I am Human.

Heyo!

I can't believe it's nearly been a month. :) Work has been garbage, but that's for another day. Time does fly when you repress stress and anger and suffering. But time also flies when you're living what feels like a dream. And that's what I want to focus more on right now. :P I can't believe I have a boyfriend and I can't believe it's been nearly a month with him.

So, ya. :P It's been a wild ride. In the last month I've been more honest and open with what I'm feeling and what I'm thinking and just being real. It's been so insanely good. Like, I don't have words for it. And for the most part it's been so wholesome too. :) He bought me sunflowers. We went to the art gallery. We cooked together a bunch. We've walked so many miles together holding hands. We ate fresh baked goods. We watched fireworks three times. We just sat in peace on benches, and beaches, and rocks, and couches, and buses. We've spent probably an hour just staring into each others' eyes. When I'm with him I don't want to be anywhere else. :) 

Most of my friends are from work (Starbucks), or from church. And it's basically been the same story every time I tell people: coworkers - suuuuper excited for me; church friends - kinda awkward, don't quite know what to say, express their love and care for me, confusion based on my previous statements in past years, varying degrees of communicating they don't exactly agree with what I'm doing. And that's ok. I wish the conversations with coworkers went deeper more regularly. They generally stay pretty shallow. Excitement. Asking about him and details about dates and date ideas and stuff. So, like, I love my coworkers, but I feel like I really appreciate the depth of conversation and the conflict happening in my Christian friends. Not only are they reassuring me that they care about me, but they are all expressing that through how they decide to approach the subject matter. Do they ask more about him? Do they ask me how I feel? Do they ask how my thoughts and convictions have changed? Do they express their thoughts? Do they invite me to dinner to better discuss it? All of those ways are them expressing they care and love me, just in different ways, and I'm so happy I've got so many people that are willing to stay engaged and show their care for me. It's given me time to think. It's given me questions to address. It's given me space to figure out my own thoughts and turn them into words. I know there are people there to hear me out, and people I can go to when I need someone to talk to. I'm so incredibly blessed and thankful for this place I'm in now and how much support I truly have.

More internally though, I feel like I'm allowed to live. I feel like I'm allowed to express what I'm thinking and feeling. I feel like I'm ok and don't have to pretend to be someone else. 

And like, maybe you're reading that and thinking "ya. obviously." but like, I've spent so many years hating my thoughts, hating who I was, hating that I couldn't change this, hating that I had to always pretend and fake and censor myself. I know I don't have to tell everyone every thing. But the freedom to be real as topics come up. The freedom to be ok and acknowledge feelings and thoughts. The freedom to not know what to do, but know that whatever happens things will be ok; that I will be ok. That's what it feels like and it's incredible. There's such an intense and heavy weight of shame that I don't have to carry right now, or anymore ideally, regardless of what happens in the end. I am me. And that's ok. Jesus calls people to himself as they are, he heals and forgives and empowers to live for him. I still need to figure that out. I've not had much free time between work madness and stress, and SH joy and bliss. :P I've got time off, I've got vacations planned in the coming month. But again, that shame. It's ok that I struggle with this and am wrestling with what to do.

I'm gonna copy and paste something I wrote a few years ago. I don't think it was the worst day of my life, but it's the one day that I most clearly remember hating being me. There've been a lot of days over the past 10 years where I'd be tempted and hate my thoughts and my imagination and everything and like go to my bed and just attempt to block it all out. Sometimes there'd be a lot of internal yelling, a lot of desperate prayer, sometimes some kicking, sometimes some crying. I hated that this was me and it felt like I was wrong. But on this particular day it felt super bad. (As I'm writing this I haven't re-read it yet.)

Background: I'm in Japan. Me and four other young adults from my church have gone to help teach English to help a church in Northern Tokyo share the good news about Jesus with children and the elderly and anyone who came to the church for English lessons. Our other friend had been there all year doing similar things. We were there just for a week for a summer camp kind of thing. Me, knowing Japan somewhat from anime, knows that hot springs are a thing and are definitely a tourist destination. Generally, Japan doesn't think anything wrong with nudity in such instances and the baths are separated for men and women. So, the chances if I said nothing were high that our team would go and I'd be forced to decide in the moment not to participate; not to go to the baths with the other men on the team or from the church (whatever may happen). So I told them in Canada "I do not want to go to any hot springs. Do not take me to the hot springs." Or something to that effect. So, you would imagine how annoying it was that for our like one full free day they planned with the church to have us drive way out to the hot springs. The whole day sucked (in my memory. Still haven't read it yet). The drive up: dreading it. The lunch beforehand: didn't want to eat. Onsen time: sat outside. And this is where I wrote the following:

"12:37 august 1.

I'm actually so sad right now. Everyone is going to go to onsen and I can't. I don't know what I will do. I don't know how I will feel then. But right now I feel like the worst. Like I'm less than a normal person. But I know I don't want to see anything I wouldn't want to see. So I know it is a better choice. I'm definitely not in a place today where I could go to onsen and be OK. But this feeling sucks.

Aug 2 on the plane.

Honestly yesterday sucked. I felt like it was a complete waste of time to drive so many hours for me to just sit and wait while others bathed in the springs. I was very annoyed by a few other things too. What is permissible is not always beneficial. To sit out was the better choice. Unfortunately I chose to give in to temptation earlier. God had provided so much and I don't want to keep living this way. Even if it is hard I want to do all I can to change the future.

God's steadfast love is better than life.

That is how the verse goes. That is what I want to experience. That is what I want to see. But I feel so torn when it feels like I need something I know I don't need. When the desires of the flesh scream for attention and demand obedience.

I seem to have convinced myself that I do need those things.

When I think of how following God will mean never experiencing so many things. Never fulfilling so many desires. Never knowing the things I don't know. I feel deep sadness.

But the steadfast love of God is greater than life.

Better than any sin or otherwise. If I have to give up the world of sin it would be worth it. If I had to give up the world it would still be worth it. If I had to give up everything it would still be worth it.

But I've convinced myself that the fleeting pleasures of sin are greater than life and worth dying for.

That is craziness.

Like actually. Read that sentence. I've convinced myself that fulfilling a curiosity and fantasy or desire is so valuable that I'd give up God's eternal love in exchange for fleeting pleasure and eternal wrath.

That is madness.  "

Hmmmmm. Not exactly what I thought I had written. I like, literally cried myself to sleep waiting outside the baths. I thought I would have gone into more detail about not feeling like a person. "I feel like the worst. like less than a normal person." less than a person. that's how I always felt when this came up. I saw myself in monsters in shows I watched. I related more to them than the normal human protagonists. There was so much brokenness and shame just at the idea of thinking about having a boyfriend, or legitimately anything smaller than that. At just a single tempting thought I'd be spiraling into shame and self-hate and desperation to be anything or anyone other than myself.

And that's gone.

I'm human. I'm totally and utterly human. I do and will make mistakes. I'm free to have these thoughts and know that they don't define me. Who I am is deeper than what I think or say or do. Obviously I want those things to align with who I want to be. Who I want to be might be the question on the table now. Not entirely sure. But I know for sure I do not want to carry around shame and self-hatred. 

The stuff from on the plane though. This is what I'm now having to wrestle with. "God's steadfast love is better than life. ... that is what I want to experience." I still feel like that. I think anyways. But the problem is the dissonance between the statement and the feeling. Over the past few years I'd been thinking like "what do I need from God that will fulfill this temptation in a positive meaningful way?" like if I feel this desire so badly day in and day out there must be an answer. As I'd regularly say in sharing the gospel we all have a God-shaped hole in our hearts, thirst leads us to water, our other desires we try to fulfill through sin are there to lead us to their complete satisfaction in God. Or something to that effect. But I couldn't figure out what I needed. And it felt like week after week God was getting more silent or further away as I was asking for help, asking to know what intimacy with God looked like, asking for satisfaction in Him. But each day that would go by unsatisfied and emptier the more I'd think I needed to change something. Lately I've been thinking like "if God really wants me to not have a boyfriend and to not struggle with these things, He needs to be the one to supply the strength to overcome it. Otherwise He needs to supply the grace to live in brokenness." Or something like that. Idk.

Like I said, I need to spend some more time thinking and reading and praying through the topic more. 

I've never felt more whole.

But the question is am I giving up eternity for this bliss? Is there a way that it can work together? I can't go back to hating myself day in and day out. I want the best for both me and SH. I can't promise the future. I can't promise anything until I figure this out, but at least I'm alive and I'm moving forward, whereas before I was static and unwilling to move in any direction slowly feeling more and more empty. 

Jesus, show me again who you are and your grace. Lead me in truth and help me figure out what you need from us. Help us experience your lavish grace and love. Give me fresh faith and help me show your love to those around me.

1 John 1:9 - Guilt and Shame

Yo,

something that I've been thinking a bunch about lately, as mentioned previously, is the concept of shame and it's really shedding a lot of light on things that I had just not even noticed before. One of the places that I think this has made a huge difference is in regards to the Bible where the concept of guilt and shame are often mentioned.

Previously I hadn't really understood them and thought they were essentially the same thing. They are definitely similar, but shame is so much deeper. Guilt is a feeling that you did something wrong and leads to reconciliation, trying harder to not do it again, and similar positive results. Shame is a feeling that you are bad and leads to isolation, despair, hopelessness, apathy, and the like. Shame makes you see yourself as less and not being worth trying.

And so, as I learned about shame, whether consciously or not, I couldn't really get a hold of it because it didn't seem Biblical. Where did the Bible ever talk about shame or overcoming shame?

And I think this really stemmed from an ignorance. I wasn't seeing it because I didn't know it was there. And now, I see it in places I'd never even imagined it being. Places so simple and yet so profound.

A verse that I'd heard over and over again and told others over and over again has now become so much more. 1 John 1:9 says "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." And I had always read that as simply forgiveness and grace for the things we had done, God's justice, His mercy, His grace and love; the legal requirement paid on the cross as Jesus died on our behalf. Us clothed in His perfection, covering our sin, covering our badness. The cleansing just being of the sin, that it was behind us. The idea that we may struggle with feeling as though, as a result of our sin or not, that we were bad, that we were unrighteous, that there was nothing that could cure that; that idea hadn't crossed my mind. But God is greater than our guilt and the requirement of death for sinners (paid through the cross to bring us life), and He is greater than our shame and feelings of worthlessness (as we trsut in Him He makes us new, He cleanses us from alllllllllllllllllll unrighteousness!)!

He is faithful and just. We are forgiven and made new in Him. Amen.

I am forgiven. I am made new.

D.Fa

Guilty Worship

Yo,

A while back I asked myself a question which I thought was really troubling and caused guilt even though the source was what seemed to cause so much pure joy in my life. So I was very conflicted.

"Why does it seem that I value the word of man over the Word of God? Why, when I am feeling down, or even often in general, do I turn more often to Hillsong than to the Bible?"

And this came out of a place where some of the moments that I felt best about life and my present situations would be in listening to one song over and over again. Whether it was at work, or at home, or on a bus. It seemed that I was most full of joy when deeply reflecting on the word's of my favourite contemporary Christian artists. Why not in reflection of God's word? Why not in prayer? Why was this it?

This week at a Christian conference I had a realization of the reason that this is, and how it is a good thing and not bad. Which, let me tell you, makes me feel so much better about those situations and about myself.

The conference was held by Power to Change - Students and it was the 5th I had attended. There were so many great sessions and workshops that spoke truth into a variety of situations from God's judgement to time management and everything in between.

What was very different than in many other years was that there was an emphasis on overcoming shame. I will end up talking about this later in relation to my life, but for now, I will give a brief overview. Guilt and shame are different. Guilt makes you want to do better because you see that you did something that wasn't good. Shame makes you want to do less because you feel you are bad. the speaker went over briefly how to combat shame in recognizing it, regulating it, revealing it, and reality checking it. Largely seeing that it's there, in the moment stopping and reminding yourself of the truth of who you are in Christ, and bringing others along to help you and others.

Again, I will get more into this, but I have come to acknowledge that I do struggle with a lot of shame in my life. When I read the Bible the truth there is encouraging, but I often read it so quickly that it doesn't have time to sink in. Songs written by Christian artists take that truth, whether a lot of it in hymns, or smaller chunks in other songs, and really go into that. They put it to music. They sing it in the chorus again and again. And my own listening to it again and again; singing it; ending up memorizing it; singing out gladly to the God who has done this in worship; reminding myself continually of who I am because of Jesus; this allows the truth to sink in so much more deeply than it can when I don't give the Bible the time it deserves, when I don't put aside the time to just speak with God and enjoy Him. even while multitasking I can reflect on the truth of the gospel and let it sink in.

My favourite songs are often slower tempo and acoustic. And they reflect on the truth that Jesus died so that I could live, that no matter what I am His and He is mine, that in resurrection Jesus reigns supreme, that He is faithful to bring to completion all the things that He has started, that sin and death are destroyed and I don't need to worry about them; things like that. Listening, literally hundreds of times to a single song like this really allows the truth to wash over me and renew the hope I have in the gospel and the mighty God who has done it.

I'm not saying that I shouldn't try to really worship God better through my times in the Bible or prayer. I definitely need to work on those. However, I am so relieved that listening to or singing Christian songs and feeling great because of it isn't a bad thing due to idolatry or anything, but that it is a way I can renew my mind and worship God.

=]

May He be praised and may I become more like Him each day in obedience and surrender to the One who is truly good and loving. May my hope be renewed each day as I learn more deeply of the great love that overcomes my shame and the wrath that was rightly mine through the cross.

Amen