A couple days ago I received some news that hit me so hard I truly felt I could not breath. The pain was way over my head. My mind started racing and thinking to my self that I didn’t know how to handle the blow of what i had just been given. As I wrestle for 2 days with anger and hurt, trying not to be bitter and choosing to walk in what we are called to walk in, that being forgiveness. it is one thing to claim we can forgive but is really different to lay down your pain and choose love. You could say that Good Friday this year was the realest it has ever been. That i truly felt a death of sorts. But as I sit here today focusing on the Risen Savior I am reminded that the reason Jesus died was for the breaking of sin and pain and death. I stand here today believing on the name of our lord Jesus, knowing that he is the only one who can save us from our messy lives.
I spent this Easter very alone. I longed today for family more than I have ever longed, but knowing that some how everything is going to be OK. Gods love does not change no matter the storms that life throw our way. Today I prayed and prayed that God would rise in me and in all of you. That his realness and truth would burst forth and life would be new.
I covet your prayers so much! I don’t know how to face the storm that lay in front of me.
if you can find the time to lift my life up, I ask that you pray Gods Strength in me that I might walk upright and to choose righteousness in the storms that I know I am going to soon battle my way through.
thanks much
Category Archives: Broken hearts
Sucker punched!
Masterpiece
Tonight I watched Forest Gump and I would say that it has been a long while since I had seen it. I do say a great movie, and I think I had forgotten how good it really was. As I found myself lost in the character of Tom Hanks, my heart fell victim to his simply way of life. Live life honest and full and never look back wishing you would had done this or that. There is something about a good story that brings hope to our lives and stirs something deeper inside of us, or at least in me.
I wept all through the movie, not because of the story of Forest Gump but because of the story of my own life. I was saddened tonight at the fact that I sometimes just shut off. That I let my life go into what I would call, Autopilot. I am coming to the realization that sometimes to face the truth, it hurts, and it hurts a lot, and in order to heal and over come we have to face the mountains that lay before us. Just sometimes it is easier to not feel or least that is the lie that tempts us.
I want to love myself! That is in a way that says that I am satisfied with whom God has made me to be. I am learning that in order to love others we must first learn to love our selves. That until we feel true value of who we are there is no way we can see value in other people. I believe that is why the bible teaches us to love others the way we would love ourselves.
I was talking with a good friend tonight about the way we see ourselves. About how that view alters the way we live and the things we do. If we feel small or dumb, useless or ugly it affects how we act and the life we live. Yet if we feel beautiful and loved we radiate with joy for there is nothing better in the world than to be fully loved. I am trying to let the love of God penetrate my hardened heart. You see I have a hard time seeing the good in myself. I struggle with the view of who I am more than you would ever know. You might think that because I stand on a stage that somehow I am granted some kind of bubble the shields me from all the impaling hurts this life throws at us but it is far from the truth. I am insecure and scared just like the rest of us that is if we really get honest with our selves.
But the truth is that we are perfectly and wonderfully made in the image of God. That regardless of our history and our fault that God still sees the potential of greatness within our human shells. We are the making of his hands and the wonder and glory of who he is.
We are his masterpiece!
Winters End!
A couple days ago I was in the kitchen when I heard Cohen screaming “dada” I rushed to see what it was he was yelling about and low and behold I found Cohen with my Wallet. He had found it laying on the coffee table and started pulling out my cards and well found my Drivers License and was joyfully waving the license in the air yelling “dada”. He was so enamored with the fact that my picture was on this card. The wheels had started turning and he wanted so badly to inform me that I was on this tiny little piece of plastic. Sometimes I wish I could get in his head to see what the discovery process of his little mind looks like. If something could ever melt your heart it is the joy and love of a little human excited about who you are. I fear for the day that daddy is not as exciting as he had once thought him to be. But for now I will take what ever I can get.
Cohen is such a little love bug. Sometimes I will be sitting on the couch and he will climb up next to me in just start impaling me with hugs and kisses. He will give me the biggest hug then stand up and just giggle as if he some how knew I needed just that very thing. The joy God is bringing me through him is so undeserved and yet so needed all at the same time. God is healing my lack of a father through the fathering of my own son.
This last week has been a melting of the heart kind of week. I feel that spring has finally come and the winter’s ice is starting to finally melt away. My heart has been in a very cold place for a while and I would have to say that I have found my self very angry with God. But know matter how much I want to stay angry, when he chooses to come in the anger just seems to melt away and all that is left is a very hungry heart that is longing for more of the father’s warmth. He has been whispering sweet words into my heart and mind, the gentle “I love you” and the “hang in there kiddo, I will never leave you nor forsake you”. My life has felt like a hurricane now for over a year. I have found myself screaming to God, “where are you”, “why won’t you show up and heal this mess”. I don’t understand God by a long shot but he never fails to show up. Sometimes it is just not on my timing, well most of the time it is not on my timing. But I stand here in the warm spring day with a hunger of God’s love saying, “I am yours, all of me, anything and everything, I belong to you”.
316
I sit tonight with a deep sadness filling my heart. Life for the last two years have been the hardest two years I can remember and for me that is saying a lot, cause I have seen a lot of hard days. I have sought help from so many places, prayer, pastors, counselors, Medication, friends. I have talked my problems out till I felt blue in the face. I refuse to let my heart die. I refuse to give up. Everywhere I go I am haunted by 3 numbers and it seems funny to even say that. how can you be haunted by numbers, but I am. It is the hotel room i am in, or the the date of the day, the time i just happen to look at the clock, the length of the new song. They won’t leave me alone. At first I thought it was John 3:16 that i kept seeing but I have come to feel it is deeper than that. I feel God is say 1 John 3:16. That a man must lie down his life for another. I feel that God has been telling me to die. I feel scared and alone at times, I don’t know how to die. I feel so often that no one understands and if I shared my darkest hour I feel sometimes the Love would end. I don’t know why God blesses what I do for my heart is so dirty. My marriage had been far from even a swim in a ditch. It has been hard as hell, can I say that, cause that is what i truly feel. Thing is I love my wife So much yet I fail her so much. How could this war in me be so strong. How could I let the evil one hold me so hard. My heart yearns for the truth in yet it is so easy to sometimes settle, for the road of love is so hard. I still ask for prayer. I want my family. please pray for Gods mercy for my family. Is it morbid for me to ask for death even when I feel it is what I truly need? My will, my wants, my dreams, need to die. I feel so heavy yet know that I can not bare this burden on my own anymore. I fear the future. I fear the fall. I Long for your words to the father, not to me. I don’t want to hear how great I am for I know the truth of my heart, I long for the birth in spirit and death in flesh. Let Christ find glory in the broken places of stinky humans.
begging
Shawn
Facing Giants!
As Christmas is approaching I find myself dreading it more and more. Not that I don’t like Christmas, it is by far my favorite holiday. There is something blessed about this time of year. The music is jolly, the snows a falling, everyone for the most part are in a pretty cheerful mood. The smell of the Christmas tree is grand and then all the beautiful lights, well just make this time of year very enchanting. I love Christmas and all of its cheer.
You see my memories of Christmas as a kid are just grand. We lived in this little house next door to where my grand parents live now, and I can still remember and smell the old family room where we would light the fire and put up the tree. The scent of burning pine and Christmas tree for me is very nostalgic. My whole life we celebrated Christmas with my cousin Jeremy and Heather, my aunt and uncle, Sheri and Danny, my Grand parents, and sometimes my aunt and uncle, Debbie and Keith. We would stay in our PJ’s and sit around the fire and play with what ever new thing we happened to get that year. My cousin Jeremy and I were like best friends and so to share this time with him it was very grand time. My parents on the other side of things never were around. In fact to this day I have not one memory of my mom at Christmas and only like 4 with my dad. And that being said that the last 3 years my dad has been at Christmas making only 1 memory prior to that. I dread going cause I dread facing one of the goliaths in my life. I have so much hurt and anger in my heart that seeing my dad at my favorite time of the year kind a makes it for me a hard time to be cheery. I find myself battling feeling I forgot I even had, ever time I am around him. I think it could be different if I felt like he even cared that I was his son, but he is so clueless to my life it is almost comical. I want so badly to forgive and move on, to just accept my lot and go on with my life. In fact I try really hard. When I am around him all he does is lie about everything, so much so I think that even he believes his own lies. And it is really hard to take the fact that no one really calls him out on anything. I have tried to tell him how I feel and how much he has hurt me but somehow it always just comes back to him. How nothing was his fault. Having the man that is suppose to be your father, show you nothing more than what it means to be 50 and have absolutely nothing going for yourself. To still live with mom and dad cause he can’t do it on his own. To run from everything in his life and yet still pretend that life is different. Sometimes I just can’t take it.
I hold my baby boy everyday and think to myself-how the hell could anyone do that to his or her child. How could someone just skip out and never look back. I tell my little boy daily that I love him, I hug him and kiss him, and at the same time I know that I don’t even know what that feels like. I use to long for those things, now I guess I have come to a place that I will be what my father wasn’t to me. I refuse to hurt my son this way. Sometimes I don’t even want my son around him in fear that he will hurt him like he hurt me. I hate these things about my self, how angry I can be. I just don’t know how to let go.
I have fallen on my face time and time again crying out for relief, crying out for healing, crying out for forgiveness, professing with my mouth that I forgive him. I have written him letters and tried talking with him and yet the wound is still very raw. I don’t hate him; I am just so saddened by his life. The pain is real, and sometimes the very sight of a man loving his child can just break me in half. I sit here in the heart of my pain knowing that in order to travel through I must wait it out. I much face my goliath. I know that just the fact he is here in my life now is God saying it is time to heal this broken heart of yours. That though this is going to be hard, I am with you, I am your salvation and I am your fortress.
I pray for this season to regain its joy. I pray that my heart can be alive even when death is creeping at my door. I pray that the Birth of Christ and the birth of my own son can be the healing factors of an absent father. I pray for the guidance on becoming a true man, a godly man, a man who would die for his family and considers his own life less valuable than those he loves. Let Christ be Christmas this year!
Ramblings of a Beggar 