psalm 23

"though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death; i won't fear. because You're with me..." psalm 23:4
i've come to see that His hand was with me through the last year and a half when life seemed the darkest. we walked through death together, and He brought me to the other side. and now...
"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies..." psalm 23:5

it's so hard to reconcile this, when i feel like i'm my own enemy. when the battles i wage are against myself. when my war against my flesh is my waking thought, my step that leads me down to my daily destruction. i want to destroy myself...
the weird thing is, He wants that too.
we're in the same battle. but our wars are on different fronts. i must die, on that matter, we can agree. but in place of my death.... He must be what lives. when i tear down all the walls and peel back the layers, i don't want to just desire a wrecked amanda, a weak amanda, a little girl lost amanda. i am all those. but His power is made all the more perfect in my weakness. He put order to my destruction; for He is stronger. He cradles that little girl: He's the father she never had.
He rewrites my story.
someday i'm not going to be physically uncomfortable at the thought of sitting at a meal with Jesus. when i'll be able to stare her (myself, my enemy, my disorder) in the face and realize that the Jesus sitting next to me is stronger than the enemy holding captive what i believe. when the voice with fingernails squeezing piercing my heart isn't resounding.. defeaning my ears.
but i can't get there on my own. and i don't want that all the time. and i don't know what to do with the moments i don't.

He is my shepard. He will lead me. He will answer.

spiral theory

“i just can’t give up now. i’ve come too far from where i started from..

nobody told me this road would be easy,

but i don’t believe He’s brought me this far to leave me.”

 

it’s easy. unbelief is easy. doubt.. it’s easy. the road without the struggle, yes, that’s the easy route.

 

even as i began to write this, my heart aches for a road map. hearing the voice of God is much more difficult than reading the directions i’ve written for my life. it’s hard to wait. and it’s hard to not have the answers to the questions that are stirring in my heart.

 

i want to know the path. i’m impatient for what’s next. but really, i’m having a hard time not knowing if this waiting, and listening, and hearing is taking me the right way. if what i’m hearing is me 

or God. in the midst of the talking i’m doing, i’m trying to decipher a voice more knowing than my own. i feel like i’m talking in circles. and frustrated that my circular talk, clearly, gets me nowhere.

 

and then i fall down, and i wonder how to get back up. i look at the last year and half and i get frustrated. i start to ponder how many circles of thinking, created patterns of misaction, creating kaleidoscopes of mistakes that make me dizzy in retrospect and make me tired for the future. i want to be excited. i think that might be about shifting that circular thinking… to spiral thinking.

 

“spiral thinking.”

                life is like a spiral. you can never experience the same thing twice. we’re always moving, always lengthening the spiral. even if you get around the curve and you feel like you’re in the same place… you aren’t. you are never is the same place. you’ve moved outward and onward, to anoth

er ring of the spiral.

               

this spiral that has been the journey of the last couple years of my life is still moving. it’s moving on the good days, the bad days, and the days when i want the world to simply halt so that i can catch up. this spiral that is life never stands still no matter the pleasantries with which we beg it or the maneuvers we attempt to outsmart it. this spiral has been long, and hard, and so frustrating. but about a year ago i decided that it isn’t my choice to quit—that those sorts of decisions weren’t up to me. so i’ve been living, and trying

 and spiraling on good days and bad.

 

and i’ve made it through the year. i’ve made it 17 months. i’ve made it 21 years.

 

i’ve made it this far, i’ve survived the spiral. He’s brought me this far. we’ve lived the spiral.

and though i may not know what comes next and it may not be easy, He hasn’t failed me yet. and He won’t fail me now.

"this is that you were made for."

today, i shared a very startling revelation with someone. 

it's about what makes your heartbeat. i've really been seeing this grow in me since despo, and that's exciting. 

"this is what you were made for."

 far too often, i get caught up in the lies i've believed for so long about myself. lies that hinge on the belief that i am not worth love, forgiveness, dreams, a future-- really when it all boils down, the lie that i don't deserve life. 

 but the thing is, i wasn't made to believe in words spoken that shattered dreams or the whispers of an enemy unseen. i wasn't made for disease and bondage and accidents and brokenness. 

 i was made to have a heartbeat. i was made to run, and dance, and praise. i was made to come alive. 

 i was made to be worthy, to sing to and be sung over by my Creator. i was made to fight the lies, to fight the disease. i was made to love. and with that, it would be wrong for me to live guarded.. so i don't want to anymore. i want to be guilty of being reckless--of loving too freely, of hoping for things far beyond what i can see, of dreaming dreams too big for my earthly strength to reach--freely giving away that which does not belong to me. (that being every part of me.)

 because i am not my own.

 but i don't belong to my disease and my failure and my brokenness. 

 i belong to the One that fixes all of that. and then makes me new. 

my heart beats for the moments i spend being surprised by the greatness that He has for me. SERIOUSLY?! He has greatness for me? that's the revelation. a newcrazyexcitinglifebreathingrevelationstirringinme. that's the cry of my orphaned, broken heart. not just that He fixes it. but that He makes it come alive in Him. that He becomes me heartbeat. and that He fills me with dreams and desires far beyond my own. and that those desires, His desires for me become the only thing that makes my heart beat.

so that i can do much more than this (though this is a start).

so that i can do what i was made for.

(and yes, i know a lot of this is ending sentences with prepositions.. it just sounded better. so i'm breaking my own rule.) just deal. :)

i am.

i am alive.

my story, every line that i write, is indicative of the most amazing thing that happened throughout the last year of my life...

i lived.

my heart limped, my car somersaulted, my body failed, my soul ached, my resolve wavered, and my faith fell.

but i lived.

my God seemed indifferent, my disease all-powerful, my friends distant, my family defeated, and my future uncertain. 

and i lived.

i was a body of bones and skin. drained of life and purpose and hope.

when friends called i pressed ignore because i was too tired to paint a lie that i was ok. as morning dawned my night weary eyes strained to read the frantic letters i typed on my keyboard-- intelligible words about a hope i strained to grasp and a recovery i didn't believe in. days became weeks became months in a hospital that started to smell like home and taste like defeat. i dreamed thought to which songs would be played at my funeral rather than my college graduation.

this may sound morbid. really, it is, morbid. because honestly.. what is lifeless living but walking death.

and still, i lived.

i came home expecting to return to valley forge in the fall of '08.. sicker, that semester began and my hospitalization continued. my sights set on january, my body and my mind resolved to make it that far. for the fall, i entered the world and lived beyond the hospital. i returned to the forge for vacation and believed for more. then december came and i was confined to a wheelchair rolling past the twinkling lights of the 8th floor christmas tree. the constant tears in my eyes making the holiday colors bleed together and wash away what hope i held for spring. 

my new years resolution was to stay out of the hospital for the year: i made it six days. 

i stopped making promises. i could keep going but the next 6 months played out very similarly, save a passed nursing certification and a catastrophic car crash. 

all that, and i lived.

i believe people can be desperate for God because they cultivate a desire to know Him and continually fuel that until it becomes all consuming. i also believe desperation can stem from necessity. often times, the latter is a firecracker that explodes and dies. it's been that way for me before.

i think my experience is somewhat of a union of the two.

i'm not going back to valley forge. at this point, i'm going to say i don't think i ever will. obviously, God can radically change things as He's shown in the last year and a half. but for now He's doing something in me i can't remember experiencing.

because He didn't make me to be living dead. He created me for life.

i come alive when i stand in front of 300 kids and play a character that brings the words of the bible to action. i come alive when i am surrounded by over a thousand college age students passionately worshiping and growing. but most importantly, i am learning to come alive through talking. and listening. and laying back in arms far stronger than mine. i came to colorado springs last april broken. i attended a church without knowing a soul and without being involved for the first time in my life. i watched. i folded my arms and avoided eye contact. and then in a service at the june desperation service i sat and listened to a man tell me of an orphan mentality that i clearly held. i folded my arms and rolled my eyes as he told me i was a daughter.

that night, during worship God unfolded my arms and i stretched them high. 

i wanted immediate healing. i was "ready" for it. but perhaps the days and weeks since then have showed me even more about the single sermon that wrecked my world.

i am not an orphan. but i am learning to be a daughter. but that's another subject for another time.

for now: i'm alive. i once was dead but now i'm alive. 

i am alive.

 

**this is just the beginning. i'm starting a new story and i'm excited to see where the next year takes me. i know greater things are going to come of all of this and i will be happy to share what i'm learning and how i'm growing and how i'm falling in love with God along the way. please join me. i welcome what you have to say.