1000 Strands

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Posts Tagged ‘struggle’

When We Were On Fire

Posted by Nicole on October 17, 2013

If you’ve read this blog since it’s inception, you know I am a woman of open and hopeful and thrashing faith. I believe in a big God who loves each individual… but that belief is a wrestling I do fresh every day. Like Jacob in Genesis, I wrestle and prevail, and like Jacob, I am constantly finding God in new places – finding Him Even Here.  I met Jesus by name in a youth group when I was 14.  This entry is a poetic remembering of that time as part of Addie Zierman’s synchroblog in honor of her beautiful new book:

When We Were On Fire.

 

We ran through fields and over chain-linked fences to escape the hands of the enemy, in practice for the rapture. Dropped off in the middle of the hills and left to find our way back to the school auditorium, we feared Jesus would someday leave us behind because we didn’t truly believe.

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We sang at the top of our lungs with Joel Weldon at Hume Lake. We sang of love and hope and a Jesus who was everything. We knelt and sang quietly, trying to find the perfect pitch so Jesus would know we were worth loving… and so the boys next to us would too.

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We piled in vans and went to outdoor festivals to rock for God. When we were on fire, we could do anything for God! We moshed for God. We bought tshirts for God. We floated on crowds who lifted us up on their hands – 1000s of hands lifting us up so we could be closer to God, voices of love and cheering and camaraderie.

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We held hands and vowed to give our very bodies to God and only God, no matter what it took. And some of us kept our promises to ourselves and to God while some of us made babies… ones we kept and ones we did not.

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When were were on fire, we shaped our gold into a god in the refining flames – A shape to worship that made sense and we could hold, until, in a fit of tears, we would melt our golden god down; reshaping Him again and again.

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We will always be grateful for the days we were on fire, to know we can melt, that at one time we were not too cold or too far to be reached by Love – a love bigger than our confusion and much much bigger than our idols.

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AND to know we can be on fire again, but this time we will keep the doors wide open; avoid the backdraft and explosions that happen when we try to control the fire.

 synchroblog-photohome_uk

Posted in Free Flying Faith | Tagged: , , , , , | 19 Comments »

Stop Hitting Yourself

Posted by Nicole on February 14, 2013

Stop throwing stones, please.

Stop throwing stones, please.

Walking around the world, feeling disappointed in yourself, is never fun.  It sucks, actually. And, I fully realize that many of you are just fine with your fine selves, but I have a sneaking suspicion that many of us are not…  Still not, even after looking through 100’s of motivational pins on Pinterest.

(it’s like dieting. i am not dieting when i read about diets. … and i am not actually feeling better about myself when I read how i should feel better about myself… you don’t lose weight by reading about losing weight…)

 

It feels impossible to hit the target in life – to reach that sweet moment of pure joyful success – when all you do is practice hitting yourself.

You learn to hit the target you aim at.

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“What’s wrong with me?”
“I wish I was different…”
“Why did I say that?”

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I know it’s the same for me as it is for some of you – The voices inside my head can be loud, demeaning, demanding.  All I can see is how I don’t measure up and I wish I did.  I’m guilty under the law.  So, I throw stones

………….. at myself.

Stoning: Execute (someone) by throwing stones at them.

We stone ourselves. Without a proper trial, we sentence ourselves to a painful execution.  Each nasty thought, a stone.  Each critique without care, a stone.

I pick up each rough, dirty stone – each rough, dirty thought – aim and throw.  Pick, aim, throw. Pick, aim, throw. Pick, aim, throw.

But, in the black-comedy turns of life, we are too close to ourselves to properly execute the guilty. I chuck a stone at my own head and it bounces off – painful but not deadly. Another. Another. Bruises form. Wounds appear and build on top of each other. It’s an incredibly slow, painful death.

Hundreds of stones thrown by me at me.

You learn to hit the target you aim at.

And, I’ve discovered that I spend entirely too much time aiming at myself.

(I say this to you as I say it to myself….)

It’s time to Stop it. Drop the stones. DROP IT.

What do you actually want to be good at?  Practice that!

Every time you catch yourself picking up a stone, drop it before you even aim to throw. Don’t spend your life practicing self-stoning. Stop hitting yourself.

You learn to hit the target you aim at. So… what target DO you want to hit?

Take long enough away from chucking stones to hear yourself answer the question. Give yourself time to answer, you jerk! 🙂 What do you want to aim at?

Start small. Focus and aim at getting out of bed and smiling at yourself in the mirror.  Maybe you just need to practice setting the rocks down before you are tempted to throw them.

Focus and aim at saying kind things to yourself and others.

Focus and aim at doing one thing each day without caring what you or anyone else thinks about how you did.

Or, if you’re ready, go BIG. Focus and aim at a life-long dream.

I can promise you will get better at what you practice, so

Practice what you want to be good at.

 

Everything else… DROP IT.

 

Thank you & you’re welcome,

Nicole

 

 

Posted in Wonderful Wrestlings | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »