LOVER of my SOUL

I had this brilliant idea today to pull out my old journal from 2008-2010 and read through it. It was cool to reminisce and whatnot, but it was probably more detrimental to my emotional status than beneficial.

Why? Because 1) I realized how little I've actually changed since then, in some ways. 2) My love life was much more exciting back then, which is definitely a depressing thought. 

As far as changing, I know that in many ways- such as goals, convictions, basic interests, and worldview- I am very much the same. However, the one area that I would hope to be most different is the one that I realized was most lacking in maturity: my everyday walk with Christ. Sure, my faith is more solid now and my convictions more sturdy and my experiences more widespread. But when it comes down to it, I'm the same 15-year-old girl who's scared to trust God and super self-focused. 

Grow me, God. 

A certain sign of grace is this: that from broken earth, flowers come up, pushing through the dirt.

SECONDLY. Let's get one thing straight: God is a GREAT romancer. If you read my blog semi-regularly you probably kind of remember my Valentine's Day post from a London Starbucks this year about being in love with God for the first time. Well I'm not really sure when it happened, but sometime between then and about a month ago, I'd kind of let that side of mine & God's relationship die. I mean, I'll do all the 'Christian' things to do, but when it comes down to letting my heart be wooed by this Being who created everything and still had my life planned before time began... that kinda weirds me out and I just let it go. 

And at some point, he got sick of not having it apparently, because all the sudden my heart was being pursued again. Not that he ever stopped, but I'd built such a wall of unbelief up that He couldn't really get through it, I guess. Well, being in the Word a lot and being vulnerable to his life-changing tends to alter that kind of thing pretty quickly. 

So a couple days ago, as I was having my nightly date with Him, I remembered a song we once sang in youth choir, the lyrics of which absolutely wrote out my heart's words. 

"And in the night I will sing Your praise, my Love. And in the morning, I'll seek Your face, my Love. And like a child I will dance in Your presence, Oh let the joy of Heaven pour down on me. I still remember the first day I met You and I don't ever want to lose that fire, my First Love!"

Though my life is far from perfect, and I am far from perfect... at the end of the day, I am His. I am loved by Him and NOTHING can stop that or separate me from that permanently. I love Him, in a way I can't thoroughly explain. If I could, I would just hang out with him one-on-one all the time and just sing and dance and write to Him. I don't want to lose that joy He's poured out on me- I really do remember the first day I met Him and gave into His pursuit... I DON'T WANT TO LOSE THAT.

So I'm just sitting here pondering how He could love me so greatly, and I remembered an old hymn that I really like: Jesus, Lover of my Soul. and it just hit me... HE IS THE LOVER OF MY SOUL. He is the ONLY Lover of my soul. He is the ONLY ONE who has ever loved my soul, and the only One who will ever love me/my soul to this great of a depth.

JUST WHOA.

I think the thing that most gets me about this is: I am kind of a boring person. I don't like any extremely out of the ordinary things. I don't do outrageous things. I like school and my family and I have a plain old  "got-saved-when-I-was-nine" testimony. My whole life, I've beens striving to find the one thing that will set me apart and make me more lovable/likeable/intruiging/inspiring/accepted/attractive/fillinyourownwordhere. I feel plain and boring and don't have anything necessarily special about me except for my fingerprints.

The fact that God knows that, and He made me this way, and He is THE SOLE LOVER OF MY SOUL- the only One who knows the most... yet still loves the most- absolutely KILLS me. HE IS SO GOOD! I'm really grateful that He not only created my vanilla-ness, but He celebrates it, and rejoices over it, and delights in it, and just LOVES it. Doesn't that prove all over again his awesomeness.

I wanna sit at Your feet, drink from the cup in Your hand, lay back against You and breathe, feel Your heartbeat. This love is so deep, it's more than I can stand. I melt in Your peace; it overwhelms me. 

face, meet ground. self, meet cross.

God is a funny man. er, spirit? Whatever He is, He's a funny one.
See what had happened was... Becca, for the longest time, has seen herself as "that awkward homeschool girl" or "the one that never quite fit in" or "little scaredy cat Becca"... and some more, much more negative things that I'm not quite ready to post on my blog. Honestly, it's such a normal thing for me to think these things about myself, I don't even realize, when I tell myself this, exactly what I'm saying.
Well, God decided somewhere lately that He was going to bring this back to my attention and laugh at how much I forget how in control and awesome He is... and how having Him in me makes me beautiful and worthy of love.
It's hit me several times lately just how fantastic my friends are, and how blessed I am to have the family and background I have. Honestly, it makes me feel a little guilty, because so few people have the pleasure of experiencing such an easy life. I've never experienced drastically life-changing things, except for the usual death of grandparents or moving away from a best friend or my cat dying. I was raised in a Christian home, by Christian parents, who've been married over 30 years. I'm not saying my life has been perfect, by any means. My older brother was a rebel who did some pretty awful stuff to myself and my family back in the day- but God is so much a God of forgiveness and redemption that even that story is changing rapidly. Basically, I'm just trying to get the point across that I'm INCREDIBLY blessed.
And then last night, through a roundabout chain of events that will be discussed in a later blog, I ended up just being really overcome with emotions and doubts and unsure of what I was doing and where I stood with Him. So like any normal, emotional wreck would do, I propelled myself to my room where I literally laid facedown on the ground and cried out to my God (including crying, whispering, whisper-screaming, etc.) on the hairy rug in my dorm room.
It was an oddly beautiful moment. I'm sure if I'd taped it, it would be on the AFV level of hilarity, because I looked like a ragged, tear-drenched nutcase, stretched out on the dirty floor appearing to talk to myself.
But that's a really cool thing about God is that no matter how silly you look, He doesn't really care. He just keeps pushing you to seek Him and wooing you into His embrace. (Heck, Ezekiel PREACHED TO A VALLEY FULL OF BONES and God used that!)
So there I am, completely overwhelmed and telling myself how I can't do this and why would I and giving myself reasons not to let all this new exciting stuff happen to me.
And the whisper came.
"You are more."
'You are more than the choices that you've made. You are more than the problems you create. You are more than the sum of your past mistakes. You've been remade.'
aaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhhhh.
I mean, how do you respond to it when THE God, the Everlasting One who literally holds the world in His hand and breathed you into existence, stops your pity party and says, "HEY. YOU'RE MINE. THAT'S WHY."
Cue world spinning in slow-mo and jamming to a halt.
It's heart-melting and earth-shattering and completely self-wrecking.
What do you say to that?
"Yeah, um, I try to love you too, God, but I'm human so I stink at love unless it's love of self and sin, so um yeah...Cool thanks."
Cause as much as I want to be able to say I truly LOVE God with every fiber of my being, it isn't true. If I remember, I kill my self every morning and let Him reign in me, and then I actually LOVE... but sometimes I forget, and sometimes I pretend to forget. Let's be honest here, truly loving is hard. It hurts and it's sometimes awkward and it's uncomfortable. And I'm still in the process of learning to/being used to LOVING everyone all the time.

I apologize for the choppy/disconnected/nonsensical/overdramatic aspect of this post. Another thing God is teaching me is how to ponder and meditate on what He's telling me, to the point that I can articulate that clearly to others, so thanks for being my guinea pigs.
Basically, He is awesome and I am His and I am undone.
auf wiedersehn!