Sometimes the Moments Don’t Feel

I, Hannah began off on the right foot this morning and quickly lost balance. In a matter of moments life can just fall apart, I am so fickle, so unstable my Jesus… the morning was gorgeous, beautiful… so maybe I slept too long, maybe I didn’t speak enough with You earlier Jesus, maybe I let the run disrupt me, but my soul is not wanting to be quiet before You. So there’s this factor called stress that I am just so susceptible too and there’s no good reason. Jesus, we have been talking so much about purpose and meaning, maybe I have been looking for it in words. You have touched me and told me to live these words. Somehow my soul rests just beneath the surface of my skin and rarely do I fully hold out my hands to let You be in me. Here’s my weakness Jesus, and yes I’m afraid. I care too much about the wrong things… I am too sharp with my words, I am not held in that quiet place where my soul finds rest in You. I suppose, then, that I am not choosing it.

I read about the head coverings today Jesus; I don’t want anything like that or the questions to become just a mental game or exercise because I want my life to love You. I am thinking about the graveyards I have drifted through on walks these past few days, and for some reason they have caught my fascination. I am stepping out of my life and risking at my own peril the wonderment of abstraction. Jesus, hold me in this life while I step up and look down at myself: so this wonderous tool called Google Earth allows me to see this school, where I live most my life, from the outside in—I can see the grounds I daily haunt and as my time here draws to an end, I am asking myself more and more with the decisions I make, how will each moment matter. Jesus, don’t let me be just another babble on the face of this earth, the book I write be another piece of junk under a pile of other works; I want my life to matter with You.

But that’s just the thing, I am just a drop in the bucket, a speck of dust in the wind, a whisper amid a thronging crowd, a breath in a gusty wind. Jesus, I am nothing, I am meaningless on my own. So how can I hold my life so loosely as to expect to be found insignificant by most, but realizing that my heart and hope, my very life are in Your hands. Be in me Jesus, I don’t even know what that means anymore. Sometimes I feel it and sometimes I don’t. Jesus, You put Your breath in me… I hold out my arms like a little child right now where no one can see, because its in my heart, and I feel Your arms wrap around me. There’s something about being near to You that comes with the in You business… let my life be in Yours… and Yours in mine. I can’t have all of You without giving You all of me. Take me, Jesus, You have captured my heart, let my life follow.

So I have decided to devote myself to You, and sometimes that looks like study and sometimes its social stuff. But Jesus, I think its something to do with constant interaction. You watched me in Hebrew already this morning and You saw how thin all of me was wearing as I didn’t parce well. You saw my unpreparedness and You were merciful, but I was humiliated. I am learning, Jesus, how to thank You in those times when You show me my weakness. Look, this life from my perspective has two sides, between which I am irrevocably torn: one the one hand, there’s just You and me, we’re the only ones in the world and I can be as flagrantly intimate with You as my heart can pour forth. On the other hand, I have this community… I need them to be You to me, and I need to be You to them, to remember, remember, remember who You are, what You do, how You love, how You have conquered. Sweet Jesus, be the center and the balance, because I have no sense of balance on my own. I need You to help me in every step of this day because I have none of this stuff called discernment.

I love You too simply sometimes, and that gets me into all sorts of extremes. Here, I have thrown my life onto the water for You, I am waiting to see what You will do with it. Yet even today, already, I have grabbed hold of Your hands and begun to beg You to let go, let me go, Jesus, I don’t want to go there, stop destroying this, I want to hold onto it… selfish, selfish, selfish. Alright, I abandon, I lay down, I let go. If empty, I need You to fill me. Empty is a scary place to be because I have no say about what’s going on any more. So I am asking You to fill as much as You’ve emptied, hopefully all. I am off to Psalms class now, and I need You and Your words in me to be You in the ways You want me to fill today. I love You, Jesus, here I am.

 

Morning Confession

I Hannah, sit here as the sky turns from black to grey, just a tinge of pink out the windows crowing the hills across the river; already a fairly productive week, I feel, though somehow at the same time I wonder if it was all meaningless. Jesus, we went for a run this morning after sitting up late over the theology class I’ve been trying to develop… thoughts flooded my mind, my soul felt overwhelmed and heavy. Somehow there was freedom in speaking yesterday—so much freedom You gave me, and that gift/curse thing You have included with it: my friends can tell when I am hiding something. And yet I don’t know fully what it is. Something in my heart that I have been running from without even realizing it, because it has become so natural. So we’re here at the kitchen table searching it all out over coffee again; I am confessing again that I don’t know myself well enough to see where I am desiring to evade Your peace and defer to chaos over the stillness of You.

I’m looking out at the river running just outside my window Jesus, and its just so quiet, so still even though its moving. Maybe that’s something like what You are in my during this life. I have been reading Qohelet lately, and he tells me that all of life is meaningless, but what more meaning can be found than to enjoy what You have given to me for every day. I think that works with what I have been learning about Your Kingdom, because I know it has to have begun here and now. I don’t want to just play theology Jesus, but I so naturally divorce all those thoughts into mere theories and forms rather than life and application. Don’t let me divorce any more, I want to live pleasingly, and be found serving You when You take my hand and lead me through that step to be able to behold Your face… whether it be with a kiss of death of and embrace of reward, having endured to the end of this time. Whatever it is, I am living today as if eternity is now, because I want to always be found pleasing You.

I was doing the homework assignments I had created yesterday, Jesus, and at some points those theological subject charts just seemed so meaningless: I added a question to each wondering about some sort of application to the thoughts of each subject, but even still, how can I implement such challenges and applications? I guess Jesus, I am still trying to become a whole person before You: I got so good at divorcing myself from reality when I was younger… I could imagine anything and it would be real as long as I didn’t step outside of my mind and engage my ideal form with reality, because my dreams would be crushed. So I limited You there for so long, and a month or longer now I realized how easy it was to retreat back into that imaginary world where I decide what is and what isn’t. Ultimately, that world of unreal forms and faeries needs a savior too, but since I left you out of it, I thought I would have to redeem myself.

We’ve been talking about that lately, haven’t we Jesus? You have convinced me that I can’t consider my life as coming for the same purpose as You: I am here to live for You, to live out under the name of Jesus without knowledge or understanding of how that is going to end. Jesus, why am I always asking You about the end of all things? I am a shadow, a vapor, a mere breath, I am gone as soon as I an uttered from Your lips and my memory is lost because I am insignificant: I am merely the vessel of Your word here. I guess You embody Your word, Jesus, into me and empower it by the same Spirit that empowered Him. So these words I struggle to speak really can have Your power, can be considered dead to sin and alive with the life-giving blood of Jesus. But I don’t have Jesus’ blood in my veins, I am merely Hannah, and without You in me, I am meaningless because I don’t have Your word to give.

So Jesus I think I want to ask Your help again, because I so desperately want to find meaning, to be near to You, my source of life… because the nearer You can whisper the word, the more clearly I will hear and the more it will change me. So here I am Jesus, I want to be near to You today, so I am going to clear aside everything I can in my heart to keep it still before You, to keep my thoughts focused on You and my words directed towards You, but I know I need that overwhelming of the Spirit too. Let’s both work at this Jesus. Though You gave me that morning run to empty my thoughts, I need You to fill me up again and give me words to speak. I will ask You in each moment I remember, help me remember often. Keep me near today, Jesus. I love you.

 

Living to the End of my Death

So I, Hannah, don’t live the words I speak… I live in a way that anticipates my death… I live as if death would eliminate my tomorrow, as if death would be the best thing that ever happened to me. Matt said “Don’t, you can’t.” That was my Jesus, He lived with the purpose of cutting the path of this life He left up to me to live out for Him… but He lived in order to die and cut through that sting of death. My purpose is not that of Jesus: He came to be proved worthy of crucifixion and suffer the torment of it all. Is my purpose to live like Jesus and love like Jesus? The death? Well, maybe as Matt tells me death shouldn’t be in the picture. Things are going to be different in the end because somewhere is the death factor. Or is it: Matt reminds me of Enoch and Elijah, how they were righteous in an unrighteous generation and didn’t die.

For me in my Jesus, there is no sting with the death factor… it does not have to impede my life, because as I can do all things in Jesus, I can consider myself dead to sin; I can live as Enoch, Elijah, John the Baptist, and Jesus. John the Baptist had that Spirit of Elijah, as Matt reminded me also, and maybe he didn’t need to die because of the way He was living before God. So me and Jesus, we’re all about this living thing, and in the body I now have. Is my goal in life not to live holily, and thus proclaim Jesus’ death until His second coming, right? And somehow that is abiding in Jesus, obeying the Torah with my life, the commandments of the Father. Living the Torah is abiding in my Jesus, allowing His words which made my soul clean to remain in me by keeping them and living them out.

I read through John 15 and some of Jesus’ other dialog just before His death, where He almost seems to overwhelm the Apostles in that hopeful essence of His word, and see something that gives my current struggle with death and being righteous, upright before God. And so because I believe that my life right now is made more abundant because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, because I can now consider myself dead to sin and right now I am made clean and new in Jesus. What does it mean for me to do all things in Christ who gives me strength. So then if I am fully clean before God right now, my need to die to be free from the law of sin and death disappears: I am as free as I take Christ at His word to be free?

I am thinking about words now and how they affect my existence and the way I live… from the Torah whose words Paul accused sin of taking advantage of, teaching me the existence and extent of things I may have otherwise never known of. Words that were supposed to prevent, from God, good words, instructed me by the sin I was stained by to sin more. I took God’s words, in the twisted state which had become natural called sin, and I ripped them out of His hand and ran with them. That’s how it always happens when I sin, right Jesus? I take something good You have given me and pervert it by whatever I do that is called striving. I guess the strivings aren’t my working toward something with You in me, but rather me doing that death sort of living: live to die, which was what You came to do?

So how can I live, now that that need to die doesn’t exist… I probably still will, but it just won’t be the same anymore. I don’t have to live tied to death, in fear, anticipating, all my life predicated on the dying part of it, because I am not going to stay dead…. My soul is just going to sleep. So I want to live like I am in Heaven, seated with Christ in the heavenlies as if there is no tomorrow… because I am forever living in the presence I Jesus. So I choose to try and live as if every interaction is like that place where there will be nothing separating that unity, where Jesus’ death has blotted out, and my soul is at peace in the middle of me. I am overwhelmed with feeling Him, I think I can even see Jesus, just standing there with me, in my heart. And I look at those hands, they are holding mine, and I don’t really care if the here and now of life ends in death or not, because time is in His hands, as is my life.

He decided to knock today, I guess we’d been conversing
I was caught in a familiar place, blood on my hands again.
That look in Your face Jesus, I simply can’t bear
You see all my shame, You know why I’m here
You see my soul, its cut there by my hand.
Destroying my self because I want to, I must…
Instead You reach over, if I would only trust:
The wounds on Your hands, Your torn bleeding side
“I paid for it all, I paid with this blood,
but You require more and Yours is not enough”
You uncover my wound, I am exposed
And onto Yourself I feel them leave and with them grow..
Wounds on Your soul, deeper than mine,
Embalming me in a love I can’t even abide.

I said I was unworthy, I still am, You won’t see!
I can’t abide this body of death, I constrict my soul,
I withhold myself… why do You love me? I see what I do.
Yet I can’t resist those eyes, those hands…
You disable me Jesus, I have no more strength
You pry out a knife, now a nail’s in its place
And into Your hand again I have thrust
Denying Your love, I’m crushing my trust.
So there now You hang and I can’t live with myself.

Jesus, my lover, the hope of my life..
I confess now its broken, my blood won’t pay the price.
I am empty, I am shattered, here I crucify my self:
Just come of that cross, exchange my life for Yours.
I’m breaking more, You’re still lifted high, steal my emptiness away
Here it is, I confess and offer up, You are near, You are full in my desertedness
Consume all that’s left of me and expand Yourself.

Yet another hour, I’ve forgotten again,
I turned away into another shadow of sin
You seek me out, I stopped holding Your gaze
Shame has turned my face away;
I had emptied myself, but this time of food
So hungry and withered I lived without breath
Fainting beneath the strength of Your hands
I guess I’m broken, I deserted You again.
It’s an empty look of longing I see fall in Your eyes.
Jesus no, just let me die, don’t take my hunger away.
You’re dying in my place, fading away, oblivious grace
I can’t bear it anymore, don’t abandon my starving soul.
Feed me with Your flesh, O Bread of Life
Put Your blood within me like invigorating wine.

You’ve gotten my soul alone from its defenses-
My blood and my flesh could not replace Yours
You are my beloved: I am Yours, You are mine
You overthrew me and I was conquered…
You seduced me and I allowed You to remove my defenses
I am bare before You… we were always this close, I never saw.
And so I have tried to focus on Your eyes..
And today You redirected mine- my healing,
So incomplete until I live it before another.
Yet sweet Savior, You made me whole, help please my unbelief.
I love You Jesus
Now I dare, You break me out of myself…
Show Your love in me, help me work to let You break me through.

Jesus, I don’t know sometimes what is going on in my soul, and I really don’t want to risk it so often, because I keep living under death. I am free, Your word is in me, help me be free in public, with words.

 

I, Hannah, continue my Pursuit of Feeling my Jesus in life

I, Hannah, have been engaging life and forgetful of You, my Jesus. Thus I do not truly engage, because You are all that life really is. I have been thinking quite a bit lately about my Jesus and how I can allow Him to be fully present within my life and how I can grow closer to His heart. I have a desperate urge that I am always struggling with to try and feel my Jesus, even to try and picture Him in every part of my life. I am so terribly distractible, though, and every person I come in contact with, converse with, even see at times takes up the place in my mind that I want You to occupy, Jesus, the focus of my attention. Jesus, I need Your help to learn how to love people through You. Right now, as I am sitting in the café, I see You in the eye of my heart, and I am confidant that You have control of my life directions, my thoughts as I submit them each to You, my words before they escape my lips… but right now I am being quiet. Soon, I shall embark on another phase of life, a different one, in which my focus will be continually crossed by others, those with whom I am conversing: it is so much simpler to be before You, to be whole, all alone.

Yet Jesus, You have called me to live with people, live amongst, and love as You love. I think then, this means You have called me to operate as You operate, guided by the same heart principles and thoughts. Jesus, I wish I could know when You flood my mind with Your thoughts, all the time. I suppose I learn Your thoughts and am intentionally conscious of them when I have Your word before me. Jesus, I ask You to invoke Your Spirit in me as I seek out Your will in Your word and open up my heart to it. Please plant Your word within my heart and let it grow, take root, and blossom out of the heart and mind into my life. I am so often forgetful, Jesus, I see You for one moment, and in the next You completely leave me mind. Sweetly broken, wholly surrendered? Hardly, Jesus… not all the time.

So, may we talk please about You, about Heaven now? I am wholly convinced that I am in Your kingdom right now, as much as I can be, with the participation and involvement of others. You have given me this gorgeous gift… something which allows me to see You right now, with the sight of my heart transfigured into the sight of my eyes: I imagine You, Jesus, leaning over me, and Your hand is resting on top of mine… I can almost feel the blood from Your cruel wounds in those strong hands, so tender when touching mine. I feel as though the wounds are becoming my own as I allow Your embrace. Jesus, You’re beautiful, I don’t even have to see Your face to know that… those wounds define Your beauty. There’s Your foot right next to mine… where You stand, I can feel the touch of Your foot near mine.

Jesus, may we go and dance? My heart is beaming with the radiance of a new bride, eternally enchanted by the embrace of her lover. My hands are aching, I think I have put mine into Yours. Let me sink into You… that electrifying touch which thrills the core of my soul. It can almost be a cruel longing to want You Jesus, because in wanting You more, I want to love people. So now I have been learning how we should dance, this intimate choreography of a lovers’ waltz, every move in synch, each word we whisper between us becoming a movement in the dance… word embodying itself in flesh, the motions of that flesh, moving us, indwelling us. And we dance, we step into that wordless silence where my heart is just in awe of You. How I love You, my Jesus.
And so You have taken Your hands from mine as I type on this keyboard… and there You are, stretching them out in front of me. Maybe its time to leave this place for now. But… oh… I hold my open hands up to You, and You placed Yours in them… I can feel it. Heavenly touch… all within me stills and I am told a blush wells up at the thought of Your love. I am wholly enamored and irresistibly compelled… now I will go off and run, for the dance must completed for this evening’s stretch… my whole being aches to dance with Jesus. Conversation changes the soul, this dance will reinvent my imagination of Him. Here we go, Jesus.

“A great lonesome hunger comes over me at this moment for someone who has passed through all the same long, long channels of hope, and aspiration, and despair, and failure, to whom I can talk tonight. And yet– there is no such person. As we grow older all our paths diverge, and in all the world I suppose I could find nobody who could wholly understand me except God– and neither can you! Ah, God, what a new nearness this brings for Thee and me, to realize that Thou alone canst understand me, for Thou alone knowest all! Thou are no longer a stranger, God! Thou art the only being in the universe who is not partly a stranger. I invite others, but they cannot come all the way. Thou art all the way inside with me–here-and every time I forget  and push thee out, Thou art eager to return.” (from ” Letters by a Modern Mystic”)

 

I, Hannah offer up my life as my sacrifice

I Samuel 1:1-10: One of Hannah’s many times before Yhwh:

I, Hannah, linger at the gates of the Temple, tears raining down my cheeks… my world is no longer as young carefree as it used to be. My life is before me, and none if it matters because my Yhwh has taken it all away from me. I stand here, barely standing, clutching the frame of the house of Yhwh my G-d, despising the life I am caught up in. Did You not care for my childhood dreams, Yhwh my rock? All I wanted was to be in Your house, in Your presence serving You. All I wanted was to be given some task from You, something to glorify You… a son whom I could raise up to be Your servant, a child to treasure and impart Your image… Yet I am accursed by Yhwh, because I am barren. I am barren, I am humiliated, one of Yhwh’s people, I have been denied the right to bear His image in myself; Yhwh, You treat a part of Yourself this way by denying me any hope of pleasing You? I have no sacrifice… the displeasure of the Lord sent locusts of disease to consume all the fruitfulness of my womb; the hatred of Adonai has stolen from me the joy of living; the condemnation of my G-d dooms me to a fate worse than death, worse than exile from my people… I am an exile within, I am living dead: no need to dabble in necromancy, Yhwh has branded me a witch by placing me with the ghost of His presence while yet living, of stealing from me the liberties of language with the muteness of Sheol. He will not abandon me in presence, but He will not speak to me; what can I have done to so anger You, Yhwh my redeemer?

My soul is bitter Yhwh, and I cannot understand the bitterness… when I was young, I was passionately in love with You, I would do anything, give anything, and I consecrated myself to You: Yet You abused me, my G-d… in ways I cannot understand, You took my hand and led me into the valley of the shadow of death: You placed me defenseless in the den of a lioness who sought my life, so there is no peace in my own tent. Here before You, Adonai, there is stillness, too much stillness… it curdles my soul with fear that You have left me, fear that I am not fit to stand before You: Adonai, I have worn out my heart and flesh to shiver before You; for long hours I ran, when my body was broken, still I ran towards You because I know in You lives the joy of my salvation. Why, O my G-d, do You hide from me? Have You not called the needy and the weary? Is it because of why I run, from the lioness You have sent to persecute my soul? Yhwh, let her not devour my life, for she has ripped out my hope already.

I see that You are resigned to silence… is there more I must say to You? You compel my spirit to search out my inmost being, and I feel to weak to pour forth what I find there. I fall to my knees, disgusted with self… Yhwh I have thought myself a martyr. I confess, O my Lord, that I have not suffered Your torment well. I have allowed bitterness to breed in open wounds, and my life lies infected with hatred. Adonai, I know the hatred of man is not like Your hatred… my love and hate may mingle in places, but I have no mercy in my hate, only dark thoughts and evil intent. I am not just and perfect as You, my Almighty G-d, I have no right to wish harm to another. One thing I would ask of You, that You save Your face before my husband and my adversary: my persecutor sees she is close to victory over my struggling soul… my husband confused when I cannot answer him with any tenderness in my soul. The vessel of love, my heart, has been broken, my G-d… its contents has poured forth and Your earth has consumed it, Your winds have blown it away: I have no more love.

As a dejected lover, I returned to You; my husband’s love was no longer enough. Yhwh, he was never enough, he cannot be You to me. I have exchanged the love of a king for one of his sons, when I must be held together with the son by the king. I had made him an idol in my heart, my G-d… and when he could not undo the work You have done in me, cursing my womb, I was bereft and became bitter towards him as well. But You are the one who renders life and death to the womb, not a mere man, righteous though he may be. Yhwh, I cannot linger long… the sun will be up soon and I must not abandon my duties to the steward in whose hands You have placed my well-being, my husband. I will return soon, Yhwh my G-d… my being will ache with longing to be in Your presence each moment I am away, though this stone floor is cold, and I crouch by Your outermost walls.

Yhwh, be known in my weakness as I return to my home… I do not seek my own glory or independence: what sort of glory can a broken women hope in? Just work through me, I am weary already and must travel home swifter than when I arrived. Send Your Spirit in my, Yhwh, and let it guide the words of my heart, to be pleasing unto You, and the words that utter from my lips; let nothing pass through me unless it is honest and if it does not glorify You, quell the shivering fear which uttered it in my spirit. Let me transparent that You may work, thin that You might often break through… You have already destroyed me, so aid me to remain submitted in my pain. I am the Lord’s servant, hated and rejected though I may be, I am His outcast for He has not removed His mantel from over my shivering form.

 

Whirlwind of though, save me from what I am?

I, Hannah, have had the potential to engage in a whirlwind of feeling in the…. 74 hours since I stepped of the bus in Cleveland. Have I dealt with them all? No, I think I avoided some by remaining aloof. Feelings are something I still truly don’t understand… emotions don’t come to me through the process of thought… (ok, maybe I will have to term emotions “sensory feelings”) but deep feelings, which for the sake of clarification I will call thought-feelings, usually have been pondered in my heart and mind very deeply. I am puzzled, looking back at who I was this year and what I chose to engage my heart in—I was convinced God was in that place of life and feeling for me then, just as I am convinced now. But I am not the same person who was here in Cleveland last Easter season.

I must diverge for a moment to think about my connections with people: I think at this point in my life, I have more deeper relationships than I ever did in my life. My love is expanding without losing its depth, I think, in new areas. What about the past then. I am very good at putting things behind me, too good, too good at moving on. It takes a lot for God to move me to a place of feeling if one of those memories I stuck in some frozen recess of my mind surfaces again. I am so confused about relationships, Jesus. People tell me things, and I don’t know how they are gauged or how true they are: am I too intense? I know I move between extremes very quickly, I am usually always on a fringe. I think that’s kind of how it works, the more capable I am of love, the more of hurt—the more capable of understanding, the more prone to confusion? My mind is probably one of my greatest weaknesses: I can look at something and say “that makes sense” or “I understand” and after chewing on it for a while, can add “I feel that,” but everything gets filtered through my mind. And I try to do that with people, filter them through my mind too, and intellectualize it all.

People don’t work that way, I’m discovering. Jesus, You just looked at that young rich man who was trying to follow the Torah and just loved him, felt, just like that. I think people who write, maybe just me, because I think through the process of writing out words rather than verbal expression, which is more spontaneous. Scholars are stuck with books with transcribed words; pastors are stuck with people, delivering verbal words as needed. Verbal words I try and treat like transcribed words, thinking through them so through them in the same depth—which when delivery is necessary, such is a difficult process.

Today has been a day of connection for me, I feel. At 8 o’clock this morning, my adopted grandfather, a very personable gentleman who is a regular customer at my place of former employment, Panera Bread, picked me up to catch up and share life a bit over breakfast at said bakery/café. I was unsure of what to expect, because sometimes the conversation is more of a surface level than is natural for me to operate from, but today was real: I think he and I have reached a place of understanding that even if I cannot always keep up on handwritten letters (I tend to try and mail my weekly emails out to him, share writing (he is an occasional poet as well… my writing rarely manifests itself through poetic form anymore, though) and the events of life. He has been in my prayers since he started connecting with my family, through my two sisters and me, challenging me to learn how to care about people in a new sense.

I’ve been reflecting on this visit since my time visiting with my Dad at his work (a rare treat, he invited me to come over after time with my a-grandfather and share life, catch up a bit, etc.): I really am pretty uncertain when it comes to feeling out the status and depth of relationships. Maybe, though my soul is buried deeply within me, and everything I come in contact with, each person affect me, but I may only respond on a surface level. Maybe, as I contemplate what it means to be a reflection of Christ, I am not reflecting the depth of my feeling. Maybe I am too stuck in myself, Jesus, feeling things deeply but not getting an accurate sense of where the other person is in their true intent. Maybe I allow a natural sensitivity to impede my ability to get an idea of what’s going on with another person. I have been stepping back from myself a lot after interactions with people, both here at home and at school (usually because that’s just what I do, reflect on what just occurred in an interaction as well as when such contemplation is triggered by a ‘confrontation’ by another…  brought to me attention as to how I was perceived, or could be perceived).

Jesus, do I really not know how to love people? Forgive me if I mingle the two lengthy conversations I’ve been having with others so far today with my own thoughts as I work on this, Jesus, because so many things have made me think lately: My dad and I were talking about his role as a deacon, me running of to California for Grad school, all manner of potential events, and how fully do I let go of anything to pursue something else? How much should I get rid of unnecessary things? Talking with Mr. P (a-grandfather), I realized how awkward conversations can become if there is not clearly communicated and felt an equal level of intensity. One of my close friend told me recently that I tend to jump very quickly into intimacy with people—or just withhold myself from it—and I attribute that to the “intense” way I approach life. My mind races back to conversations where my head was beginning to hurt from how long I had been trying to pry apart a subject, and being told by the one with whom I was conversing “this is too much intensity.” That’s my life, one big intense, detailed approach to everything. I will miss no small aspect, but can I get the whole picture?

Maybe that’s what I do with relationships. With Mr. P this morning, I had the distinct privilege of sharing my life with God, something I am unsure of how to do until it happens. And I know by the questions he asked me, hard things about relationships, if I’d ever fallen away from God, what I thought about Christian community, etc… honest wonderings about life in its intimate details… that it was about me he was asking, but in a very round-about way, God in me. I don’t even know if he knew that’s what he was asking, but that’s what I felt: my way of channeling Jesus. I traced for him some of the growth and the inspiration for the growth, as well as its struggles and hard times… how something about meeting God when I was young and being renewed in inspiration when I needed it, His faithfulness in all that has kept me close to God and helped me personalize Jesus and make myself more like Him. Jesus, You’re great…Mr. P did ask me a question, which You and I need to dialog a lot more on: the details of how You have kept me close. There were times when I wandered, and I can only attribute it to Your love as being the reason why I am still seeking You today.

Back to relationship, I am the most dishonest judge of character I know; I see potential in people and cling to actualizing that potential, believing it over the actual results I get. Human nature never seems to turn out as what I want it to be. As I conversed with Mr. P, I wondered about closeness… not with him, so much, but with others. If I do not feel obligation, or do feel obligation in relationship, what does that tell me? I realize I feel compelled out of love to do, say, write things to people at different times—I guess it is love, and I guess it is God compelling me through who I am to love the people I do in the ways I do; Hm. That brings me to the thought I started with when I diverged into relationship: Jesus, am I in denial about relationship?

Many times, I have wondered about physicality in relationships, and honestly, its not something I think about much, because I tend to stay away from it entirely; it makes me uncomfortable, and I haven’t fully explored why. Some have suggested my underlying theological beliefs about the flesh—maybe that’s part of it; some have suggested past experiences, others upbringing… I’m sure all of these are components. Why do I feel awkward in some relationships with physicality and not with others? Jesus, I don’t want to monopolize this whole conversation, I need Your input here. I’m pretty sure Your Spirit in me knows, because it searches out my heart to its deepest recesses… my spirit may probe there too, but some stuff in subconscious is rather hidden from me. I need You to tell my spirit how to understand whatever is going on inside me. I don’t think its normal, from what I see with others (excuse me, let me rephrase that, “typical” in comparison to others) to be so disconnected from understanding my reactions and feelings, but as I understand the way I’m wired more, it makes perfect sense with me: I function through the filter of the mind… if something like a feeling, emotion or reaction slips through, I may be lost until I fish deeper than thoughts.

I guess for me, connecting with people is a dangerous experiment of letting go of my spirit in His Spirit within me: I can’t always think about it, thoughts aren’t the only way to understand, right?  I must understand without thinking at sometimes, because You, my Jesus, my God, blow and defy my mind, my logic: I want to learn intellectually how to identify with You, I want to cognitively recognize the casting away of self, the filling with the Spirit: Yet I realize that I must take You at Your word and trust that I will lose my self as I find You. It’s all about focus, right? The disciplines that I focus on at first must stop being so volitionally and become incorporated into subconscious action if I am to grow farther? My mind can only hold so much at once… part by part I must assimilate it into my life so my mind can hold more and pass what it was holding into my heart-life. I just caught a snatch of something on the radio that caught my attention: “It’s hard to believe that someone so close could miss by so much” (on some Christian radio talk show contemplating Judas’ betrayal). To me, it’s not surprising: the closest often miss the most, fall the hardest. But they were never far away. Maybe that’s where I am with all this feeling and people interaction stuff: I am close, which gives me more opportunity to win or lose. Jesus, You win, but… can I ask You not to let me fall too hard in the process? I don’t want to ruin You for others! Let me not be broken without cause, but emptied into You, my Jesus.

 

Losing Self in Communion: Sunday at Home

I, Hannah, sat in the pew of Bethel Church in Cleveland Heights, holding communion in our hands… I was a bit cold, so my hands weren’t naturally feeling “the stigmata” as I have termed a sense I sometimes get when I get either a feeling of compassion, or just overwhelming sense of God… something I really can’t explain; You know it if you’ve felt it. The sermon had just been on the character of Joseph in the context of hearing about Mary’s surprise pregnancy: he cared about her more than for himself. That was quite the interesting my parent’s pastor painted of Joseph: He has every right according to Mosaic Law to have Mary stoned, but he choose to lay aside his lawful rights for the sake of “love”(?). Sorry about all the confusion about love, but what else could have motivated Joseph to think of Mary above himself except true compassion, if not romantic love. It must have been extremely humiliating to take this girl, who was probably obviously pregnant now, into his home as his wife. There must have been talk incriminating him with the pregnancy. Yet Joseph accepted the angel’s words: the responsibility of naming a child that wasn’t his and denied himself the consummation of his marriage until this illegitimate son of God, to be known as Joseph’s son, was born. And the pastor that morning began by acknowledging his own lack of concentration, physical fatigue, and asked God to be big in the middle of that. I return again to the feeling I got during the communion service.

Jesus, I think I just realized that You can’t hold me any closer—You are in me. Your bread invigorates me with Your strength and Your wine with Your life. As I am reflecting through the psalms in my life this week, reflecting with friends and family and alone with my Jesus on this self I have and how to allow my God to be strong in me, it is really interesting to track the sorts of challenges everyday life at home holds. I want to be weak so He can be strong, but I find myself stuck in the catch-22 of growing as I get closer to Jesus. Am I honest or sickly narcissistic to tell my Jesus that the more I grow in Him, the more I am tempted to drop away from Him; I feel I can do more, am more capable because of where I am compared to where I was. Maybe my overly-analytical mind is my greatest strength-weakness, but there are times when I appreciate the ability to draw my thoughts aloof from the situations of life and see that I am less “capable” in world terms, the tangible stuff, than I used to be. My faith is growing far more slowly than I am becoming incapable. I am trying to learn what it means to be dependent on the Spirit for every move I make, every thought I think. I have learned intellectually that it isn’t “trying” that accomplishes anything, but I still need to realize that in my life. I think the heart is trying to feel it out this week.

I found myself reflecting on my wicked long run yesterday morning (I could get far too used to having an hour and thirty-five minutes everyday set aside just like that to talk with Jesus, but unfortunately, my body isn’t that strong yet… 10.6 miles takes a lot out of me, and life is busy! As it should be)… reflecting that I am not the same person who left home again in December… or came back from working with the City Mission, or left for Davis College in Fall 2006. I cannot live the same way I used to. I am learning more than what it means now; I am learning about feelings, how to experience things, how to allow myself to be changed—how to really love. I have a tendency to try and trust too much; I have an ideal in my mind, a perception of potentiality and a hope to see that potential actualized in everyone I come in contact with. But this is unrealistic idealism: I cannot inspire anyone to anything. There is only so much I can try and see a dream worked out for a person before they must take over: I cannot be the Holy Spirit to anyone, energize anyone. Nor can I for myself, either. Adrenaline only lasts for so long. I am very tempted to try and spend myself more this week than rest. I think I have a good chance at that having run 15 miles already, sleeping my average 5 hrs per night, and having quite the intense social calendar this week. But while there are people to see and things to be accomplished, I think this trip, I am not stressed because I realize its about seeing God more through the relationships I’m working on cultivating now.

Maybe I should listen to the conversation I had with the Rabbi last week and stop focusing so much on the losing of self and just do, focus on my Jesus by loving people, tapping into where they are in their situations, and I will get lost in the way. I lost my heart to the dear people at Davis College, as much I can never expect them to love me back as intensely. Other people loving me is a challenge… but relationship truly is a two-way street. So how can I be intentional about my doing for Jesus out of a heart of love, but cease in all the trying to manufacture the Spirit. I need to just be in Him; Jesus, should I stop asking how and just explore You? I think you’ve given me enough tools… but guide me, Spirit, move me, Jesus, connect this heart and head, Father. That’s quite enough for the week—every day an adventure.

 

Multiple personalities: Temple Prostitute for Yhwh

As I explore different parts of me with my Jesus, I consider different types of women, all of which I have allowed some part of me in my hypocritical worship. I desire to be whole before my God, and thus I wonder if maybe I should explore each facet of the personality He has given me in the ways I have divided it up, segmenting different portions of self to His service. But my God wants all of me, thus I feel I should flush out my discomfort with “the memory of the crucified God…” and my falsification of Him “by changing the cross into an idol of our driving practical optimism in various crusades. I have many an apathy in my soul, which I have manufactured by placating my soul’s thirst for Yhwh with everything from spiritual adultery to misguided idolatry in attempt to worship my G-d. To begin, I will start with how I was in my misguidedness towards my Jesus…

I, Hannah, served my G-d as a temple prostitute, dedicating myself to what I perceived to be the most intense form of self-sacrifice I could offer. I have been dedicated to Yhwh since my youth, and learned well that my life had been dedicated to His covenant since my youth; I have believed that as an unworthy woman, the blessing of Yhwh on my heart is entirely undeserved, and as a handmaiden of the gods, I was plunging my whole person in all of my sensory capacity into conveying the passion of my G-d in a religious moment. I gave myself over to the experiencing of Yhwh, seeking to be a vessel of His love: I became the bridge by which others might be united with the Almighty through participating in psychophysical rites. As the lowest of all creation, a woman, my G-d exalts me through my self-degradation—Yhwh consecrated me as the highest means of unity with Him, enabling others to feel Him

At the gates of the temple I waited, an eager servant to draw others close to my Yhwh… Some labeled me a radical, but the prophets of my Yhwh, called for the complete disclosure of self before Yhwh. Thus through me, through my humiliation as a holy harlot, I fulfilled the whole person as Yhwh would…their needs, their desires, their passions. My spiritual harlotry embodied the satisfaction of Yhwh to His worshipper. It was beneath that altar, an image of defiled cross, where I became Asherah the consort of Yhwh to satisfy His worshippers with religious feelings in the forms they found most attractive. And as I worshipped through the sacrifice of my very self, my body and my spirit, I found that I did not feel any closer to this mystery of Yhwh… any nearer to the Lover I craved for my soul. As a priestess embodying the feminine side of Yhwh to the men who sought His nearness, I in turn sought Him in them. But the Yhwh I desired was never present in the men who were to bring me near to Him as I was to usher in His presence through the sacrifice of my self: my spirit only groaned as if bound in torment under the agony of my body.

Did I misunderstand the humility, I who poured out my soul full of passion to pursue closeness with my G-d? My soul lingered at the gate of the temple, growing weary under the berating demands of Yhwh through the men, those worshippers. I grew sick within myself, the brutality of their raw desires seeming less and less like worship each day of my service. But no rest for a slave of the G-d; how could I be rescued from the very Yhwh who gave me life, even if He tore me into a thousand pieces and killed a little more of my soul each day. One day, I leaned against the pillar of the temple, my weak body unable to bear itself up, but still fulfilling my obligation to the G-d. As a worshiper approached, I fished my broken soul up out of the dust, but even the dust was too heavy a weight to lift off in my emptied state. It was a rabbi, one like many who come to this temple to approach Yhwh, though this one walked far too shamelessly to be a young man burning with a passion for “worship”. He approached me—this was one of those celibate types, I could tell, who would never come near enough to Yhwh… he was a ready convert to be experience the ecstasy of Yhwh.

But I was too weak to solicit him, too weak to offer myself up to bear him in the passion of Yhwh. Had I failed my G-d, must I now take my life, having lost the joy of service when all I had ever done was desire that Yhwh’s name should be uplifted in His temple, proclaimed by all who came in went; to usher in His experience and help others realize the bliss through which life might become more real. This was the Rabbi Yehoshua of whom I had heard… who served Yhwh as a heretic, I was told, who refused to enter such temples as mine, because he preached that Yhwh was not bound up with a whorehouse. He preached the kingdom of God as a figment of spiritual relationship, but not one where such self-sacrifice was made. What an opportunity I would have had, I would have thrown away my wounded soul to draw him into the presence of Yhwh. But I was too weak, my feet slid from under me, and I grew dizzy, leaning against the stones where I had poured out my all as worship to Yhwh—but my all, my very self was not enough.

Yehoshua knelt beside me, Hannah, the whore of Yhwh who was so ungrateful as to feel abused by His mercy, which offers me a place in His presence. Child, he addresses me, this is no sort of death to suffer. Your G-d requires you to lay down your life, not to take it up in my work—you are not a suitable sacrifice. I am too broken to argue… my soul knows the truth of his words, I cannot be earning my salvation as an ungrateful sinner, a self-righteous spiritual prostitute who believed with all sincerity that such a life was worship to Yhwh. My eyes are opened… I see a crowd flocked behind Yehoshua; they stare with disdain at the closeness of His proximity to my broken self. I am without hope, I have spent all myself in vanity, I find… and all my labors have done is to dig a hole to deep to extricate myself from.

Yehoshua disgraced himself before me by offering the most humble of offerings to save my life when I could not even realize that I needed saving. Thus he became foolish to me by walking onto my plane far beneath me, and asking me to start moving into the arms of a faithful, Divine Lover when I did not realize all the others were abusing me. You offered to let me find myself if I would be willing to lay it down for You, sacrifice my heart and all I deem success just to go deeper and really love You. Humility, Jesus: You give me this picture of such contradiction: passivity and passion… one who defies all the words I try and use to picture You in my own heart and mind. As I explore Your personality, Your self, I see how You had the perfect personality to love people the way You did; to step out of Heaven and humiliate Yourself on that cross before thousands of people. You defined from me the ideal of leadership… lowering Yourself beneath the very self which deserved a crucifixion for my unintentional idolatry.

I was the temple harlot, worshiping my God through the glorified destruction of self, and yet this was still narcissistic idolatry, because I made myself a co-redemptrix with Yhwh, a businesss I had no part in. My optimistic intent of becoming the self-sacrificing Yehoshua was destroyed through the empty cycle I found my worship to become. I was hopeless and helpless until Yehoshua removed my means of worship and drew me into magnification of His glory. Yet the temple still draws… as sick as it seems, the dead whore can be resurrected through sensitive memory. Close to the hem of Yehoshua I cling, desperate to be near, too easily straying. How long will I stay close to You, my Jesus?

 

Iconography of Self: A Narcissistic Idol

I, Hannah, think I am my soul.
My soul, my soul, my pitiful soul, how did you become such a desperate wretch?
I don’t even know the first time I met You, Yhwh, how You began to become attractive to my frozen heart, my overactive mind, my distant, distracted self. But You did.
You, Jesus, came and took my hand, and You led me before the Father;

Through the labyrinth of Your love You guided me, and I was entranced by all I saw.
I did not know how I got to where I was with You, I could not retrace my steps, I could not remember how I got into Your presence, and I didn’t want to leave.
I was younger and more trusting… so willing to be romanced by You, to enjoy Your beauty, but then You decided to break my heart and send me forth from Your mountain.
But first You reached out of that burning bush and You touched my soul;
I cringed, I thought the fire would scorch, but You warmed my heart, You set Your light in me, You made me Your own, and You sent me off the mountain.
It was night when I set forth from the heart of Your labyrinth down off that mountain.

Your cloud was so thick over me that I walked like I was in a dream… I didn’t hear the reality of life in that valley until I was at the foot of the mountain… how did I miss that horrid stench, death fumigating towards the nostrils of God, and repulsive noises of sin clamoring as throngs flocked around three figures, backed against the base of the mountain.
Suddenly, I am no longer on Your mountain, it is behind me now, not even a figment of my thoughts.

There I stand, the leader of the people, like Aaron placating with the golden calf, like Pontius Pilate bringing forth Barabas and Jesus. I hear hate and scorn from the voices of the people and peer into their faces as I look for understanding of the hate, the violence in their words, in their intents; they are all me.

They demand satisfaction… I demand satisfaction… here in the deepest pit of Hell in my soul, revelry is not sweet unless it can drink freely of innocent blood, spilt in large quantities until no more innocents remain. I take not remorse in this heartless killing, I am the chief of the murderers, I am the Caesar presiding over the gladiatorial torture.

I bring forth the two potential victims; the most innocent shall be crucified by the multiple personalities within my soul, all hungry for blood and calling for sacrifice.
I find myself standing before the face of God, but this time, He is nearly naked, bloodied and beaten, flesh ripped open like a raw piece of meat, disgraced by the mocking purple robe now hard from the blood-encrusted scabs fusing it to His wounds… but I am in the place of the judge, not He.

The other prisoner is just a girl, one like all the rest before me, she is me… she looks too much like one of them to be killed in sport. The throng of my sins, the sins of my self cries out and demands that this girl go free, though one can see the fresh stains of blood on her lips, the devilish light in her wild eyes, the knife still clasped in her hand from her self-sacrifice. They, I, want her back, she knows how to worship. Kill the other, this Son of God. And I, the judge, realize that I agree with myself, the crowd, and render this sinless Man “Sin.”

I revel as I lead the man up the hill, the throngs of self dancing and rejoicing to sacrifice again to our God. I have become narcissistic in my worship of Yhwh, I have become besotted with my self, and what an abusive lover self has proved to be. Yet self gives me what I ask for… and I realize that I fell in love with self as I grew with Yhwh on that mountain top: the closer I drew to heaven, the wider hell gaped beneath my feet: such a narrow stretch of ground between the emptying self in purgatory towards the gates of heaven and the self-indulgence of hell: My self has grown to know itself too well , but if Yhwh is to speak to and work through me by the vehicle of self, what a thin line to tread, between idol and worship.

And I think I have made that cross, that God-forsake cross, Your accursed way of dying… into an idol at times because it is now an icon, jewelry, a mere charm. You have not invested Your power into the crucifix which I bear round my neck… I bear the reflection of a passionate image, a Lover dying in my arms in my own self… but I am the crowd that demanded His death, I am the narcissistic judge who could not bear the competition of self with Jesus, I held the nails in my hand, and I laughed as He wept out to You under the piercing I inflicted. I have treated Your cross, my Jesus, like a shameful memory, because I know that it was my own self that crucified You. I have misused Your cross as an Asherah pole through which I polluted the graciousness of Your name through the prostitution of my soul.

I have become an addict the self-degrading injuries of my own demon-soul… giving sway to every whim to find value within my self, my horrible self. The emaciated soul clings all the harder to assumed identity, drinking the poison of worldly beauty, which will starve me into the pit of hell. I am eating the air, I am consuming myself, and I am murdering the Bread of Life. My masochistic blood will not serve as that purifying wine… I will only become weaker as the life drains from my veins… and my spirit grows to be weaker. I have pinned You there on the cross, and now– stripped bare by the lovers who betrayed me, weak from self-righteous penance in my flesh, the scourge which beat Your back now covered with my own blood—Your eyes brim with tears for what I have done to myself: I have separated myself from You; I have injured the relationship.

I sold my soul for pain, seductive pleasure of self-injury… I have lost all sense of what it means to honestly feel anymore, and the limbs of my heart have become numb to all but the pain I give to them. Sticks and stones don’t break my bones, words have never hurt me… because I have steeled myself off from the world, the depersonalization of my own sphere of existence to try and wrestle my doppelganger, my evil twin, myself. I have tried to crucify the flesh, but I love it far too much to set myself aside… my attempts to pierce the hands of self to that cross result only in the inconsequential  scars of my finger nails, no resolution… I cannot die as Jesus and bear the sins of the world. I fall on my face, empty, before You… my scarred hands reaching towards Yours… my God in not in a machine, like the impersonal force I have used You as; Your glory rests in the broken body of a Man, humiliated beyond recognition… mourning my harm, not His… craving the love of my soul– giving up His own to buy me back.

Jesus, I have made too much of an attempt to sensationalize You in my longing to feel—that isn’t Your compassion, is it? I am naturally so backward from the way I need to be with You, Jesus; I do not let the life You have put in me by this spirit just flow out by Your Spirit. I confine it by my thoughts; I have taught myself to feel through my thoughts. You have given me a gift—what I would far rather think of as a capacity for danger—a natural capacity for understanding; but Jesus I so naturally abuse everything You put into my hands: I limit You and my obedience to You by my thoughts. You have taken my heart between Your hands, those sweet hands whose wounds were caused by the nails of my sin, and You have warmed its natural coldness. While I think with my heart, I still think before I feel. But maybe that’s not so bad Jesus, because maybe that’s how You made me. It still gives me no excuse to think verse feel—no, no… the two must remain married. This idol I have made, putting myself up on the cross and thus further crucifying You is locked up so tightly inside me, Jesus… I think I have hidden it from even my very self.

So Jesus, I am coming to You, and I realize that as I ask to get closer to You, I am getting closer to myself as well… because You show up in me… I cannot look for You without. Your Spirit inside of me will bring You closer, but then I will be perilously close to me too. I wish You would have mercy, Jesus, and just crucify my narcissism right now. Do You not see how I have tried to be apathetic to the world, what I believed to be my reasonable sacrifice, but distancing myself from You? I am torn into pieces like the whore I am, ripped apart by my very self. There lie the pieces, here I am, broken again… I need You to remake me. Is it going to be this way a lot? I just want to be near to You… I know You can help me negotiate my greatest temptation, my self… and successfully come before Your Father. Keep me humble, keep me faithful Jesus. There isn’t room for two of us on Golgatha. I love you.

 

A Crucified God Becomes Lover to Man

I,Hannah, feel You, my Jesus, strike my heart. Somewhere inside me, I want to idealize You, make You pristine and too holy to touch… yet You contradict my very definition of holiness by descending Yourself into Man, becoming man… and embracing that rugged cross. I am speechless and amazed at how You took onto Yourself my degree of separation from our Abba; I spend my entire life trying to be rid of this flesh, this body which I need I have polluted beyond despair, and have just begged You to destroy before because I know that from the dust of my nothingness, You are able to recreate me, to fill me with life Yourself; Sometimes Jesus, I would rather be Your golem than Your beloved– I have so much more freedom to choose… choose to do the wrong I have so tried to hedge myself from.

I look at those beautiful words in that Sermon on the Mount, Your blessings… all those things which just describe You, my Jesus: poor in spirit, gentle, mourning, yearning after uprightness as for food and drink, merciful, pure in heart, a peacemaker, and persecuted: Yours is the Kingdom of Heaven. You have blessed Yourself and the circumstances, those footsteps after You which we too will find ourselves in if we devote ourselves to loving You. Is that not what I should be aiming for Jesus? I have signed this marriage pact with You, I say that to remind myself as much as You… and thus I have obligated my heart to seek Yours before I decide a course of my own: You have as much input or more in my decisions than I should have. I have a broken theology today, Jesus, I confess maybe it was headed to self-righteousness… I was going after Your footsteps rather than going after You.

You are the Author and Finisher of my faith… You completed the course and turned back to run with me before the finish line. I find myself there, staring ahead at Your footprints, wonder how I can ever maintain such a relentless pace. I hear that You will humiliate me before the presence of my enemies, Yhwh, that You will pursue me harder than any other… that I who love You am so drawn into Your love that I feel as if I have no choice but to obey: I would use the word compelled. But I am not Your golem– while I am being humiliated, my mouth does not have to remain silent. I was thinking about You today, Jesus, and how Your humility escalated to humiliation– how You became poor in spirit by remaining up on that cross and not opening Your mouth to defend Yourself.

You tell me that a life of self-defense is not Your sort of love and compassion: of course I cannot trust anyone, to trust is to place them under obligation to my expectations rather than freely loving. So whom can I trust, besides You? Very few, and I am sure any human will dash my trust at some time or other. We do not always live in the basking warmth of that mountain- top sermon… I have no ability to evaluate myself by such standards as those of the transfigured Jesus I see on that Galilee mountain top. Jesus, remind me to be humble, always, because I just don’t want to get in Your way.

I would rather overspend myself than be stuck too fast in arrogant self-evaluation. I know I am nothing, Jesus,  and You keep allowing my best intentions to fail to show me the truth of Proverbs 16:9, “The human heart may plan a course, but it is Yhwh who makes the steps secure.” Jesus, You keep my step, I am going to try to make the good decisions for the sake of Your beautiful name. I think I am learning how to love You Jesus, and I guess that love requires me to be desperate and broken, a state I just don’t want You to find me in because I want to have something to give back to You. I have nothing, Jesus.

My crucified Jesus man, the God in humanity, the greatest Mystery of Mercy. Help me Jesus, to let You be full in me. I am struggling with my stubborn will, Jesus. I have this wretched desire to take on a savior complex, but I know it would be meaningless, I would hurt more than help. So I love You, broken up as I am, and beg You to continue You love with me,