A House on the Rock

So I have made this decision to walk with God, and to remember that I’m never alone, not really. I talked at community group about feeling alone, feeling addicted to my phone, because it’s my connection to the outside world. To things outside myself that fill me up, distract me from my pain, and make me feel whole...

...unless they don’t. And sometimes they won’t. That’s where I run into trouble. I ask, “What am I supposed to do? God’s not going to send me a text message!”

To this, Leslie tapped the Bible. I smiled shyly, point taken. Longest, text message, ever. And the best. I never have to open up the Bible, fearing what it might say, paranoid of the news.

God’s never going to get mad or lose His patience with me. God’s never going to cancel on me because He forgot we had plans and accidentally made other ones, or because He’s sick. God will never leave me unexpectedly and never explain why. God will never be late. He will never slip and say something stupid that hurts my feelings.

I AM SAFE.

And I am here. I am not in the past. I am not in another place. I am not in the future. I am right here, right now, and God is right here, right now with me. I don’t have to obsesively check my phone every thirty seconds, waiting for an answer. The Holy Spirit is already here, waiting to wash over my heart of cold stone like a rush of hot water. I can visualize it now. My heart, cold and grey, embittered by the pain of a thousand disappointments, paranoias, and injustices, begins to soften as the Holy Spirit begins its work, easing me into renewal.

Because renewal is exactly what I need. I’ve become bitter, jealous, and selfish. I don’t like what has happened to my heart at all. It’s a sick, twisted thing, these days, and it needs a serious makeover.

Lucky for me, one seemingly random trip to church started the whole process. I didn’t think for a minute going into it that such a thing would happen. I figured I would go once, sit through an awkward hour of feeling judged and out of place, and then I would walk home and politely decline the invitation to come back.

But that’s not what happened at all. Mere minutes into the sermon, I was biting my lip as tears poured down my face. The words couldn’t be more relevant. Pastor Mark talked of the parable in Luke of two houses near the sea – one built on a solid foundation of rock, the other of sand. When the storm swells came, the house built on stone was unshaken, but the house built on sand was swept into the sea.

I feel for all the world like my life, my peace of mind, is just like the house built on sand. My reliance on imperfect things – fellow imperfect humans, incomplete cellphone covereage, my own ability to succeed in school – is the foundation on which my life is currently built. And guess what? Every day, it seems, some part of that foundation lets me down. Heaven forbid someone take more than two minutes to respond to a text message. Heaven forbid someone is sick and there’s nothing in the world I can do to change it. Heaven forbid I can’t understand the assignment without help. But these things happen on a daily basis, and if there’s anything I can trust for the rest of my life, it’s that things will continue to happen. This foundation will continue to fail me.

I began to think, maybe this is something I haven’t tried yet. Maybe this is an option I should be seriously looking at. My friends and family have been urging me for months to get counseling, and I’ve been nothing but resistant to the idea. I haven’t wanted to have a designated breakdown hour, every Tuesday from 10:00 to 10:50... I wanted a REAL solution, something that was more meaningful than a scheduled vent session, something powerful that would actually enable me to live my life with strength and peace of mind. For some reason, I was doubtful that counseling would give me that.

But could God?

After being apart from church for so long, the thought hadn’t even really crossed my mind. But suddenly, it seemed so obvious. It was a complete DUH factor. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Heck, even rapper T.I. thought of it before I did:

“Wonder how I face years and I’m still chillin, easy, let go and let God deal with it.”

Of course, this is a lot easier said than done, but he had the right idea. I can’t do this alone. I’m failing miserably at trying to pick up the pieces of my house out the sea every day and scramble to rebuild my house, just in time for the storm to come crashing down on it again.

I have a lot of work to do. It’s not going to be an easy job to tread upstream and start moving all the building materials over to the new foundation on the rock. It’s true, I do still have some issues with organized religion to overcome, and I still have some deeply held opinions that are inconsistent with Christianity.

But, it seems to me that a life safe on the rock is worth the price of giving up my liberty to drop a bunch of F-bombs. There is a lot to change – I have some serious work to do on cleaning up my act. I realize it’s probably going to be a life long process, because obviously I’m never going to be perfect. But I think it’s going to be worth it. I’m tired of pain. I’m tired of exhaustion. I’m tired of fear. If changing my ways to make my life straight and narrow will help me walk with Jesus – and become more aware of all my blessings – then why shouldn’t I?

So I stand at a crossroads of great change. I’m still a little scared, a little hesistant to commit, a little steadfast in the beliefs of all my prior life – but it’s finally dawned on me that whatever I’m doing, it isn’t working, and I’m ready to try to change. It’s going to be a long road, but by the grace of God, maybe it will fill me up in ways my life as it is never will.

Speaking of UNDERSTANDING, and other stories

This last week at my family's house has reminded me so much of my life in high school, and believe it or not, I actually kind of miss it.

On Wednesday, I got all dressed up in my old goth(ish) clothes, particularly my "old faithful" boots and the torn-up skirt that I wore like, every week. It felt very much like high school, and getting ready for the Evanescence concert reminded me of those parts in between the drama, stress, depression, cutting, and suicide threats that didn't suck. The parts where people I didn't even know called me "Evanescence girl" in between classes, or when I sat in my car in the driveway singing my heart out to the music I loved. Correction: Love.

Being at the concert was, in so many ways, going back in time to the height of my love of the band, and fulfilling the dreams of the high school me that never got to see them live. It was a little weird being at the concert with the temporary musicians - when I saw Ev in Vancouver, it was when John and Rocky were still in the band - and it definitely felt a little more like "The Amy Lee Show" than enjoying the whole band... but then, I suppose, they are called Evanescence after all... that just so happens to mean ephemeral, temporary, like vapor. Everything does change. My life. Her life. The band. And that's okay.

The most powerful moment all night was when she sat down at the piano and played Lithium and Good Enough back to back. If Amy and I had sat down in a room together, figured out one emotion we had in common (as if there were only one!) and decided to write about them, those two songs would have been the result. Basically, those songs express the absolute truth of so many of my feelings... her lyrics could not have captured them more perfectly. So needless to say, I felt incredibly connected to her knowing that the words we were both singing were entirely from the heart, and I felt like our voices were crossing in mid-air and blending... I could see her face so clearly from where I was standing - maybe 20, 25 feet from the stage - and that emotional connection was amazing. I don't suppose I'll ever know if she knew what I was feeling, but I guess that one way connection was enough for me. I felt it. Towards the end of the song, I could tell she was breaking up at some of the phrases, being such an emotional and personal song. To see this person that I've looked up to and cared about so much all these years, almost crying at the song that connected our hearts was about the most incredible and emotional thing I could have ever prayed for.

And course, just her saying "Good evening, Seattle," was the fulfillment of something I've waited years to hear. She even said, "Wow, there's so many of you here! Thanks!" She sounded rather touched... it was sweet.

At the end of the show, when the crowd had finally called the band back for an encore, she sat down at the piano again, and I thought, hm, they must be doing Your Star... that's what they played at the Vancouver encore. But then I heard an organ... an organ? There was no organ on The Open Door... not even on Fallen, really. Not much, anyway.

I thought for a second - really? Are they really--are they seriously--is this actually--? It was. All at one second, Nikki and I looked at each other, and SCREAMED!!! OH MY GOD THEY'RE PLAYING UNDERSTANDING!!!! For those of you that don't know, Understanding was the first Ev song ever to be played on the radio, back in (if I'm not mistaken) 1998. It's off their first EP album, so needless to say, rare and not exactly recent. At the end of the song, Amy said, "Wow, I'm surprised any of you knew that song!" And I was thinking, "HELL YEAH, that's me!!" Way way cool. And then they did Your Star, which is awesome live. The whole show was incredible.

November 21st was the Someday of my high school life, my high school dream. And who knew how far the both of us would have come! In 2004, I don't think either of us could have forseen feeling Good Enough. And yet, there we've both arrived.

So then, on (Black) Friday, I was hanging out with Nikki and Sam, just like old times, talking and laughing and innuendo...ing, and just generally goofing around, in my family's house, in my old room. It still feels like home, even though I've called the dorm, and now my apartment, "home" since last fall. I miss living with my family, living in that room, even if it is nice to have the freedom to run my own life and my own schedule. Having my old room and my high school friends back kind of made me want my old life back. It's so boring at college. To be honest, the "new life," the "real life," whatever you wanna call it, kinda sucks. Competitive majors. Jobs. Realizing how much debt I'm going to have to pay off when I graduate, thank you $50,000 education. Wondering what the fuck I'm going to do with said competitive major in order to pay off said $50,000 education. Not to mention, I never seem to have the inspiration to do anything interesting with the little free time I do have, at least in that creativity-killing, pathetic excuse for a city.

Even things that aren't inherently bad are still huge changes that are going to take a lot of getting used to. I mean, one of my best high school friends is now married and has a baby. A baby! She has an awesome husband, and I'm totally happy for her (and comfortable around him) and her baby is a little angel and I love him with all my heart... but my high school friend wasn't a married mother. She was an angsty kid, just like me. And it's not that I want the angst back. I'm very glad to not have to be the suicide hotline anymore. That's great. But even so, our lives and our friendship have changed. We're on opposite sides of the motherhood line now, and while we're still very close, it's different. And while it's a good different, I still miss the old, uncommitted, single-person friendship we had. And I know we'll never have that again.

On top of it all, uhm, my sister has changed. A LOT. It's not really my business, so I'm not really at liberty to spill all the beans here, but let's say my mom and I are scared, hurt, and totally unsure of what to do. It's scary and depressing.

I'm also depressed that I have to go and endure 2.5 more weeks of the most boring town on the west coast, starting in a couple of hours. And then, at least six more months after Christmas break is over. Ugh. The move to Seattle, providing it all goes as smoothly as I hope, cannot come soon enough. Heh... that reminds me, I still have to figure out how to get around my lease. Gulp.

Alright, so life doesn't totally suck. I think my wounds about the holidays from years past are starting to heal, and I think I might actually enjoy this Christmas season, and, well... it could be worse. I could have literally lost friends, and I haven't. I guess I'm okay. It's just hard, and life's just different. A lot of times, I need change, but especially if I don't instigate it, I always have a hard time dealing with it.