In The Deep Recesses of His Heart, Where I Long To Be...

I remember the first time in my spiritual life the connection between my mind/intellect and my heart/spirit was complete. I was reading SOS chapter 4, verse 9: "You have ravished my heart and given me courage, my sister, my bride; you have ravished my heart and given me courage with one look from your eyes, with one jewell of your necklace." Words don't serve justice to that feeling - I just sat in my basement and cried, letting Jesus pour His oil over me...

It seems like those moments come less and less frequently. Or, maybe my hope and expectation for their re-occurrence are so great that it just seems like it's been forever. At times it seems my spirit man is being stirred, and yet my mind cannot grasp the meaning...or if a connection has been made, it is still incomplete somehow - as if I've got some unconscious way of blocking it to prevent a complete circuit. It's as if I'm on the verge of something that would be too much, too deep, too powerful if it was fully released. God wants desperately to reveal Himself to my spirit, but maybe I am afraid or I don't feel like I can handle the fullness of it. I have all of these wires full of energy with nothing to connect them to or to plug them into...

Last night I was reading my fiction pick for the summer, "The Four-Chambered Heart," by Anais Nin, and this line kept me up all night: "The heart...is an organ...consisting of four chambers...A wall seperates the chambers on the left from those on the right and no direct communication is possible between them..." She alludes to the different compartments of our spirit here, the different places we store certain memories or parts of our being that cannot we do not allow to interact with others. "... a place in some obscure recess, where flows eternal love, in a realm so different from the one inhabited by Rango (current lover of the female character) that they would never meet or collide, in the vast cities of the interior."

There is a place in the vast cities of my interior that God wants to fertilize, that He wants to open up, but this place seems to keep seperate and obscure the secrets of the goodness of Jesus. They seem so far away or so hidden when I long for my spirit to feel/experience what my mind knows. Yet when my whole being begins to grasp the meaning of my relationship to Jesus, the reality of His person, His character, His love for humanity (that's ME!), it's so close and large, for some reason I clam up, I close that place up.

The best I can do at times is to imagine our God as the God of a different planet alone or different people (but not me), and I envision the most amazing love story of a God who loved this people so much that He left His place of power to become physically changed in the likeness of humanity, left His throne to become one of them, and live among the, and yet they rejected Him. But, He went ahead and took all of their "bad qualities" as His, He took the responsibility for everything they did wrong because He loved them so much that He wanted them to have beauty and purity and righteousness anyway. I picture this tender, compassionate God-Man who is also the fiercest warrior, the most just judge, and the wisest of anything wise - perfection that goes so much deeper than our skeletal description. Then, He comes and places me among those people whom He loves - I am one of them, and for a moment the chambers on the left and right of my heart communicate, for a time I clearly understand. My mind and spirit and body comprehend fully for a teeny tiny second, and then it's static. I can go back and try to remember, but it's not the same.

How I long to constantly live in that place, "... a place in some obscure recess, where flows eternal love in a realm so different...in the vast cities of the interior," in a place where love seems too simple a word to describe the fierce connection I feel with my God, where my whole being overflows with His beauty and goodness and where I truly know that He is indeed IN me, and He is beginning to show me the depths of His heart.

How Old Do You Act?

How old do you act?

I'm 26. I act 16. Uh-Oh.

Try It!

You Are 16 Years Old
16

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe.

13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world.

20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.

30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more!

40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

In some respects acting younger than you really are can be quite positive...but we want to be "child-like," not 16. Did I miss something back then that I'm yearning for now? Oh well! This was fun...thanks Jen for the post and the link.

Prying My Hands Off...Finger by Finger...

I wish I could describe how I've seen anew the goodness of God in the past 48 hours. There is nothing quite like hearing from God after thinking that you've been asking and asking and asking for so long and not hearing anything back. Now I keep wondering how I've missed all that He has been trying to tell me and show me in the last couple of months. All I've been trying to do is put my little ducks in a row, to be prepared, to make arrangements, to get ready for this baby, to plan our lives...oh, the details! Over the past couple of months, after I found out I was going to be a mommy, Luke and I also found out that we would have to move out of our house because our landlord wants to sell it ASAP. In the meantime, I had been working 50 hours per week in truly the most stressful environment I think I've ever been in, thinking that I would LOVE to find another job - maybe one that would allow me to work even more of a part time schedule after the baby's born. So, we set out to find ourselves a new place to live and I began looking for work. I also began looking for childcare. Nothing worked. It seemed like a dead end at every turn...


I thought, I am going to get everything straightened out! We are going to have a new place to live, I'm going to have a new job, and we are going to have perfect affordable childcare...except that is almost the complete opposite of what is happening now.

And God is speaking, "Take your hands off! Let me do the work here, and stop trying to control what I am doing! I have it taken care of, if you will just quit messing with everything! Now, go! Relax and let me do MY thing here!"

And so...what do I do now? This is foreign land! But it feels a lot better than fighting with God over who is going to carry this load, it feels better than forcing my way into HIS way and carrying something I don't have to...I kind of feel like the little kid who was hanging on her mommy's leg while her mommy was trying to do the grocery shopping - looking for the right things to buy her child so that she could grow up strong and healthy...

Money Money Money, or a lack thereof...A Beautiful Rant About the Cost of Living Here

I am trying to figure out what makes Minneapolis so great that people would pay 500,000 for a 1000 sq foot 1 bedroom house and 300.00 to register your car for one year and 2000.00 per month for childcare. Plus 7% state income tax, plus taxes on stuff you buy...I think I'm turning Republican! The longer I am here, the more it seems like the most expensive and "too-trendy" place to be (my apologies to all of you Minnesota lovers...I too loved you, Minnesota, until about a month ago). If we were transfered anywhere else life would be so much easier! The only thing that makes me want to stay is my church family. Can't they move somewhere more logical? How do people survive? Luke and I think we make a pretty okay living- or it would be considered good in Texas...and our goals in life are not to be rich...but to survive comfortably...that doesn't seem to be an option here.

I am just at a loss...we've been looking for childcare for about a month now and have not found anything for less than 265.00 PER WEEK!!!!! My sister pays 350.00 per month for Montessori School. PER MONTH. What do people do here that allows them to afford these things? And food and cars and homes...? I know my boss works more than 80 hours a week to do so...Is everyone that crazy? The last place we visited was 1899.00 per month for full time - part time was 1400.00 per month, and they had a WAITING LIST! They taught the 6 week olds Spanish! I was tempted to ask if they taught them to speak English first...The "teachers" for infants all had college degrees in child care/child psychology, etc... Honestly, do people really buy into this? I'll be lucky if my 6 week old does more than sleep, eat, poop and cry - does this require a college degree? Maybe I just haven't learned all I need to learn about babies, but this seems completely rediculous.

At this point, it looks like I am going to have to stay home, breastfeed through the high school years...and we are going to have to sell our car and our plasma and live in boxes on the street! I just don't understand how expensive life is up here, and I'm ready to move to a more sane place. GRRRRR.

And so, if anyone reading this has information about affordable, dependable, certifiable childcare in south minneapolis/edina/richfield/bloomington that offers part time or half days, please please please let me know. Or, if anyone wants to sponsor us, that would be great too...or just volunteer for free? That would be super duper nice!

TAG

Blogging Cohort, Patsy Brekke sent this to me...she "tagged" me, and so now I get to answer the following:

Blog these 5 items:

What is the total number of books you have ever owned?

What is the last book you bought?

What is the last book you read?

Name 5 books that mean a lot to you.

Tag 5 more people and pass it on!

What is the total number of books you have ever owned?

I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing, but I inherited from my mother the characteristic of book horder....so, there's no telling...right now I've tried to cut it down to one book case, but I find that every cabinet is also full of books...my aunt Vicki keeps sending me more in the mail too!

What is the last book you bought?

For Father's Day, I bought Luke this book called, "Why I Need You, 100 Reasons" By Gregory E. Lang - it's about a baby's first thoughts...the first thought in the book is, "I need you to remember that I'm watching everything you do." It's so sweet...

What is the last book you read?

Unfortunately, I have not finished a book in a while...I seem to get what I need from the book and then it gets dry and boring...I am trying to read more fiction this summer to stop this trend...that sounds kind of "not good," huh?

So, I decided to not do the book thing in terms of "self-help" for pregnancy and child birth and spirituality, but that didn't seem to work for very long. Currently I am reading:

- The Cloud of Unknowing & the Book of Privy Counseling...I am not sure who this is by originally

- A Grief Observed, CS Lewis

- Divorce Proof Your Marriage - don't know at the moment who the author of this is either
- The Four Chaimbered Heart by Anais Nin - the only fiction for now, but I'm trying!

Name 5 books that mean a lot to you.

1. The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning

2. Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers - this one probably means the most to me...

3. The Oranges of Hironymous Bosche by Henry Miller - there was a time in my life I wanted to BE Henry Miller, or a female version of him...things have changed a lot, but I still love this book. It spoke to me a lot about trusting that I will be taken care of...

4. Bernard de Clairvoux on SOS (series)

5. The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy by Vicki Iovine (she makes it clear that it's perfectly normal for your butt to be bigger than your belly at this stage! I love it!)

I'm tagging: Mark, John, Melody, Luke, and Bob - never mind, I'm not sending this to anyone...I will not spend more then 20 minutes trying to figure out how to link on someone else's blog comments... I just don't get it, and that's how it is. :)