Francois Fenelon and Younglife songs

Tracey has our small group reading a small little book called Let Go, which is a compilation of short letters written by spiritual advisor Francois Fenelon to those he was pastoring in the Court of Louis XIV. His words cut deep, bringing my fears into reality, and at the same time giving me hope for a door out of this carnival Fun House of distorted mirrors I feel like I'm in.

"You need not expect Him to attack those gross and wicked desires that you renounced forever when you gave yourself to Him. Nevertheless, He will perhaps test you by destroying your liberty of soul and by depriving you of your most spiritual consolations [....] Do you fear that He alone may not be able to supply to you that human-based comfort that He takes away? And why does He take it away, except to supply it from Himself? And to purify you by the painful lesson? I see that every exit is closed. God intends to accomplish His work in you by cutting off every human resource. He is a jealous God. He is not willing that you should owe to any other that which He is about to perform in you."

During these times when everything seems to exhaust me, when I feel empty of worth and identity, when I feel dry of life and joy, I get this hopeful image in my mind, one that I experienced on one of the last days of my internship:

A cold Grand Canyon at sunrise, everything dark slowly being brought into a gentle light. I am alone, gazing out into this natural wonder, and feel as if I am looking at myself; an endless maze of caves and mountains that I will never fully understand, something that seems too vast and too complicated to fully satisfy in any way, something that could never be 100% known. Then I am reminded that this canyon is only a glimpse, a glimpse of a fleeting thought, of the depth of my God. And I hear echoing young voices, all arm-in-arm in a Younglife camp club room somewhere, swaying back and forth, all singing a simple song that I've always secretly cherished. As I gaze at this canyon that seems to reflect me, I listen to the words of this song and begin to understand how this canyon reflects Christ:

Your love is deep, Your love is high

Your love is long, Your love is wide

Your love is deep, Your love is high

Your love is long, Your love is wide

Your love is deeper than my view of faith

Higher than this worldly place

Longer than this road I've traveled

Wider than the gap You filled

Your love is deep

That which despairs me seems always to be that which Christ has created in me to use most profoundly.  The things about myself I wish to change seem always to be those which God put intentionally inside of me to grow.

His love is deeper than our view of faith, higher than this worldly place, longer than the roads we've traveled, wider than the gap He filled.

It is with this knowledge that I now begin to find peace.

Cold is the water that freezes your already cold mind.

Looooooooooooooong time, no see! Well hey again. :)

I may be writing in here more in the following days. I have been given the gift of time, time to myself. Less noise. Less bustle. Less responsibility of others. Silence. Options. Choices.

It's been a rough nine months, to be frank. I wasn't sure why for awhile, but a resentment toward God had been creeping into my conscious thoughts, and I eventually realized I'd been fostering a bitterness toward Him since coming home from my internship in August. He and I are now wrestling with why that is.

So this will once again become my space to "verbally" process and share my stories. Honestly, I haven't written anything in all this time because I felt like there was nothing to share. I was producing nothing of substance. That is all my doing (or really UNdoing) and I have to process through that as well.

Thankfully I have positive voices in my life, and friends who freely give me grace to stumble my way through this dark time. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, but I feel its warmth and its encouragement to move forward.

His cross is my gain. I have understood this my whole life as "Christ dying on the cross has given me a new life." But lately I'm feeling a deep resonation with the truth that His cross is my gain when I am carrying it. When I am suffering on His behalf. When I am led to do something difficult that I deem to be "beneath me." I truly, deeply, wholeheartedly benefit from the weight, agony, and endurance of bearing His cross and doing His work.

This does not help the suffering feel better, only deepens my trust in Christ's steadfast determination to give me life to the fullest, without a drop of blood/sweat/tears wasted. Without this trust, I slip into the assumption that I am simply a pawn in His divine schemes to use as He pleases. It is, in fact, that very lie that I am attempting to untangle myself from now.

That's all for now. I want to squeeze a nap into my lunch break!

Adios, it's good to be back. :)