Honeymoon
Looking at my May Showers post, I've come a really long way in 5 months. So much has happened, and I seriously don't even know where to begin, but all I know is that my heart has been changed for the better. I sent this e-mail out to my intentional community group, but to preserve anonymity I'm going to just post fake names. This time period is a huge part of my life, though, so I just like sharing it to whoever will read/listen. (:
1.) I actually hung out with ex-Boy one Saturday since I was planning on visiting an art exhibit in SF that day anyway. Originally it was with my best friend, but then she had to go somewhere else, so it left me and ex-Boy on our own for dinner. After that dya, I came to a really important realization: ex-Boy was never inlove with me.
2.) So all of the above was why, when Boy #2 first told me that he liked me, I started taking him so seriously. Boy #2's confession of love was pretty different from what I experienced with ex-Boy because a.) we had had a real friendship where we were able to just be ourselves with each other before he DTR'd with me, and b.) his reason for liking me was just that he really liked... me. For being me. It felt really different from the so-called love ex-Boy had offered me, and it really felt a lot more fulfilling. I then just felt safe simply being who I am in front of Boy #2. Anyway, that's a preface to what happened after Boy #2 and I hung out all day after church on Sunday (day after I hung out with ex-Boy). We climbed with old climbing friends and then got eats and everything just felt like normal. I was still a little heartbroken that day because we couldn't be together, but before he went home that night, he for some reason asked me what Manda thought of our whole thing, and I didn't think twice before telling him that she didn't approve of him (yea.. that is definitely a downside of being too comfortable around someone). However, I didn't tell him why and told him to ask Manda himself, which he did. WELL, it didn't make Manda super happy that I told him her opinion of him, so Manda and I had a minor conflict resolution the next day (Monday). But in the process of that she told me that it was just because she loved me and wanted the best for me, especially in being with a guy who was capable of leading me spiritually, that she was worried that I was taking this whole Boy #2 situation so seriously. For some reason, nothing hit home as strongly as that did, and when I got home from our chat and started cooking, I finally realized Jesus had been waiting by my side the whole time; that He had been wanting to pour out His immense, deep, wide, great, vast love for me into my very empty heart. And it was so much bigger than what Boy #2 could ever offer me because He already knows me, has known me, created me -even the parts Boy #2 doesn't know - all of my ugliness and beauty and brokenness and glory with which I was formed, and He loves me for all those things and despite my fallen self. This brings me to part 3.).
3.) After reading Searching For God Knows What again, I had the realization that I never understood the true reason Jesus came to Earth and died for us. Or I guess I understood, but the depth of the situation of our broken relationship with God and the true devastation of the Fall of Man never hit me until this past month. We were originally created to be fully satisfied and fulfilled by and with and in the glory of the Almighty God. In Eden, we had truly perfect communion with the LORD God. He loved us with everything, gave us everything, fulfilled us in every way possible, and that's why we were naked and not ashamed. So the Fall of Man was not simply just us being separated from God Himself, it was the breaking of that perfect relationship that fulfilled us in every way possible, a relationship with the One Satisfy-er of our souls for which we were created to be fully complete, that made the Fall of Man so truly devastating. So that is also why, when Jesus came down to Earth to actually bring restoration to that relationship and make it possible again, it is truly Good News. This is truly the Good News of all good news, friends: we can have that perfect, unbroken, all-glorious and fulfilling relationship with our Maker again.
So I realized that I didn't really have that relationship with Jesus and my Father in Heaven because I hadn't truly understood that until now. And (again, referencing the May Showers post), I am so ready to let Jesus have my whole heart. For the first time in my life, I'm excited to have a real relationship with Jesus. I'm super thrilled that my Creator and the God of the Universe is pursuing my heart, and that He sent His Son down so that I could have a restored relationship with Him in which all of my being, what my soul craves in being valued and in worth, will be filled and fulfilled by all the glory of our God. I feel like a brand-new born-again Christian these days, and really feel like my real relationship with Jesus has just begun. Still kind of in the honeymoon phase, but I do need prayer to keep growing.
So that's the major update.
And then Mark Study with Steep was SO MIND-BLOWINGLY AWESOME. That needs another post in and of itself, but I am so happy with Steep and the community there, and I am truly truly enjoying this moment in my life. Even the disappointment and difficulty with this current job is not enough to override my honeymoon phase with Jesus and my GrX Fremont community. I know that there will be rough times, and I know that I'm not always going to feel so ecstatic about everyone at GrX Fremont and Jesus, but I also know I am 100% committed to Jesus FOR GOOD, and can't wait for our wedding day in heaven. Longest effing engagement ever, though.
And with GrX Fremont... I'm committed to them for good too. (:
1.) I actually hung out with ex-Boy one Saturday since I was planning on visiting an art exhibit in SF that day anyway. Originally it was with my best friend, but then she had to go somewhere else, so it left me and ex-Boy on our own for dinner. After that dya, I came to a really important realization: ex-Boy was never inlove with me.
- [I use the term "inlove" because that's how Donald Miller writes of the kind of love that overtakes a person and makes them want to give themselves up/die to themselves to love another. I refer to Searching for God Knows What a lot these days, but it's because that book really changed my life and helped me realize that I wasn't truly a follower of Jesus until about 3 or 4 weeks ago (that will come in part 3). OK, enough digressing]
- [Lol, OK, I need to give some background here, too: Donald Miller kind of places our love story with Jesus next to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and compares Romeo's love for his first girl, Rosaline - a very logical, almost rigid love characterized by the use of iambic pentameter and lunar (dim light) imagery when he speaks of her - to our somewhat-logical, 5-point Gospel presented to try starting a relationship with Jesus. And then he compares Romeo's love for Juliet - a deep, passionate, almost inexplicable love characterized by the use of free verse and solar (bright, shining light) imagery when he speaks of her - to what a real relationship with Jesus might feel like and how it isn't fomulaic and there aren't steps to follow in order to be inlove with Jesus and have a relationship with Him]
2.) So all of the above was why, when Boy #2 first told me that he liked me, I started taking him so seriously. Boy #2's confession of love was pretty different from what I experienced with ex-Boy because a.) we had had a real friendship where we were able to just be ourselves with each other before he DTR'd with me, and b.) his reason for liking me was just that he really liked... me. For being me. It felt really different from the so-called love ex-Boy had offered me, and it really felt a lot more fulfilling. I then just felt safe simply being who I am in front of Boy #2. Anyway, that's a preface to what happened after Boy #2 and I hung out all day after church on Sunday (day after I hung out with ex-Boy). We climbed with old climbing friends and then got eats and everything just felt like normal. I was still a little heartbroken that day because we couldn't be together, but before he went home that night, he for some reason asked me what Manda thought of our whole thing, and I didn't think twice before telling him that she didn't approve of him (yea.. that is definitely a downside of being too comfortable around someone). However, I didn't tell him why and told him to ask Manda himself, which he did. WELL, it didn't make Manda super happy that I told him her opinion of him, so Manda and I had a minor conflict resolution the next day (Monday). But in the process of that she told me that it was just because she loved me and wanted the best for me, especially in being with a guy who was capable of leading me spiritually, that she was worried that I was taking this whole Boy #2 situation so seriously. For some reason, nothing hit home as strongly as that did, and when I got home from our chat and started cooking, I finally realized Jesus had been waiting by my side the whole time; that He had been wanting to pour out His immense, deep, wide, great, vast love for me into my very empty heart. And it was so much bigger than what Boy #2 could ever offer me because He already knows me, has known me, created me -even the parts Boy #2 doesn't know - all of my ugliness and beauty and brokenness and glory with which I was formed, and He loves me for all those things and despite my fallen self. This brings me to part 3.).
3.) After reading Searching For God Knows What again, I had the realization that I never understood the true reason Jesus came to Earth and died for us. Or I guess I understood, but the depth of the situation of our broken relationship with God and the true devastation of the Fall of Man never hit me until this past month. We were originally created to be fully satisfied and fulfilled by and with and in the glory of the Almighty God. In Eden, we had truly perfect communion with the LORD God. He loved us with everything, gave us everything, fulfilled us in every way possible, and that's why we were naked and not ashamed. So the Fall of Man was not simply just us being separated from God Himself, it was the breaking of that perfect relationship that fulfilled us in every way possible, a relationship with the One Satisfy-er of our souls for which we were created to be fully complete, that made the Fall of Man so truly devastating. So that is also why, when Jesus came down to Earth to actually bring restoration to that relationship and make it possible again, it is truly Good News. This is truly the Good News of all good news, friends: we can have that perfect, unbroken, all-glorious and fulfilling relationship with our Maker again.
So I realized that I didn't really have that relationship with Jesus and my Father in Heaven because I hadn't truly understood that until now. And (again, referencing the May Showers post), I am so ready to let Jesus have my whole heart. For the first time in my life, I'm excited to have a real relationship with Jesus. I'm super thrilled that my Creator and the God of the Universe is pursuing my heart, and that He sent His Son down so that I could have a restored relationship with Him in which all of my being, what my soul craves in being valued and in worth, will be filled and fulfilled by all the glory of our God. I feel like a brand-new born-again Christian these days, and really feel like my real relationship with Jesus has just begun. Still kind of in the honeymoon phase, but I do need prayer to keep growing.
So that's the major update.
And then Mark Study with Steep was SO MIND-BLOWINGLY AWESOME. That needs another post in and of itself, but I am so happy with Steep and the community there, and I am truly truly enjoying this moment in my life. Even the disappointment and difficulty with this current job is not enough to override my honeymoon phase with Jesus and my GrX Fremont community. I know that there will be rough times, and I know that I'm not always going to feel so ecstatic about everyone at GrX Fremont and Jesus, but I also know I am 100% committed to Jesus FOR GOOD, and can't wait for our wedding day in heaven. Longest effing engagement ever, though.
And with GrX Fremont... I'm committed to them for good too. (: