More Heart Emptyings
Started before Easter
sigh...Life is not the happiest place. This is a season of grand transition (none of which is comfortable or feels good). I guess there is a need for me to go back to the first things, realign my priorities, and find myself again.
Sorta like the Eliot's opening to The Wasteland, "April is the Cruelest month," This has been a cruel month, a cruel trial, a cruel famine.
C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters as the voice of a chief demon, Screwtape describes a Law of Undulation that people experience troughs and highs in desire and inspiration. Well, this is a low trough. I am a failure at relationships, I am a failure at most of my school life, I have been faking the funk with a smile and perfunctory response. I am hiding behind this aura of permanence and consistency because noone wants me now Inside I am shattered like a clay pot (2 Cor. 4:7) and really I am in need of real reshaping...
In the meantime, I am alone...needing someone close. I am counting down the minutes until whoever is going to be my future wife (if that is going to happen) enters my life. Yet, I am constantly being reminded that she will not make me who I am, I will not make her who she is. Just, like who I am is not my calling or my vocation. My identity must be made different and separate. Who I am is not what I am. What I am: a Black man in a whitewashed world, who has a calling to Black men in this whitewashed world called Wake Forest. I build bridges and contacts regardless of race, I am a musician and a worship leader. Who I am: is something that is evolving as I experience more and more of life. Yes, I am a Child of God...yes I am becoming something...My faith in the fact that God is a master potter is about all I have to hold on to. Yes, I am thankful for my friends being there. But, even then...I am still "acting strong" because I am here to serve you.
Yet, when I tell certain people that this is the way I feel about they will tell me, "Well, why? I don't feel that or see that" or my favorite, "Well, I can't believe what you just said...because I just don't see it!" How can someone discount the problem and my exhaustion with the issue in the first place? I am tired of trying to be a bridge when I feel overwhelmed. Part of me, the very human, earthly (earthy) side of me wonders was everything worth it. The sacrifices, the agony, the pain, the craziness, the emptiness, the neglect of my own vineyard (Song of Songs[Solomon] 1:6 "Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me. My mother's sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept! [ESV]") I feel that I am in disrepair, but then I remind myself that it is not about me or how I feel (and never was) but its about service to others to my friends. I don't think I will ever stop or can stop serving. Yes, I get left with the scrapes of my tattered life...tattered because I am always...always...always will to give my all to help mend and reach out to the brokenhearted even when I am brokenhearted myself. So, there is my heart. My pouring out to a God who cares, to my journal who cant judge me, to the world who will judge and stare.
Finished After Easter
I went home for the first time in 3 months(which is pretty bad for someone that lives an hour away from campus) and yet again fell into the wonderful trap of home. It's a trap because I never am really productive at home. I sleep and justify my sleep and inability to work worth a hoot on things that are important (school stuff). I find myself losing ground in those tings but needing incessantly to be with my family. But really, what being at home was about was aloneness, not loneliness but aloneness (the feeling or state of being alone...yet with little hope of fixing the situation.) Now, being with my family assails that feeling, I love them dearly. But, at church when there was a moment of just total brokenness the entire congregation heard the testimony and crying out of a terminally ill member and I am at the keyboard maintaining a spirit of worship, continuing the song Grateful by Hezekiah Walker which I had led coming out of Everything by Tye Tribbett which I had led as well...I am pushing and pressing into the place of the most High and God just drops the bomb and everyone is crying out and I am at the keyboard physically alone still trying to worship when all I wanted to do was lay down on the floor. But, the realization is that those who God calls to lead have to be prepared for the moments of aloneness in leadership. I felt alone everyone else had someone supporting them...but I was alone and just leading people. At the end of service, I felt bare and busted. And still...God uses broken people.
Yet I am sitting here in the Music Library...my heart and body just spent. Was everything worth the price...was all of the sleepless nights and crying and the taking my friends burdens as my own? Was it worth all the nights I cried knowing what the were going through but I cant get to the depth? Was it worth the hours I put in just being available. I can honestly say I cannot make a qualitative decision about my life. I give because it is all I have. I cant buy fancy things...I give when I cant give anymore. This is who I am...
I apologize for the rambling but my heart has been wanting me to write.
Much Love
sigh...Life is not the happiest place. This is a season of grand transition (none of which is comfortable or feels good). I guess there is a need for me to go back to the first things, realign my priorities, and find myself again.
Sorta like the Eliot's opening to The Wasteland, "April is the Cruelest month," This has been a cruel month, a cruel trial, a cruel famine.
C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters as the voice of a chief demon, Screwtape describes a Law of Undulation that people experience troughs and highs in desire and inspiration. Well, this is a low trough. I am a failure at relationships, I am a failure at most of my school life, I have been faking the funk with a smile and perfunctory response. I am hiding behind this aura of permanence and consistency because noone wants me now Inside I am shattered like a clay pot (2 Cor. 4:7) and really I am in need of real reshaping...
In the meantime, I am alone...needing someone close. I am counting down the minutes until whoever is going to be my future wife (if that is going to happen) enters my life. Yet, I am constantly being reminded that she will not make me who I am, I will not make her who she is. Just, like who I am is not my calling or my vocation. My identity must be made different and separate. Who I am is not what I am. What I am: a Black man in a whitewashed world, who has a calling to Black men in this whitewashed world called Wake Forest. I build bridges and contacts regardless of race, I am a musician and a worship leader. Who I am: is something that is evolving as I experience more and more of life. Yes, I am a Child of God...yes I am becoming something...My faith in the fact that God is a master potter is about all I have to hold on to. Yes, I am thankful for my friends being there. But, even then...I am still "acting strong" because I am here to serve you.
Yet, when I tell certain people that this is the way I feel about they will tell me, "Well, why? I don't feel that or see that" or my favorite, "Well, I can't believe what you just said...because I just don't see it!" How can someone discount the problem and my exhaustion with the issue in the first place? I am tired of trying to be a bridge when I feel overwhelmed. Part of me, the very human, earthly (earthy) side of me wonders was everything worth it. The sacrifices, the agony, the pain, the craziness, the emptiness, the neglect of my own vineyard (Song of Songs[Solomon] 1:6 "Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me. My mother's sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept! [ESV]") I feel that I am in disrepair, but then I remind myself that it is not about me or how I feel (and never was) but its about service to others to my friends. I don't think I will ever stop or can stop serving. Yes, I get left with the scrapes of my tattered life...tattered because I am always...always...always will to give my all to help mend and reach out to the brokenhearted even when I am brokenhearted myself. So, there is my heart. My pouring out to a God who cares, to my journal who cant judge me, to the world who will judge and stare.
Finished After Easter
I went home for the first time in 3 months(which is pretty bad for someone that lives an hour away from campus) and yet again fell into the wonderful trap of home. It's a trap because I never am really productive at home. I sleep and justify my sleep and inability to work worth a hoot on things that are important (school stuff). I find myself losing ground in those tings but needing incessantly to be with my family. But really, what being at home was about was aloneness, not loneliness but aloneness (the feeling or state of being alone...yet with little hope of fixing the situation.) Now, being with my family assails that feeling, I love them dearly. But, at church when there was a moment of just total brokenness the entire congregation heard the testimony and crying out of a terminally ill member and I am at the keyboard maintaining a spirit of worship, continuing the song Grateful by Hezekiah Walker which I had led coming out of Everything by Tye Tribbett which I had led as well...I am pushing and pressing into the place of the most High and God just drops the bomb and everyone is crying out and I am at the keyboard physically alone still trying to worship when all I wanted to do was lay down on the floor. But, the realization is that those who God calls to lead have to be prepared for the moments of aloneness in leadership. I felt alone everyone else had someone supporting them...but I was alone and just leading people. At the end of service, I felt bare and busted. And still...God uses broken people.
Yet I am sitting here in the Music Library...my heart and body just spent. Was everything worth the price...was all of the sleepless nights and crying and the taking my friends burdens as my own? Was it worth all the nights I cried knowing what the were going through but I cant get to the depth? Was it worth the hours I put in just being available. I can honestly say I cannot make a qualitative decision about my life. I give because it is all I have. I cant buy fancy things...I give when I cant give anymore. This is who I am...
I apologize for the rambling but my heart has been wanting me to write.
Much Love