lavish yourself

I start the new job on Friday (in politics, you can start a new job any day of the week really because you work 7 days anyhow).

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Talking with Tony last week and sharing tears over heartbreak and sorrow, I informed him of how aware I've been lately of so many people that are in need, and that are hurting. So many people that have never known the love of Christ. So many people that walk around with blank faces because they don't know why they're here on this Earth... it was nearly overwhelming for a bit. It's always overwhelming to think of good people who just seem to get a really shitty deal. Good people who are living in the depths of poverty, or who made a poor choice at a young age and are now fighting to survive an abusive husband, or young children stricken with fatal diseases and who are now forced to demonstrate strength that a full-grown man would have trouble mustering up.

I found it interesting that after all of that, Pastor spoke this morning about healing. I think he mostly was referencing physical healing and the faith behind it, but it got me to thinking about emotional healing, mental healing, spiritual healing (and it is only coincidence that I was listening to "sexual healing" as I pulled into the church parking lot before service) and brought me back to mine and Tony's conversation late last week. My heart goes out to Tony right now because I know how badly he's hurting. I know that he's hurting and not understanding why his world is being flipped upside down. Granted, there are individuals across the globe who are suffering far worse from disease, and crime, and crippled governments and economic systems, but this is affecting HIM. In the grand scope of things, this would be considered a minor bump in the road, but I'm learning to listen and to view things outside the grand scope and on a much more intimate level.
I looked around the sanctuary this morning and felt that there were so many broken hearts sitting around me. People who are suffering things in their personal lives that perhaps no one around them will ever know about. I knew that there were people sitting in that sanctuary that were completely and 100% broken, and that were, despite their faith in Christ, completely unsure of what to do about it. I felt so burderened for so many people at once that it became difficult to even stand and although I didn't necessarily feel as though I should have been, I began to cry. It's a strange thing to stand completely straight-faced with tears streaming from your eyes, looking like someone who cries just from allergies or a particularly good yawn.
I feel as though I've probably spent a lot of time trying to convince others that my belief system is right and good, when in reality I should just be living my life, purposing to demonstrate the love of Christ to others. That despite an individual's race, or gender, or financial status, or sexual orientation, or religious beliefs, I can still love unconditionally and have compassion for those in need. I once told someone that it makes me scared, how uncompassionate I am, but I really don't think I'm uncompassionate at all. I'm sometimes completely overwhelmed by compassion for others. I think I sometimes have a poor way of showing it and I sometimes become too defensive for my own good.

As Tony cried on my bed last week, and as I shared with him in those tears, I told him that we have a choice to either give up and give in, to go completely crazy when we feel this broken, or we can rely on the strength that Christ promises through Him, that sometimes we need to be stripped down to absolutely nothing, to the bare bone in order to see how much we are nothing and how much we need from God in order to make us whole. Is it a crutch? You bet it is. And a damn good one at that.

So this is what it means to be held, how it feels when the sacred is torn from your life and you survive.
This is what it is to be loved, and to know that the promise was when everything fell, you'd be held.

God heals hearts too. Isn't that great?

Currently listening : Brothers & Sisters By Coldplay Release date: By 18 November, 2003