Guest Blogger: Love Notes from the Fickle Monster, Part 15
We make decisions or decisions are made for us. We breathe and adapt. We change.
Last weekend, I participated in a disaster relief project. While I was concerned with the destruction, I was most impressed by the construction, the unity of a community chosing to actively pursue newer, stronger, and better. Homes were being rebuilt more efficiently, differently than what stood before.
These people were not standing stubbornly on top of their destroyed lives; these people were still breathing, moving.
On Thursday, I stood at the tail end of the line this year. Last year, I stood in the middle, positioned between a boyfriend and colleagues. This year, I stood at the end, with colleagues none the less, but my place was different. My place will always be different.
And I am still breathing.
Perhaps the word drastic is a degree too dramatic for the change observed in my life through the days and months and seasons of this past year. However, I believe my year was marked by significant change, reduction and destruction. I was reduced which is defined as the conversion of an expression or equation to its simplest form. God reduced me; He removed pharasaical religion, destroyed relationships, revealed the temporal, and redefined sanctification which altered my expectations of other people, of Him, and of myself. This year has been the pursuit of my simplest form, conversion from presupposed equations.
Simply put, He tore up a few things I held to, tightly.
He worked out, burned down, and threw away unnecessary expectations.
And often, I was a desperate to cling and to grieve, to stand still. I was angry and ashamed.
And now, somehow, I am breathing again, free to construct, and I am excited to explore and grown and build. I am thankful my place in line is different, and I am equally thankful for where my place was last year.
Oh God, I am grateful for how things change, how we grow up and out and left and down.
I am amazed we get to continue, to strengthen, to be miserable and joyful, to make decisions, and to stubbornly defend them.
I am so thankful we are each in process and get to explore together.
How lucky I am to find new places in lines.
May we endeavor to embrace destruction fully in order to reconstruct properly.
I dare us.
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Last weekend, I participated in a disaster relief project. While I was concerned with the destruction, I was most impressed by the construction, the unity of a community chosing to actively pursue newer, stronger, and better. Homes were being rebuilt more efficiently, differently than what stood before.
These people were not standing stubbornly on top of their destroyed lives; these people were still breathing, moving.
On Thursday, I stood at the tail end of the line this year. Last year, I stood in the middle, positioned between a boyfriend and colleagues. This year, I stood at the end, with colleagues none the less, but my place was different. My place will always be different.
And I am still breathing.
Perhaps the word drastic is a degree too dramatic for the change observed in my life through the days and months and seasons of this past year. However, I believe my year was marked by significant change, reduction and destruction. I was reduced which is defined as the conversion of an expression or equation to its simplest form. God reduced me; He removed pharasaical religion, destroyed relationships, revealed the temporal, and redefined sanctification which altered my expectations of other people, of Him, and of myself. This year has been the pursuit of my simplest form, conversion from presupposed equations.
Simply put, He tore up a few things I held to, tightly.
He worked out, burned down, and threw away unnecessary expectations.
And often, I was a desperate to cling and to grieve, to stand still. I was angry and ashamed.
And now, somehow, I am breathing again, free to construct, and I am excited to explore and grown and build. I am thankful my place in line is different, and I am equally thankful for where my place was last year.
Oh God, I am grateful for how things change, how we grow up and out and left and down.
I am amazed we get to continue, to strengthen, to be miserable and joyful, to make decisions, and to stubbornly defend them.
I am so thankful we are each in process and get to explore together.
How lucky I am to find new places in lines.
May we endeavor to embrace destruction fully in order to reconstruct properly.
I dare us.
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Cora Ruth Flottman is the best friend, college room8 and a complete inspiration to Sheila.
She is an actress, teacher, christian, lover of the written word and men who can change the tires on a car.
She blogs here most Fridays, and she was half asleep as she wrote today!
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