not living in defeat

I am not defeated but I often tell myself I am or will be.  I seem to be wandering into a place in life where there’s more and more victory mainly because of love and openness with other human beings.

A dear friend who I haven’t seen in four years is coming to visit me this week. I had thought I was going to have to work Saturday while she was here. The managers tried all they could to get the time off for me but it seemed impossible. Despite the apparent odds, I began a quest to find someone to take the shift from me so I could have a much needed mini-holiday AND time with my friend. I assumed I would fail and had already accepted defeat because it seemed all avenues had been tried to no avail, but then someone came through for me and decided to take the shift. When this happened my managers and I all cheered. It was a shared victory. Everyone knew I was willing to take the shift and work it with a smile if need be but I was trying hard to find a way to spnd the time with my friend instead and the victory in the end was a group victory and not just my own. That made it all the better.  This experience, and others like it recently, have taught me something.

Especially during the last couple of years, I have tended to approach life with this attitude of defeat, assuming I will fail either because I have before or just because I lack confidence or am fearful. It’s interesting to have a few occasions back to back where I have succeeded and found mini victories in the face of assuming failure or defeat, often when working with others who are able to help me shine or reach my goal. It shows me that I can suceed. I can be blessed. I can find joy in rallying people together for a good cause. It also shows me the truth that speaking your desires and still living in joy regardless of the outcome really does enact something in the spiritual realm. It’s amazing.

I rode home on the bus, in the dark gloomy rain, with a smile on my face. It was a smile that welled up from deep within, a smile born from love and knowledge that things are working in my favour and that some of the favour came from me putting myself out there and not staying on my own in the dark.

We should not wait and simply expect greatness and great things. We should move with boldness and kindness and dedication. And maybe, just maybe we’ll get to win and have people around us to join in the cheer.

Happy Canada Day!

love and healing and dreaming

Sometimes it is so easy to dream. You feel free, open, and enegetic.

Othertimes you feel tired, worn out and if not captive just not entirely able to release your dreaming.

The other day I started to cry, lying on the floor with arms out tears flowing and words spilling out. Confessions and shadows and things in myself I wish I could evict. But in that moment God reminded me of the fence and the things we’ve been working on in my heart.

We tore down the fence. I let Him in and now there’s no going back. Now if I rebuild the fence He’s got permission to destroy it. And all the things I held in that prison sanctuary are up for grabs and up for destroying and being brought to the light. It’s a scary thing when you realise that by asking for healing you have opened the wound.

Today I am not energetic. I don’t feel free but I know that I am free. I know that even when I tired His life and love can push me to greater things and places than I can imagine. I should be free to dream. I am always free because of Him.

If only I would let my humanness stay a gift and not keep seeing it as a curse. How we twist things and damage ourselves!!

His love is so simple and so vast and huge it’s easy to forget it because we cannot compute it, and it’s so desperately important that we don’t forget or dismiss it. Love fuels everything. Love is everything. I need more, Lord.

okay, so…

Do you ever get the urge to just stand somewhere high and out in the open, throw back your hands/arms/head and yell:

“It’s not about you!!!!”

I do. Often.

I want to yell that to myself when I get selfish and self centred; I want to yell that to people who make assumptions or twist my words to their own meaning; I want to yell it to the people who think company policies are set out just to annoy them; I want to yell it to people who sit in churches taking notes on how to better themselves only, and ignore their neighbour…

It’s not about you. It’s not about me. It’s about truth. And the truth is I need more peace, joy, freedom, and compassion. I need more release, more ability to be graceful and giving and honest with myself so that I do not enter into places where I allow myself to be untrue and then have to deal with the aftermath later. I’d like to love boldly and truthfully and with all of the authenticity and confidence found in knowing who He made me to be. Cos you can’t give yourself away if you don’t know who you are. If you do you’ll lose more than you gain because you are giving from empty reserves and not full ones. I’ve learned this the hard way.

Curiosity killed the cat but set the bird free. When I figure out which I am today, I’ll let you know.

my heart in this season

I’ve been in Vancouver for three months now and it’s still strange. It’s so good, really, to be so near family and to sort of reclaim myself, my old stomping grounds and my roots. But there are constant reminders in this city of things and people I once ran from.

And yet in the quietness of a day which has featured little more than kite flying, coffee, tea, a little bit of form filling out (for student loans), and random conversation… I find myself again pondering the gift of being here, the gift of my job, the restoration of relationships, and the coming weeks full of friends, family, and hopefully a promotion at work.

Did I mention my manager suggested I do this three month contract gig? Something normally which only goes to people with alot more seniority in the company than I? Yeah. Exciting. I’ve never been looked highly upon at work so I am pleased, and especially pleased given what the contract gig actually is for (I’ll give more details when it’s official)!

If I could summarize what is happening in my heart right now I would say that my heart is sloughing off the lies and the pretenses and just becoming true and true enough to accept the truth of who I am and who the God of love is and what it means to be loved unconditionally, for real. It’s as though all the things I could be are being replaced simply and delicately and heroically by the truth and the authentic me.

It’s exciting and strange.

I have to keep reminding myself to just be present because that’s what He told me to do. Be present. And be at peace. Everything will be sorted in due time. Right now we’re working on my heart.

It’s crazy how everything comes back to love.

play

They always said the truth will set you free, but I didn’t feel free. I was caught, trapped, surrounded by guilt and shame…

But for the last few weeks I’ve been feeling a growing strange sort of lightness. The kind that comes only when your heart is free. For weeks I felt caught in a crux, pressured down to make a decision and totally strangled by fear. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t dream. I wasn’t me.

Then God began to change things. He started to show me what freedom really is. He told me in a way at long last my heart could understand.

I AM LOVED.

I think the most powerful thing about that statement is the release that comes with it. I wander around trying to decide what is right or wrong, what I should or shouldn’t do and meanwhile the Creator of the Universe is standing there just saying repeatedly ‘Hey, I love you. Stay still a moment and hear me tell you. I love you.’

My heart is good.

I have not believed this. I have always, due to lack of affirmations and lack of confidence believed there was something wrong with me that I needed to make up for. I thought I knew grace but I only knew one side of it. I thought my heart was bad but He said my heart is good. In fact, he treasures it. How crazy is that?

I have begun to play. In a way that is both child-like and spontaneous and releasing. I’ve begun to discover the power of love, of being present, of being open and giving to those around me and the result is freedom.

I am definitely a late bloomer but I am glad at last to throw back the fence and the walls and the broken record player telling me I am wrong and unlovable and begin to believe that I am loved no matter what.

I feel free because of love. I feel awake. I feel alive.

There’s so much to do. So many prayers not yet answered but I am here and present and willing to know and learn deeply and intuitively and consistently that I am loved no matter what and that makes ALL the difference.

spoken word

Two poems, spoken/performed by me. Music by Patrick Watson and Bear McCreary.

fear, love, freedom

“These dreams in my brain are too great to conceal
And I can’t stay here where nothing is clear
Where love is just wasted, replaced it with fear”
- John Torres (Crazy Man’s Mind)

It seems my indecision has moved me into a place of examining. I am examining (again) who God is, who He made me to be, what I want, what I believe, and why… and it’s not so easy a journey as one would think.

For years I’ve ‘prided’ myself on my lack of religiosity when really I am living under the law and I am not free. I am convinced that I am guilty, every day, of something. I am convinced that I fall short (and I do) but instead of that knowledge leading me to a place of love and thankfulness for God’s abounding forgiveness and hope and wonder… I simply allow my feelings of guilt, though washed clean by Jesus, to weigh me down and make me feel useless.

The truth is as much as I want it I know that I am not who I should be yet and I do not live the way I ought to (as Paul wrote “I do what I do not want to do and don’t do what I want to do”). This is because I have replaced love with fear. I’ve gotten so used to fear that I sometimes don’t even recognize it for what it is. And it’s making me far too short on love.

Do you find it interesting how often we speak of what we will be more than what we are? I think we, or at least I, do this because of the power of speaking. Our words–especially our spoken words–shape our lives.

So if I do not speak and then speak negatively, I am shaping my life, my self-image negatively. God says I am free. If I do not believe this, then what does this tell me about my faith? God’s freedom and calling to live abundant lives full of hope, faith, joy, and love is the greatest gift.

And yet here I am with my head in the dirt in my fenced-in garden, convinced my fence is worth more than the light and hills and people beyond. I long to step beyond it, no, LEAP and FLY beyond it. I think this is possible. I can be free, because I already am. I just don’t know it yet.

And do you know the crazy thing? The way out? It’s not something I can do on my own. It involves love. It involves people. It involves opening my mouth.

Higher perspective

Daddy asked me “why are you crying?”
and I said “I broke the vase.
The flowers have fallen,
they’re spread all over,
the water’s flowing away…”
Daddy asked me “why are you crying?”
as He gathered the flowers again.
We watched the water wind away
forming patterns and pathways.
Daddy asked me “why are you crying?”
I said “I broke the vase.”
He said I set the flowers free
then He gave them all to me.

It’s sometimes a bit crazy how long and how strange the journey is for my heart to understand what my brain is telling me and visa versa. I had this picture, from God, recently. Of two diverging pathways and a vine from each reaching up and intertwining in the middle. I couldn’t figure out what this meant until a friend pointed out the obvious. I also didn’t know what to think when God told me to not dislike my “international heart.” I seem to be so caught and focused on being there or here or over there. But it seems like perhaps all are correct. He said it’s not about “L.A. vs. Bournemouth.” And yet I assumed then I would have to lose one.

What if God’s way is not our way? What if His thoughts are not our thoughts? What if the dream I have for my life in all it’s bigness and complexity were just a tiny glimmer of what the real plan is that God has for me?

I am so limiting of myself but especially oh how often I limit God.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty; but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55 10-11)

so divided, so united

I have begun to read another book by Erwin McManus. I should have known when God subtly suggested I read this one, that it would have an effect. Just nearly 3 years ago when God said ‘hey, read The Barbarian Way, I think you’ll like it’ (and that propelled me to buy my plane tickets to Scotland!) I felt this urgency to get myself a copy of Chasing Daylight. And you know it’s just a bit eerie his references to my favourite childhood story A Wrinkle in Time, to the term atomos which I just read about in a book on Quantum Theory, and then in my moment of crux, to have an entire chapter on of all things… choices.

I find myself here, sipping wine in the sunny evening after an unexpected full day at work, listening to music from someone who attends Mosaic L.A. pondering the choices I have before me. And the prophecies and words that have been spoken over me. And the choices I have made that have brought me to here and now.

I waste too much time because I get caught in moments of disbelief, fear, doubt, worry, or lack of confidence. And the more moments I waste the more I see them go by and mourn their passing.

A little while ago, back when I was still in Scotland, God told me to remember His promises, the things He had told me before. It’s been hard to remember. But easy at the same time. Hard because when I feel rejected or hope deferred I can dismiss a promise as wrong or false when it just isn’t the time yet.

I’ve been hearing these words from a sermon I listened to many years ago on a drive to San Franciscso with my friend Gina. The key part of it was ‘you have to get left in order to get right.’ And I keep hearing that then thinking ‘You have to go right in order to get where you’re meant to go.’ Heh. And this because I have gone right and then further right, to the East (well it’s right if you’re looking North, it’s left if you’re looking South… interesting…).

I find it hard how people role their eyes at me when I mention L.A. as if it is a childhood dream, a silly figment I  need to let go. I get offended when people tell me to move on because I am being childish or that it is time to let go. When the dream of L.A., my passion for that silly city has been more alive in me for more years than ever Scotland was.

I think the dificulty, why I am so divided, is that it is as if my past and future are melding. And because I feel caught between my heart, impossibilities, unknowns and uncertainties. Each choice I have lead me into places of unknowing and places potentially full of good things. Neither path is specifically wrong. But I am haunted by L.A. and feel the need to return at least, at very least to say a proper hello and goodbye.

I don’t know that I have the right questions to ask of God. I don’t know that I know what to even seek in effort to get His direction here. Because the choices lead in different, very different ways which may connect in days to come but right now are divided.

I don’t understand how the city of my dreams (I called Edinburgh that for a while) and L.A. the city of my heart, are connected. I don’t understand the way my heart is or what must come next. I don’t know why the world is the way it is right now for me. My choices seem contradictory and yet equally true.

L.A. I love you. You were my first love and you know it.

U.K. I love you.

Where do we go from here?