It's amazing the timing God has on things. Especially in my life lately with what He wants to deal with. For the last few years He & I have been dealing with offenses I have towards Him... & most of that has been completely surprising to me. A few years ago I dealt w/ the offense of my father dying & how I was holding God at arms length with the blame I held out in front of Him. That was finally released from my life @ a funeral for a friend of mines Mom. Then back in November I released the offense that God would never truly set me free from thoughts & feelings that stemmed from sexual abuse as a child because of the bad choices I had made throughout my life... and He did. I am totally free. It's an amazing, beautiful feeling.

Now He & I are again dealing w/ more offense. This time it's taking a longer time than I thought it would. This one is also very tender. I can only handle so much @ a time. It's kinda hard to talk about openly like this but in vague terms I am mourning the life I feel like I was supposed to have. My life was going down a path I was very happy with & then due to decisions a couple people made (myself included) all of it changed. By the time we were ready to get it back on the "right" track the world was a bit of different place for the people involved. Now it would seem pretty simple: that I only had myself to blame but that is not the way my heart has taken it on.

I hadn't even realized it but I have been holding a grudge against God for the way that whole situation went down almost 8 years ago. He didn't have to orchestrate our lives to go the way they did. If He would have taken some time to look @ the situation & how happy people were & how amazing life could have been He would have just left me alone & I wouldn't have gone on to make some of the dumbest decisions of my life.

I was listening to the song Talk Show Host by Radiohead the other day & the first thing he says is "I want to be someone else or I'll explode". As soon as I heard that line I thought to myself "SERIOUSLY". Now I have always adopted the mentality that I will not regret things in my life or events or decisions because then I wouldn't have a lot of the good in my life even if there is some bad. But lately I have had a hard time retaining that mentality. All I have been thinking about is how I may have been happier. All the things I have learned & grown in God, maybe those things still would have happened & maybe in a less painful way... if YOU would have just let it be.

All this to say I have been unpleasantly surprised in the last few years with all the offense that has been in my heart towards God. There is coming a time very soon where everything that can be shaken will be... yeah, more than it all has been already... and if we are not preparing ourselves by ridding our hearts of the offense & bitterness we have towards God, we will be overwhelmed with offense when God does a lot of things that we do not & will not understand. What's worse though is even now, we point our fingers @ a God who delights in mercy & say you are the reason why I am unhappy, you are the reason why I do not have any peace, when He is a loving a Father who delights in His kids & thinks only good thoughts towards us. In fact He says "I desire mercy & not sacrifice" (Matthew 9:13).

He desires that when we mess up, when we hold in bitterness, when we are under a cloud of heaviness, when we are completely dissatisfied with life that we would allow Him to extend mercy & more than that, that we would actually receive it. But instead, because we don't know how to receive mercy, we accuse His heart of giving us anything good begrudgingly. Because all we ingest is the world's system of love, when His system of Love is a completely different animal. His system doesn't keep a record of wrongs because He has to keep His word, but because He DESIRES so. If His desire is towards me, then why wouldn't I trust His heart to only have the best in store for me? His heart is full of desire & Love towards me... when I do not understand His methods, I need to remember I can trust His heart.

So I'm not quite to that last paragraph yet in my heart. I know it's all true but He & I are still at the place of me not understanding what the heck He is doing & because of that I am upset with Him. But we will get past it... we have before. Pray for me in this process. I am also praying for many of you to come to terms with any of the hurts you may still be harboring & unjustly accusing God of inflicting because He believes you deserve it. He doesn't. Trust His heart.

"You only get what you give..." been thinkin' about that tonight. I've been "giving" a lot of cynicism & doubt lately. Not exactly something I wanna be "getting". Looking over some areas of my life I wonder if things will change, get better, happen. A part of me thinks, why should they, why would they? And all of us have that part. But you have to be careful of entertaining that part too much. And I have been lately. I don't want to do that anymore. I wanna believe that things will get better, I won't always feel so indifferent towards my job, I will relish in the area of ministry I am in, I will again kiss someone & have someone kiss me w/ a passion that's almost frightening, I will quit worrying about whether or not my sister will finally get it together, I won't care when a song comes on the radio that use to break my heart, I will be content w/out being complacent... I will give.

Well, let's see if I start using this again. I make an effort probably about once a year... come and change things up & then never return. But I REALLY am gonna try to get back to blogging. I know how much my "reader" misses me. ;-) Life is ridiculously busy but I think if I just get through the next month/ month and a half, I'll be good to go, plus it'll be SUMMER! Or atleast it better be!

This is my 10-20 playlist. All the "mainstream" songs I loved in the 2nd decade of my life... Some I still love, some it's pretty embarrassing. Either way, here it is.

I just helped my best friend pick out the ring he is planning on giving to his girlfriend.

Weird.