, but I checked on Facebook before logging onto WordPress, and the statuses I saw almost took my breath away.

I have many Adventist/Christian friends on my Facebook, so I’m used to Bible texts on my Newsfeed, but this afternoon something else happened: all the passages that people were putting up were about sin, and the penalty that Jesus paid in order for us not to feel guilty and dejected and depressed when we do something wrong, but for us to give all our burdens and baggage to Him, at the foot of the Cross. I almost cried again, but for a different reason this time. So many people, so many texts and words of encouragement–I hadn’t told anyone about how I was feeling or what was going through my head, but it was as if the Spirit moved, so that they all wrote texts that corresponded with each other. The text that really stood out to me is taken from 1 John 2:1-2:

My little children, these things I write unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world…

I was also reminded of the lyrics to a hymn that has been in my head ever since I read the Bible text: Jesus Paid it All:

I hear the Saviour say
“Thy strength indeed is small
Child of weakness, watch and pray
Find in me thine All in All”

Jesus paid it all
All to Him I owe
Sin had left a Crimson stain
He washed it White as snow

Sometimes, God leaves me lost for words. Despite what has happened today, with my habit of self-destruction reaching such a high level, it’s finally taken a turn for the better…

…Because God has the power to save me from myself.

Lament

Once, I told you everything I knew.
I believed you could too.
Then an absence came
like a monsoon
to fill the ever widening gulf
that was always there
but remained unseen.
Once, you struggled.
You asked me about my life
I told you scraps
and you picked at them for a while
before leaving dry crumbs
on the cold pavement floor.
Once, you struggled.
I asked you how you were
because my blood was numb
I just wanted to know how you were
and you said
“I’m fine.”

Understanding God

It dawned on me the other day that I don’t actually know what love is. What does it mean to ‘love’ someone, what do you do when you ‘love’ someone? How would they know that you love them?

A baby latches onto the first source of food and comfort they find. They understand that the fragrant, warm, secure blobby thing above them from which milk is secreted can bring them happiness. A little child knows that this blobby thing is their mother, eventually their father too, and they build a relationship with their parents. They don’t fully realise that the reason why they burst into tears at the school gates, watching the red lights of the family car vanishing far into the distance, is because they love their parents and don’t want to see them go.

Love gets more complicated when you’re older. Suddenly, it’s not just your parents that you love, but your friends. Sometimes teachers, eventually you’ll grow in love with someone who isn’t related to you. All different feelings, manifestations, decisions and contexts, with one word to describe them all.

Love.

A word used too freely. I have members of my extended family that I am not close to; some I’ve only met a couple times. Sometimes I don’t get on well with them at all. But then, I’m expected to say that I ‘love’ them, immediately, on the first meeting. People generally say that they ‘love’ their siblings, but they don’t ‘like’ them. What does this mean? It’s a cliche that people use on the assumption that everyone knows what they’re talking about. Another one is ‘loving someone is not the same as being in love with someone’. Words and adages and riddles; they mean nothing to me.

I spoke to my dad about it yesterday. My dad and I talk a lot about these things. I’ve told him when I’ve fancied someone, or had relationship drama, and vented to him about the odd ways of men and women in the church. I asked him how he knew he had been in love with my mum. He was honest: “it’s indescribable”, he said “but there’s a difference when you love someone as a Christian. It’s no longer ‘I fancy him, I fancy her’; emotions can’t be the main part of it. You learn to love Christ first; you experience His love for you; then you learn to love other people”.

I think it’s the best explanation I’ve heard about ‘love’. It cannot be explained in a few words or actions. It’s a verb and a noun and an adjective; it’s a decision you make–you decide to love someone and stay with them and accept them for their faults and their good sides–and yet it’s a word that rouses emotion: anger, joy, arousal, desire. It can trigger hate; people kill others over their love for someone else; people kill themselves because they love someone else…

Christ killed Himself, didn’t he? He sacrificed himself, lived a life of persecution and completed his task on the cross out of love for people who to this day give him nothing in return. That’s why love is so hard to understand; because to love someone means to make sacrifices.  It means you put yourself on the line: you give up your time, defer your personal happiness to make someone else happy and safe. You compromise and give without expecting anything else in return.

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

1 John 4:8

I’ve been praying for God to teach me how to love truly and earnestly; to be willing to make sacrifices and care for people as I should, not just as a Christian, but as someone who has morals. I know from the text above that love comes from God first, and more importantly that ‘love’ is something I’ll never fully understand…

…because to understand ‘love’ is to understand ‘God’.

Fearful

Silence.
.
.
.
.
A noise to rattle the catacombs in my head
make me dizzy with fear.
The kind of feeling that weighs the body down
black treacle. Thick and imposing
too heavy to control
to move beneath.

Silence.
.
.
.
The one word to scare me
enough that I’d shun everything
crowds were my enemy for fear of that moment
when there’s now’t to say
but they all look at you as if you’re supposed to know
To be witty and articulate and make people laugh
they look at you because they think you know
what they think; what they like
you’re supposed to know
how to salvage their conversation
before the pulpy shreds of it
stick and merge with the floor

Silence.
.
.
My crutch and my crucifix.
Bullied by it
Taunted by those who said my mouth was too slow
because I was cursed with bullets in my speech
and my tongue was useless
a-a-and it w-w-was d-d-difficult to f-f-fight ag-g-g-gainst those
thick words; plosives and sentence starters.

Silence.
Became my favourite way of speaking
when I found the comfort of your eyes
and how soothing a sound it is
when your silence meets mine
Listen to me breathe
So I can feel your heart on my spine
as we sit
in
silence.

The God Standard

Happy New Year….

This is my first post of the year. There was a long list of things I wanted to start off with: about my new goals as a Christian, about all the things I did wrong last year that I want to rectify for 2013; a prophecy post based on Daniel and Revelation and how the 21st December apocalypse scare was a bunch of hodge-podge.

And then something developed in the last weeks of November, leading to an event on the 2nd of December that has changed many things in my life, but in a good way: I’ve embarked upon a relationship with someone who has been in my life for five years. This means I can no longer read my posts of months ago, where I chastised the men in my church for leading me on, mainly because it reminds me of a bitterness I didn’t realise I had. I still stand by my arguments: trifling with a woman’s heart is ungodly, and a man of God should let his yeas be yeas and his nays be nays. However, the motive behind the writing of those posts came from a place of misguidance. I’ll say it plainly:

the person I am with now is someone I’ve cared about for a very long time. And even though what I had felt for him had abated somewhat when a ‘new man’ came onto the scene, I believe my underlying feelings for him manifested themselves to others, which may be a contributing factor of as to why I found my myself in those ‘false start’ relationships.

Being with my ‘someone’, has made me think about the list I had made about my ‘dream man’ years and years ago. When I was much younger, the list was very superficial:

Must be Six Foot something
Must have dark, rich skin
Must have locs, so we can have loc babies….
…And something about loving God.

As I began to give my desires to God and think seriously about it, the list changed to things that were practical and had a focus for spiritual things:

Must have the same view of God as I do
Must be someone who is trying to be a better person
Must be a reader
Must be intellectual and intelligent
Must appreciate my writing
Must respect me as a woman
…Must be someone I would have no problem submitting to, in the way God intended.

Fortunately, a sister has started up a series of Dating, Courtship and Marriage Bible studies at my church and last week a couple from our congregation, married for 19 years, spoke about how  God had put them together. The husband said that he had made a list of things he wanted and knew God would have wanted for him, and he found all these things in his wife. He asked God to help him make a choice.

It gave me hope for my relationship, as I was never a person who believed in the ‘God has one person for me’ (there are 7 billion people in the world. How will you possibly start searching for that predestined one?), and this husband and I had approached things in a similar way.

The last item on my personal list was a very recent addition (probably only a few months). It dawned on me just how important that factor is, because even if he’s intelligent, or he reads, doesn’t mean he is a good man, a man who respects a woman and understands what’s required of him as a man in a relationship. I began to read Ephesians 5: 22 in a whole new light. Literally, it only dawned on me what God is actually saying to women here:

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

Even in this verse, though directed at the women, has a rebuke for men all over it. What Paul is saying here is ‘women, God has such a high standard for you of as to what husband you should choose, He’s literally reserving a man that is only like Christ to be your husbands. Don’t settle for anything less’. 

This was huge for me to see. The fact that Paul immediately says that men have to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave His life for it (verses 25 onwards), there is no mistaking just what kind of men women are supposed to marry. The fact that God wants you to have a marriage that immediately reflects the relationship between Christ and the church, says a lot about the standard of man that God has reserved for his daughters. Now I know why we are described as ‘far above rubies’ (Proverbs 31:10).

This was just the kind of revelation that I needed for the new year. 

Also, the person I’m with is someone I have complete trust in to respect me. I’m always amazed at his reaction to Ephesians 5: awe and caution and self-reflection. He always asks himself ‘how can I be that man’? when he reads it, rather than ‘look, you’re gonna have to submit to me, woman!’

Very encouraging, indeed.

Have a good week.

xXx

That Night…

I did something wrong.
Tied together with someone else
the rope forming complex knots,
knots strong enough to caress a carcass
and rock it back and forth
over a cliff.

That night
I did something wrong
and it was so wrong that I couldn’t talk to You about it
pacing my room muttering
sonnets of sorrys in my head
the words dissolved on the edge of my tongue
I rebuked the walls
lest they heard my of my sin.

I didn’t want the air around me to be polluted with it
so I sat up all night
staring at the ceiling
and hoping to see Your face.

And now, all I ask
is Your forgiveness
and a way to feel Your grace.