Waterfalling
Spilling my heart to y'all.
We can hear things our whole lives and never really understand them until they become relevant to where are in life.
Love is emotion. Love is dangerous. Love comes from the heart, and I understand why we are to guard our hearts so carefully.
Romance movies are trash. Romance movies are fiction. Romance movies are simply an appeal to Pathos to attract viewers. They're worthless, and I sometimes think they are vain. Love is not everything. Love cannot be contained in an hour and half of video. Love cannot be displayed by man when it was created by God. These movies glamorize love like people try to glamorize being rich. They have no substance. Two people meet and then 1 month later they declare their love for each other and kiss. The movie ends and gooey sap fills our hearts.
If I have learned anything in the past four and a half months, I would have to say that relationships don't fix us. Relationships can't complete us. Relationships aren't meant to define us. Relationships are meant to change us. Relationships help us grow. And we have all had relationships that end much to our dismay, but we all change after them, right?
Change is good. I believe that now. I know that we can't be stuck in the moment and stay in one place. We can't be a child forever. God wants us to grow. But he wants us to grow towards the light. Like plants lean toward the direction of the sun, God wants us to grow and press closer and closer to Christ. We can't do this if we get caught up in love and romance and everything the world tells us that love is.
We can't dwell on romance more than we focus on God.
I just can't.
I don't tell y'all this for the purpose of attacking anyone or pointing people out. I tell you this because I'm living it.
I call myself a hopeless romantic, but really I'm just a young woman who is in love with the idea of being in love. I love love, and I don't want to anymore. I don't want to push love away, but I don't want to shrug off God because I want to be loved by a person. I look at love and want a relationship, but I look at God, and I realize his love is all I need. I don't need love from anybody if I have his love, but I still want it.
I'm a writer, obviously, and for a long time I wanted to write Teen Christian Fiction Romance. I read teen romance books and enjoyed them thoroughly. But I'm tired of them. I'm tired of girls and boys meeting and liking each other and "falling in love". I'm tired of love stories that put God on the sidelines instead letting him play. God is not a bench-warmer. God is the coach. The coach is on the sidelines, yes, but the coach makes the team. God makes the relationship. Books don't do that. I want books to do that. So I gave up the dream of writing love stories. I'll let somebody else write those. I honestly don't feel comfortable writing flirting scenes or kissing scenes. I don't want to write misconceptions of what true love is.
I've seen true love. Jesus died on the cross. He gave up his crown to come here where people treated him wretchedly. He bled for us. He can save us. My grandparents, they have true love. They hold each others hands during prayer. They take care of each other, and they lead each other closer to God. My mom and dad work so hard for me and my siblings. They put all that they have on the table and expect nothing in return. My sisters and their husbands (one per sister of course) have true love. They share a life together and they correct each other and continue in the faith. All these examples show true love not because I see them kissing or sweet talking, but because I see them praying, and singing, and laughing, and discussing God, and living for him, and serving him, and renouncing the world. I've been blessed to be the youngest because I get to look at my siblings' lives and learn from them.
You see, I've lost sight of where I'm supposed to be. It's at my fingertips. Literally. I have 15 Bibles. Fifteen copies of the words of life sitting on shelves and in my backpack, and what do I do? I want to relax, so I turn on the laptop, and I watch another movie. I turn off my brain, and I listen to my stupid heart. Not the reasonable part of my heart, but the hormonal part. So you can say that love/romance is a temptation for me. I don't know how it started and this may sound dramatic, but I'm not doing anything illegal.
Love has been defined by great authors and wonderful poets, talented musicians and creative script writers. But they all define romantic love, maybe even lustful love. I despise lustful love.
I want to be done binge watching shows to see who ends up with who. I want to stop watching movies when I already know what is going to happen.
I want to change.
But I think in order to do that, I need prayer. I need to pray for myself and my soul. I want to love, but I want compassion not passion, and I know there's a difference. I need your prayers too. I've put this off, and I kept telling myself it would go away on its own.
Don't do that. Don't lie to yourself because you're afraid to face the truth. Don't let the devil feed you his poison because you're afraid to be wrong. Accept your flaws. If you don't accept them, you can't fix them. If you don't fix them, you'll never progress. You'll find yourself stuck at the same issue. Trust me, it's happening.
Don't get me wrong I want to get married and love my husband. But love is not perfect. God is perfect. His love is perfect. If we don't have his love, then we don't have love.
I want to love. I want to be bold. But I want to love others with agape love. I'm done pouring myself into romance only to find that I've wasted time. Even as I write this, I want to go back and watch movies and shows about this, but I have to let it go. I have to leave it behind. I can't put anything before God because then it becomes and idol.
Love has become my idol.
I don't want love to be my idol. If love is my idol, books will fall quickly behind it.
I've also noticed that I haven't written in a while. I have over 30 journals, and I stare at them and admire them, but don't pick them up. My boyfriend would tell you it's because I buy them without knowing if I'll ever use them. I'll use them. Someday. But my point here is that I know when I have lost my zeal for God. It is evidenced by the dusty journals and the blank pages. I hear the silence of the pages and the cries of the drying ink in the typewriter. If I didn't have God, I wouldn't have a reason to write. So when I don't write, that means I've lost God. No, not lost. I've left God.
Left.
I never thought I would do that. I always thought leaving God would be a big show. Walking away literally. But it's not. Leaving can be can dividing your heart into counties and using connecting bridges to transfer to one county to another. But our hearts are not meant to look like maps. Our hearts are dartboards. The bulls eye is God and with the middle the rest is pointless. (literally no points)
How do I find my way back? I open the Bible and turn the pages. I smell the ink and run my hand over the pages. I breath in the scent as if that's enough. It's not enough. It will NEVER be enough.
I want more of God.
I need more of God.
I want to cast down my idol. I must.
All I ask is that you help me. I'm not good at asking for help. Another one of my flaws.
Confession: Going up during church service scares me. I've thought about it every Sunday for months. My heart races, but I tell myself it's okay to not go because they'll pray anyway. So I need to open up here. Ironically, for the whole world to see.
I'm not perfect.
I never have been.
I never will be.
I'm flawed, and I need prayers.
So please, pray not only for me, but for everybody in this world blinded by love or lust. Blinded even to their blindness.
I wrote this poem a while ago, and I find it convenient:
We can hear things our whole lives and never really understand them until they become relevant to where are in life.
Love is emotion. Love is dangerous. Love comes from the heart, and I understand why we are to guard our hearts so carefully.
Romance movies are trash. Romance movies are fiction. Romance movies are simply an appeal to Pathos to attract viewers. They're worthless, and I sometimes think they are vain. Love is not everything. Love cannot be contained in an hour and half of video. Love cannot be displayed by man when it was created by God. These movies glamorize love like people try to glamorize being rich. They have no substance. Two people meet and then 1 month later they declare their love for each other and kiss. The movie ends and gooey sap fills our hearts.
If I have learned anything in the past four and a half months, I would have to say that relationships don't fix us. Relationships can't complete us. Relationships aren't meant to define us. Relationships are meant to change us. Relationships help us grow. And we have all had relationships that end much to our dismay, but we all change after them, right?
Change is good. I believe that now. I know that we can't be stuck in the moment and stay in one place. We can't be a child forever. God wants us to grow. But he wants us to grow towards the light. Like plants lean toward the direction of the sun, God wants us to grow and press closer and closer to Christ. We can't do this if we get caught up in love and romance and everything the world tells us that love is.
We can't dwell on romance more than we focus on God.
I just can't.
I don't tell y'all this for the purpose of attacking anyone or pointing people out. I tell you this because I'm living it.
I call myself a hopeless romantic, but really I'm just a young woman who is in love with the idea of being in love. I love love, and I don't want to anymore. I don't want to push love away, but I don't want to shrug off God because I want to be loved by a person. I look at love and want a relationship, but I look at God, and I realize his love is all I need. I don't need love from anybody if I have his love, but I still want it.
I'm a writer, obviously, and for a long time I wanted to write Teen Christian Fiction Romance. I read teen romance books and enjoyed them thoroughly. But I'm tired of them. I'm tired of girls and boys meeting and liking each other and "falling in love". I'm tired of love stories that put God on the sidelines instead letting him play. God is not a bench-warmer. God is the coach. The coach is on the sidelines, yes, but the coach makes the team. God makes the relationship. Books don't do that. I want books to do that. So I gave up the dream of writing love stories. I'll let somebody else write those. I honestly don't feel comfortable writing flirting scenes or kissing scenes. I don't want to write misconceptions of what true love is.
I've seen true love. Jesus died on the cross. He gave up his crown to come here where people treated him wretchedly. He bled for us. He can save us. My grandparents, they have true love. They hold each others hands during prayer. They take care of each other, and they lead each other closer to God. My mom and dad work so hard for me and my siblings. They put all that they have on the table and expect nothing in return. My sisters and their husbands (one per sister of course) have true love. They share a life together and they correct each other and continue in the faith. All these examples show true love not because I see them kissing or sweet talking, but because I see them praying, and singing, and laughing, and discussing God, and living for him, and serving him, and renouncing the world. I've been blessed to be the youngest because I get to look at my siblings' lives and learn from them.
You see, I've lost sight of where I'm supposed to be. It's at my fingertips. Literally. I have 15 Bibles. Fifteen copies of the words of life sitting on shelves and in my backpack, and what do I do? I want to relax, so I turn on the laptop, and I watch another movie. I turn off my brain, and I listen to my stupid heart. Not the reasonable part of my heart, but the hormonal part. So you can say that love/romance is a temptation for me. I don't know how it started and this may sound dramatic, but I'm not doing anything illegal.
Love has been defined by great authors and wonderful poets, talented musicians and creative script writers. But they all define romantic love, maybe even lustful love. I despise lustful love.
I want to be done binge watching shows to see who ends up with who. I want to stop watching movies when I already know what is going to happen.
I want to change.
But I think in order to do that, I need prayer. I need to pray for myself and my soul. I want to love, but I want compassion not passion, and I know there's a difference. I need your prayers too. I've put this off, and I kept telling myself it would go away on its own.
Don't do that. Don't lie to yourself because you're afraid to face the truth. Don't let the devil feed you his poison because you're afraid to be wrong. Accept your flaws. If you don't accept them, you can't fix them. If you don't fix them, you'll never progress. You'll find yourself stuck at the same issue. Trust me, it's happening.
Don't get me wrong I want to get married and love my husband. But love is not perfect. God is perfect. His love is perfect. If we don't have his love, then we don't have love.
I want to love. I want to be bold. But I want to love others with agape love. I'm done pouring myself into romance only to find that I've wasted time. Even as I write this, I want to go back and watch movies and shows about this, but I have to let it go. I have to leave it behind. I can't put anything before God because then it becomes and idol.
Love has become my idol.
I don't want love to be my idol. If love is my idol, books will fall quickly behind it.
I've also noticed that I haven't written in a while. I have over 30 journals, and I stare at them and admire them, but don't pick them up. My boyfriend would tell you it's because I buy them without knowing if I'll ever use them. I'll use them. Someday. But my point here is that I know when I have lost my zeal for God. It is evidenced by the dusty journals and the blank pages. I hear the silence of the pages and the cries of the drying ink in the typewriter. If I didn't have God, I wouldn't have a reason to write. So when I don't write, that means I've lost God. No, not lost. I've left God.
Left.
I never thought I would do that. I always thought leaving God would be a big show. Walking away literally. But it's not. Leaving can be can dividing your heart into counties and using connecting bridges to transfer to one county to another. But our hearts are not meant to look like maps. Our hearts are dartboards. The bulls eye is God and with the middle the rest is pointless. (literally no points)
How do I find my way back? I open the Bible and turn the pages. I smell the ink and run my hand over the pages. I breath in the scent as if that's enough. It's not enough. It will NEVER be enough.
I want more of God.
I need more of God.
I want to cast down my idol. I must.
All I ask is that you help me. I'm not good at asking for help. Another one of my flaws.
Confession: Going up during church service scares me. I've thought about it every Sunday for months. My heart races, but I tell myself it's okay to not go because they'll pray anyway. So I need to open up here. Ironically, for the whole world to see.
I'm not perfect.
I never have been.
I never will be.
I'm flawed, and I need prayers.
So please, pray not only for me, but for everybody in this world blinded by love or lust. Blinded even to their blindness.
I wrote this poem a while ago, and I find it convenient:
Real Love
Love will never fulfill us
when we get it from a man.
Love will never complete us
when we take their hand.
Love will never satisfy us
when we satisfy a man.
Love is more than kisses,
more than hugs,
and more than touches.
Love is more than families,
more than friends,
and more than marriages.
Love is not love
if God is not present.
Love is not love
if we keep it within us.
Love is not love
if we accept the sins of others.
Love is love
when we are honest with each other.
Love is love
when our souls are tied together.
So here it is, my heart on a web page. Do with it what you will.
With all my heart and my sincerest love,
JesusFreak
JesusFreak
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