Lord, give me a sign

Forward: I wrote this thing at three am last night. Long day, and  Netflix night, by the time I was ready to sleep there wasn't any sleep. So i showered and washed my hair. And got to bed at 3am. But there was no sleep. So I wrote. And finally, slept. 

People know it. In their deep inner lives, they know what they ought to be doing. And they know it would improve the quality of life. The challenge is to develop the character and competence to listen to it and live by it – to act with integrity in the moment of choice.

The people of Israel had been pestering Moses for a while. These guys, like me, were not too fond of hearsay. You know, some Guy, who we’ve never seen, keeps telling you stuff to tell us to do, and you know, we’re just supposed to like, do it. No questions asked. Sorry,but yes questions asked, yes lots of questions asked. Who is He? Why is He talking to you? If He’s everywhere why can’t we see Him? What’s this that’s so good about you; He just has to talk through you?

We wanna talk to Him ourselves, even us (disclaimer: this is a direct translation and obviously not my stellar grammatical prowess). We want Him to talk to us, coz you just keep telling us stuff, and you know, broken telephone, so we’d prefer if we could communicate directly with the Source. You can make that happen, Moses? Yeah, that’d be awesome.

So blah blah, rules about washing up and abstaining from drink and no lovey dovey stuff for three days before The Meeting. More rules about not touching the mountain, not touching someone or thing that touched the mountain whilst putting the someone or thing to death, not looking up at the mountain lest they see Him and die, and so on.

So on day three the clean and eager Israelites congregate at the base of that mountain. The Lord, as promised, comes down. I figure maybe two or three overeager chicken or persons get stoned or arrowed for touching the base of the mountain. He gives the Ten Commandments to a crowd shaking in their metaphorical and actual pants.

And finally, the bad word here people decide that these -a-tetes are way too intense. We just wanted some of that eating and drinking fun you and the seventy have every time you go up there and you come back looking like an angel. All this lightning, thundering, trumpets, smoke and booming voice from fog and darkness – that’s hardly what we had in mind. You know what, it’s totally cool with us, you just be going (see disclaimer above), He tells you, and then you come tell us, we’ll do. From now on, it’s cool, you can be our spokesperson.

Someplace else it said that God revealed Himself that way so that the Israelites would understand how fearsome He is, and not sin. But you’ve got to love the human psyche, not far after that and they were already at it again with the grumbling et al. Do you ever wonder what life would be like if stuff didn’t go forgotten? I wonder all the time.

When I was in first/second year dad was living in Eldy still, and we used to go to IVC – a church – on Sunday. Around that time dad was so busy with school he stopped commuting to Mumias; mum came over instead. This one Sunday, I was wearing black on black with my favorite black wedges, for some reason I remember that.

I think I was in second year, coz I was freaked out and looking for a sign, like frantically. I hadn’t met the boy yet so it wasn’t that. The only other  major freak-out I had was around the time dad got a transfer away from Eldy, which meant I’d actually live in campus aaaaaaalllll the time, and like it. Coz I’d go home Fridays and come back Mondays.

Anyway, whatever, point is, I had convinced myself that I wanted to hear Him speak. Not with the helpful platitudes from people I already knew, because I probably already knew those, but like in a way I would have no doubt it was Him. Like you know those where a pastor you’ve never met calls out your name and says things about you (this is before the 310 era, so it was still legit). That’s what I wanted.

So that Sunday we went to church, dad, mum and I, and found that there had been a conference running with the guest speaker and so he’d do the sermon. Usual stuff, praise and worship, announcements et al, and then he came. And the first thing he said after intros was “Who is Joy?” Now obviously it wasn’t me, I mean it could be me, but it had to be some other Joy, because come on, who talks to me?

Now, Joy was a pretty common name even then, unlike when I was born; but that day, there was no other Joy in the church. And of course mother kept prodding at me so I went na huko mbele. He said I was the one, and then said stuff. I’d gotten my answer, sort of. I left service with so much zeal, I figured I would live. It would turn out okay. Because God had spoken to me, me, meeeeee.

I don’t know why I remembered that this evening. Looking back, even that assurance was forgotten not too long afterwards. I still freaked out after the actual move happened, it’s took me a whole semester to acclimatize and start cooking. But I still pretty much hated it. God had spoken, and while theoretically that should have been THE POINT when all things became new, really, it just… faded, I guess.

I’m in my stressed mode, have been for a while. How do I know this? Well, there has always been a weird relationship between my sweet junky tooth and stress. On a normal day, I’ll go for weeks, months even, without wanting or eating cake, and eat fries only occasionally. But now, it’s like a mainstay in my brain. I always want more fries and real cake - none of this SupaMill Madeira stuff, the real decadent one with frosting.

I know why I’m stressed. I know it’s only going to get worse. Or it won’t go away. But I don’t know what to do. So here I am again praying for one of those signs from God Himself again. Except now I remember that even if it came, it may not change much. I think He knows it too, so He’s been rather silent.

Sometimes God sends signs, like real deal you'll-meet-a-girl-in-a-red-dress-who-will-have-no-front-teeth signs, but I think He likes to do that when He knows it will make an actual difference. Most of the time, almost all the time however, you know it. You don't need a sign. Deep down inside you know what you should do. Maybe you think you can’t, or just won’t, but you know. And you know that until you decide to do it then you’ll keep circling that mountain, like the Israelites. But you know, easier said; always easier said.

So you keep praying for a sign. 

too often scars

“The marks humans leave are too often scars.” 
~John Green~

“Hey!”

“Hi, how are you?”

“I’m well, and you?”

“Fine thank you. How've you been...”

I’ve been working on a concept. I have yet to come up with a real name for it, or chance upon what other people have called it, since I doubt I’m the first to think about it. However, for today’s purposes I’m going to call it the ‘one good turn’ theory.

One good turn (for today) is doing what is expected simply to add a plus to your list of pluses, or perhaps negate a minus. So that you can walk away patting you back feeling like an exemplary human being. or at the very least an okay person. And dare the universe to repay your kindness a hundredfold. Like that conversation. That’s how hallows go, depending on what side I'm on; it’s become so ingrained that most of the time I’m doing it on autopilot. On some days, I mean to actually know how you are, but there are times really it’s an autopilot mode response. Don’t give me those eyes, you know it’s true.

One good turn is passing by that guy and tossing a coin into his little cup. Hell, if you’ve been extra bad (hence extra guilty) or extra good (hence extra magnanimous) it might even be a note. So you can add another thing the universe owes you. Like today you have transformed the universe and done your share to alleviate human suffering. And the universe must not fail to see that. Like in the background there should be a big choir singing Handel’s ‘Messiah’ as you walk away. Okay, that last part is a bit much, but you get my drift.

The reason I’m thinking about that tonight is that I recently mended fences with an old friend. It wasn't an exactly friendly parting and we hadn’t spoken in forever until a couple of weeks ago when apologies were poured out by the torrents and promises were made. And life was back to normal. But I knew it would happen. We’d slip back into the normalcy that was there before. And not the good kind of normal either, the uppity kind.

“The worst type of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see--the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived.” 
~ Katie McGarry~

Because you see, they weren’t apologies to reinstate the friendship for its sake. It was a therapeutic move. To purge the conscience of the weight, to gain some relief. I said sorry, she said it was okay, now we’re friends. We’re good. Cased closed. One less thing to worry about. Hhhmmmm…. It’s human form I guess. I have this other theory, that life is about those who give and give, and those who take and take. So are human interactions. It’s one of those things, just like the reacher-settler phenomenon people don’t usually want to believe. I don’t know why I’m mentioning that; maybe because I feel done in. With giving. And being the bigger person. And being nice. Much good I have been done for all of it. I'll just shop.

A few months ago I was going to write about forgetting. Just forgetting as a concept. You know, past pain, past drama. I had just started doing my research (occasionally I’m not just blabbing from the abundance of my thoughts :)))). And then the news about my friend’s passing came, and I abandoned that for whatever I ended up sharing last month.

Do you ever wonder what would life be like if time didn’t heal everything? I wonder sometimes. If you could remember every single thing with the same rawness as if it was yesterday? In medicine there is this ailment called  the ‘broken heart syndrome’, it’s failure of the literal blood pumping organ, brought on by having your other heart broken, like by a boy or loss or something. If one event, like having a boy tell you that he doesn’t think it’s working , can cause your heart to fail, wouldn't we all die really young?

Would we suffer pain and more pain until we dropped dead? Would those people who have higher thresholds for pain live longer? Would have the human species survived?

Forgetting is a gift, it’s a privilege, and sometimes it’s all you have. Knowing that no matter how much pain you feel right now, no matter how insurmountable the mountain of distress, there will come a day when it won’t be so bad. It will just be an event in the annals of your life, and then it won’t be even there anymore, towed away to make room for new things.

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.” 
~Fernando Pessoa~

Well, it’s just that sometimes forgetting is easier on some than others. Which is why hypnotists have a job at all. I’m thinking about that, going for hypnosis. I hear you should carry someone along so that you aren’t subliminally told to do anything weird. I’d carry Dinah along, she knows karate and her eyes can get very serious (mean) when she wants. Which of course means that she’d have my back. Which in turn means that she’d talk me out of it before the words came from my mouth.

But there is a word for this feeling: defeated. It’s what you get after a whole series of broken-sciencey things slapping you across the face in rapid succession. Like Barney did Marshall with the three slaps of the slap bet. Like what point is there anymore, you know. Not in any I want to be dead sorta way. Just, I dunno, just defeated. Even the girl with all the logic in the world can’t get over this one. And too afraid, maybe  proud, to ask anyone. So she tries to not go completely down, over and over again. Perhaps one day a sun ray will shine with her clarity. Every dog has its day, after all. 

But oi, Lord, shall ever a break be caught....

lead me to the Rock that is higher than I

When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I...~The Bible~

Figures I would run to Thought Catalog. It makes sense, I read it like some sort of religion. Just as with forums open to public contribution, I am oftentimes disappointed, but every so often, every so often someone comes up with something genius, something brilliant and something just right for me, and that’s what keeps me going back for more fixes.

Today, I run to the arms of Meredith Gray, that girl with all the soulful monologues that make you want to sit back and narrate your life along with her. I figure I could come up with a soulful monologue or ten of my own. But Meredith’s are way cooler. Like this one:

People have scars in all sorts of unexpected places. Like secret road maps of their personal histories, diagrams of all of their old wounds. Most of our old wounds heal, leaving nothing behind but a scar. But some of them don’t. Some wounds, we carry with us everywhere… and though the cut is long gone, the pain still lingers. What’s worse? New wounds, which are so horribly painful, or old wounds, which should have healed years ago, and never did? Maybe our old wounds teach us something. They remind us where we’ve been, and what we’ve overcome. They teach us lessons about what to avoid in the future. That’s what we like to think. But that’s not the way it is, is it? Some things we just have to learn over and over and over… again.

Life has got its own way of shaping you, sometimes by throwing crap all over you, tying you down the back of a truck and driving around with you there at full speed. It’s amazing what people go through… I used to sit in a mat on my way to see dad every day, and I’d look around at people. I’d imagine asking the person next to me, “So, what’s your story?” Because at that time I too had ‘a story’. I guess until then I never saw life like that, i just thought about the surface of things. But people contend with so much crap every day, you’d be shocked.

But while one still stands there’s much to be grateful for. Because it means that until now, your survival rate for bad days remains 100%. Maybe that’s what they mean when they say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Only I wonder at the wisdom of that. Michael Jordan says that you miss 100% of the chances you don’t take. He’s got a bagful of quotes about shots he took and shots he missed, and we must all believe him, he did take some pretty great shots after all. But just like Colin, who is actually a pretty great guy and amazing brother with a nice girlfriend who sends us nice things ;), I wonder, when you have just one shot to take, and you take it and miss, what’s the difference?

All logic will tell you it’s not worth that much sadness. It’s really not worth that much crying. It’s not that big of a deal. But sometimes, it isn’t mourning over the what was, sometimes, the greater loss is for what could have been. For the picture in your head that wouldn’t half match the reality once it got here. The finding out that all the things you thought were crap were real things. And while it shouldn’t, it still causes pain. Pain that emo-music and ice-cream can’t quite reach. I discovered that doesn’t work by the way.

Pain. You just have to ride it out. Hope it goes away on its own. Hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions. No easy answers. You just breathe deep and wait for it to subside. Most of the time, pain can be managed. But sometimes, the pain gets you when you least expect it. Hits way below the belt and doesn’t let up. Pain. You just have to fight through. Because the truth is, you can’t outrun it. And life always makes more.

It’s the end of June. June wasn’t the greatest of months this year. It started with the loss of a friend. And now it ends with the loss of a friend. That much more frustrating because there’s no one to take the fall, no one to be angry at, and even if I were, what good would that do?

But every so often, the tears come uninvited. Once in a while, I let them get the better of me. Once in a while, I forget the wisdom of knowing that all things are working together for good. That no good thing shall He withhold from those who walk uprightly. Once in a while, I just want to be human and ask why. And shut the door and let the pain seep through my being. Do that, by all means. And then get up and keep living life. Because life must go on. And no matter how far you run from it, there’s always another rough patch waiting for you a little ways down the road.

You just have to live through this one.

fear not, He said, I have overcome the world

 “It’s all fine to say, “Time will heal everything, this too shall pass away. People will forget”—and things like that when you are not involved, but when you are there is no passage of time, people do not forget and you are in the middle of something that does not change.” 

~John Steinbeck, Cannery Row~

Is it true that when a man is dying hope is the last to go? Or maybe regret, you know, for the more important things one should have focused on but didn’t: family, love and a whole bunch of like stuff? I don’t know, I’m not dying, but I watched my father almost die every day for months, and every day I wondered what life was like through his eyes. It’s not something I like to remember, until recently I think I blocked every image from that time. I still wonder even now, even though the threat of death is now behind us.

Flo died. She was loud and lively, she had the optimism of three rainbows, and she died. And she is in a better place. It’s easy to say that, because I mean, it is fact. Where we are going is a better place than where we are. But this was truer for her. And I am angry. We are all angry. Not at God for allowing it to happen, because God’s truth I don’t think any of us would call her back even if we were given the choice.

27 years, that’s how long she was around for. And for the better part of those years no one ever saw the burdens she carried. No one could imagine that behind that frame that clung to Christ so ably, making all of us imagine it was totally doable, there was a gory tale.

Flo downlived it every day for years. And she did so without changing, without losing grace, without frowning at the world or taking it out on anyone. And now she is not around anymore. And we are angry. We are all angry. We are angry at human beings. Not in general, with faces and names and stuff.

I’ve always imagined that nothing is impossible with man given the right set of circumstances. Mother will turn against daughter, father against son, and every single one of us is capable of the most heinous acts of evil that has ever been. That part is fact. Which is why I cling to Christ, because even I cannot imagine the depth of my wickedness, I must have Him with me at all times.

So, given the right circumstances, someone can tear your resilience down bit by bit. Hit you below the belt and never let up. Continually crush your spirit and every ounce of dignity and self-belief that you have nurtured, and tear at your very essence until you are nothing but a mass of shrapnel not unlike a building torn down by bombs.

A number of statements come to mind:

You are capable of handling situations you couldn’t have possibly imagined. Fathers will disown you. The love of your life will sleep with someone else. The person who made you will hit you. Your best friends will die. A man will ignore your fervent “no” and take what he wants. And still you will find yourself filling your lungs when situations should have left them empty. It is in those moments that you’ll remember there isn’t anything you cannot overcome.

~Danielle Campoamor: 30 Life Lessons for 20-Somethings with Too Many Feelings~

Mostly that’s true, but what if you can’t? What if you can’t fill your lungs anymore and you just simply give up and say something like ‘I am going to be quiet now’. And then nobody ever hears from you again?

I went to Google in search of answers. Not about life, actually I was looking for quotes about forgetting. I found that first one up there. Shortly after we found out Dinah and I kept wondering how life could possibly keep going as though nothing happened. You know, you want to stop people on the street and go like, “Yo! People, hold up, hold up, this major thing just happened; this unbelievably strong woman is no longer with us. Please be still and respect that for a while, okay? ”

But you couldn’t. Life goes on, and pretty soon people will forget. Maybe we too, will not remember it with as much vividness. We’ll always have memories of the times and etc, but as time goes by, the pain will fade, and new memories will take part of the room we have reserved for Flo.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing at all. Because it’s a sad thing when you are relieved that your friend is no longer here. It’s sad when you know that given the chance you would never call her back to the life she lived. I wonder what she’s thinking, looking at us from up there. I wonder what life would be like if we didn’t forget things, if we remembered everything as vividly as though it happened yesterday.

So this is my lament. I hope I am allowed that much. I have not questioned God’s Will, or His wisdom. In Him I have unshakable faith that everything in the universe is unfolding exactly as it should. But David wailed. Jeremiah wrote an entire book wailing. I’m allowed this much. Because our souls need to be purged of the pain, and in the words of Anne Frank:

"I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn." ~Anne Frank~

I write because a great woman died. And while the world will go on, we noticed. For a few people in the world, time stood still. And so maybe in time, we won’t recall as much; but right here and now, today, we noticed. I noticed. And I write to engrave the memories of this remarkable woman all over the sands of time. I will write for as long as I have the words. Because people deserve to be remembered when they are no longer here. Life must go on, but we in turn, must never forget to those to whom we owe a significant chapter in our lives.

Farewell Flocy, I know you make the face of heaven so fine!

tuesday morning musings...

I was attending service at CITAM Woodley; that must have been the last week of October last year, before I left town the first time around. I think somehow for a while before that I had not been in church, and it was for me some bittersweet reunion of sorts, that entire service. Anywho, not my point at this time. There had just ended a baptismal class, and I think, as I was new to the place, they have lunch after the fact. So this guy stands up there and says, “Many animals have laid down their lives to facilitate this meal, blah...blah…” He didn’t say blah, I just don’t remember what he said after that, but it was something to the effect of please don’t blow off the lunch.

Which begins my point. I went to two different high schools. Sort of, I went to one for three weeks before the folks came and took me to the other one (against my express instructions). Anyway, I had missed my first choice my a whisker, which is how I landed at my second, and I told the folks I didn’t want them to keep looking for a place there, if my marks got me here, that’s where I was going to (fie upon you Ciaos!) stay. In fact, they later told me they weren’t sure I’d agree to come along when they were coming for me, but blah… blah… I did and here we are. 

The girl who beat me to my school couldn’t go, something about a full bursary she got that would only work in the school the sponsor chose, and so she couldn’t go. I thought about how she felt, because the school that was chosen for her was a lesser school. So, I went in her place, took her admission number, landed in the wrong class - and how I loved it, and picked my own hostel. The school wasn’t even expecting me, it was quite the mess. Happy mess.

Anyhow, this morning I’ve been thinking about the reasons we are where we are. Sometimes we are lucky, and God just opens a new door for us, but sometimes someone has to literally and figuratively “lay down their life” for us to land where we should. The Bible is so full of substitution doctrine, you know, this happens because that other thing paid the price. Ultimately, the very foundation of my faith is substitution. He laid down His life, so that I would live, He was bruised for my transgressions, by His stripes I am healed… 

And sometimes I ask myself, those things that are mine, now and in the future, whose are they now? What and who will lay down their life for me… Until now, it’s usually been my folks, putting their life on hold for mine; I guess that never ends… There is this verse:

³For I am the Lord your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Saviour;
I gave Egypt for your ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba in your place.
⁴ Since you were precious in My sight,
You have been honoured,
And I have loved you;
Therefore I will give men for you,
And people for your life.

The truth is that there will always be Egypts, Ethiopias and Sebas being given for our ransom. Just like the carnivore’s good news is the herbivore’s bad. And now does the grass normally feel, being eaten like that?

Inevitably sometimes, our good news will also be someone else’s bad news. Sometimes we will know them. And they will be in worse stead than us. But still, they will have to be the ones leaving to make room for our entry. And that kinda makes me sad, even though such is the way of life.

jar of hearts

When I was in my first semester of first year a bunch of us landed in a Bible study group with a former schoolmate of mine. She was kind enough to break my idealistic view of the education system early enough, for which I’m eternally grateful. Otherwise, I would have been sore disappointed with the Kenyan public university system. But she also told us something else I’ve never forgotten. She said, “Don’t ever squander any young man’s money; you’ll have sons one day”. Well, I had already been given ‘the talk’ about campus boys, what I hadn’t been told I saw within two weeks of being in campus (my roommate then was REALLY sweet and pretty, as everyone noticed, me, well… I have that face that needs to keep smiling or else… ;)))). 

I’m a bit of an introvert, I don’t take to novelty easily, especially new people. Hence some people think I’m really quiet, others know me as chatterbox Joy. Anyhow, even when I was a teenager, I was always so scared of well, boys – all boys. Not because they want ‘one thing’, back then I didn’t even know about this ‘thing’. But I was afraid of anyone ever mistaking my attention and infectious affection for anything other than what it was. When a boy came along, I was quick to say no, coz I always  wanted to marry my first boyfriend, and that high school chap was soooooo not it. So why go for that date, why should I waste his money (his mother’s money), and yet I wasn’t going to give him what he wants.

I was so young then, so naive, so unschooled and unexposed. No one had ever told me any of this stuff; don’t even know where I came up with it, God just worked overtime on my behalf before I even knew what He was up to. But I still live by those rules I made for myself as a girl, because now I have the understanding. I’m responsible for every heart I break, I’m responsible for every ambiguous message I give. That boy has a Father to whom I will answer. I have a Father to whom I will answer for how I watched over His daughter. One day I may have sons, and they will do some searching before they find a wife, if I bleed him dry now, yet I know we’re not headed anywhere, my sons may be the ones who take the fall for it. As a result, I haven’t been on too many dates… sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes I don’t think it is. Maybe if I was a bit more ‘out there’ I’d… Sigh!!

Right now on replay is Christina Perri’s Jar of Hearts:

And who do you think you are?
Runnin' 'round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don't come back for me
Who do you think you are?

I like that ‘running around leaving scars’ part, ain’t that what we do now? Breaking hearts upon hearts for that momentary high? How many hearts have we got in our jars? I know I have some; I have not been too faithful to 16 year old me… We have so much trivialized relationships, and the responsibility that comes with them… Nine year old girls are in love, and their parents think it’s ‘cute’ and everyone goes, ‘Aaaawwww!!!’ Is it a wonder girls in primary school are having sex now? What is this world my children will come into? 

When my mum was in Form 1 she got a letter from a boy in our brother school. She cried!!! Real tears!! She was so distraught, why would he write me such a letter?!  So, I didn’t see the letter, but I don’t think this boy wrote any derogatory things, just the normal ‘I can’t sleep thinking about you’, we know them, those letters. We wrote them or got them. But I envy that innocence, maybe it isn’t all good, but we’re raising a generation of adult children. Between civilization – the Internet, social networks, telly and novels – the result is babies trying to carry the emotional weight of an adult. and then when we become adults, we're still babies. But we don’t listen; we want to make all the mistakes ourselves, coz our folks don’t know what they’re saying.

Can you honestly get your heart broken thrice, even just once, and go into another relationship whole? I won’t even talk about ‘chips funga’. A lady came one Sunday and told us “Marriage is not for children”. Every heart in your jar will affect your marriage, every meaningless fling, every friends-with-benefit, every relationship that didn’t work. This guy, Richard Cohen, wrote for the Washington Post years back about this open marriage couple (quoted by Chuck Swindoll):

Open Marriage… Broken Marriage

“There were these couples I know. They were open. They were honest. They were having affairs. They were not sneaking around (applause), they were not lying (applause), they were being honest (whistles). Everyone agreed that it was wonderful. The men agreed and the women agreed and I agreed and it all made you wonder.

Then they split. There was something wrong. Invariably someone couldn't take it. It had nothing to do with the head. The head understood. It was the heart; it was - you should pardon the expression - broken.

It all made you think. It made you think that maybe there are things we still don't know about men and women and maybe before we spit in the eye of tradition we ought to know what we're doing. I have some theories and one of them is that one of the ways you measure love is not with words, but with actions, with commitment, with what you are willing to give up, with what you are willing to share with no one else.”

Are we experts on the human psyche? Do some of us know more about human beings the rest of humanity doesn't? Do we know what we are doing? God, forgive my ignorance… forgive my ignorance…

Who do you think you are, running around leaving scars,

Collecting your jar of hearts, tearing love apart…

i want a heart that forgives

I had a friend once, one of those people you just know are supposed to be your friend forever. She was as good as they came. Maybe she didn't have it all figured out, who does anyhow, but she always tried. Most of the time she didn't make it, but she would try again. All the odds were stacked against her, that one, and I mean every single one of them. She is perhaps one of the greatest people I know. Then one day we had a misunderstanding. I may not have been all right, but she was wrong, so anyhow we stopped talking. She was one of those people, I know she had a few friends, but almost none of them were available when she neeeded them to be, so almost always I was worried about her, with little I could do. I think about her, more often than I'd like,because I still worry. Love is not a switch you can just turn off. At the time we stopped talking I was so convinced that I was right, that I was justified, but now I'm just thinking, "Does it really matter?" 
Last Sunday in church we were learning about Jesus Christ's death, and the things He went through just before He died. He was betrayed by Peter, and before I just looked at that at face value, so I learnt something new. Of all His disciples, only Peter was over 30, like Him. In their time, anyone under 30 could not have inherited property, didn't pay tax and was not allowed to testify in court. So when Jesus was arrested, only Peter could have spoken out on His behalf. Imagine that, being denied by one of your best friends, the only one who could save your hide. I cannot imagine the extent of such pain, my disagreement with my friend dims a millionfold in comparison.
I ran into Kevin LeVar's song by chance, but it has got such powerful words that song. I want a heart that forgives:

I want a heart that forgives
A heart full of love
One with compassion just like Yours above
One that overcomes evil with goodness and love
Like it never happened, never holding a grudge
I want a heart that forgives that lives and lets live
One that keeps loving over and over again
One that men can’t offend
Because Your Word is within
One that loves without price, like You Lord Jesus Christ
I want a heart that loves everybody....even my enemies

I want to love like You, be like You, just like You did
I want a heart that forgives,

I want a heart that forgives!
When the ones that are closest, that I’ve known the longest, hurt me the most;
I still wanna love them just like You love me
Even though I’m hurting
I want a heart that forgives
When the pain is so deep, it’s so hard to speak, about it to anyone
Just like Your Son, I give up my right to hold it against them with hatred inside
I want a heart that loves everybody....even my enemies...

Those cliched people say that those who are closest to you more often hurt you the most. And betryal isn't easy to forget. But that pain, Jesus felt it too. And He gave up His right to hold it against them. I should too. Maybe she was wrong, maybe I was right, but the heart that loves like Jesus, it doesn't really care about that. Jesus didn't. And because He didn't neither should I. I should call her, my friend, I should call her.

if the foundations be destroyed...

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

Ps 11:3

Earlier this evening I set out to do some sudoku puzzle, that very involving logic puzzle. So I was just about done, and was feeling very proud, when I discovered I had just input the same digit twice in one line, all logic leading until that point had seemed rock solid,  I could not see why the math was not coming together , so I had to erase the whole thing and start from scratch. Of course I decided that my life does not really depend on this here one puzzle, and I lay it aside for more constructive self-driven activities.

Nevertheless it got me thinking about this whole state I found myself in – the whole being stuck in the middle. The resemblance to the puzzle I was doing was astounding. The game, for those unfamiliar, is a 9 by 9 square puzzle, so it has 9 rows, 9 columns and nine 3 by 3 smaller squares. The objective is to fill up those squares with the numbers 1 to 9 such that all digits appear once in every row, every column and every 3 by 3 square. It’s purely a game of logic. So back to my earlier point, I discovered that maybe when I started out, I may have been logically sound in my reasoning, following the clues I’d been given -  in the puzzle they give you a few numbers to get you going. But somewhere along the way, and I don’t know where exactly, some flawed logic found its way in. And so, from that point, no matter  how correct the inferences may have been, the answers, the decisions made, the conclusions drawn, none of them could have been correct, because they were based on wrong data in the first place. And when that happens, it’s easier to just erase it all and take it up from the start, moving once again from what’s known to the unknown, this time with the advantage of hindsight.

If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? So it turns out that the solution to all my dilemmas is really very simple: take it from the top. It’s always the simple commands that are the hardest to obey though. But like a wise man I have come to greatly rely on in recent times said:

The Lord will not go after you, He will not plead, but every time He meets you on that point He will simply repeat, “If you really mean what you say, those are the conditions, sell all you have. Turn it all over to me.” Undress yourself before God of everything that might be a possession, until you are a mere conscious human being, then give God that.

It turns out it isn’t as much an issue of “How close can I get to my surrender without losing all control” as much as it is an issue of how yielded I’m willing to be, how capable I am of losing all control, how willing I am to give up my right to own myself (which is indeed rightfully mine) for the “goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”. It’s the ability to say, like Paul, everything is permissible, everything is lawful, but not everything is beneficial, not everything is expedient, I will not be brought under the power of any. Others may, but I can’t. Now, that right there, that is the real foundation. That is where the math must begin.